Art to Move You: Hidden Shapes of Nature
ShapeVision, Forest, 2018, inkjet print
by Martin Brooks, ShapeVision Artist
Hidden Shapes of Nature at Saint Vincent Hospital
September 23rd to October 16
Movement is life. Regardless of ability, movement large or small — even just the intention to move — makes us aware of who we are and what we want.
When we look at art, we move our eyes, our head, and perhaps our body. Up, down, left, right; an image collaborates with our brain to direct our gaze around the canvas.
ShapeVision Art at Saint-Vincent Hospital aims to stimulate residents’ visual engagement with fascinating images. Large, brightly coloured, highly detailed inkjet prints are encapsulated in light plastic. The pieces can be viewed from close and far, and are safe for touching whether accidental or intentional. The elevator lobbies provide a wonderful opportunity for repeated viewing; we will be delighted if we hear of people choosing to miss the elevator because they are busy looking!
ShapeVision Art is designed to be viewed at any distance, with successively more detail emerging as you get closer and closer. In the elevator lobbies SVH residents can move, assisted or unassisted, to different views. ShapeVision’s extreme scaling is shown in Forest (see above). From the distance (left) it is a forest, in the middle it is trees, and very close it is abstract.
Images like Forest, leave the viewer free to move into and out of the scene, whereas other images may exert stronger stimulation for eye and head movement, Images like Forest, above, leave the viewer free to move into and out of the scene, whereas other images, like Bunch Grass (below), may exert stronger stimulation for eye and head movement.
ShapeVision is driven by a creative partnership between software artist Martin Brooks and art coach John Spence, with much of the source imagery by Ross Photography. The team has backgrounds in mathematics, education, photography, and painting; we approach image-making as combination of serendipity and intent. We constantly experiment, creating multiple versions of each image for comparison and evaluation. Only when we have fused beauty with surprise do we consider an image as a candidate for printing. For more information on ShapeVision, see our two websites: www.HiddenShapesOfNature.com and www.ShapeVision.gallery .