Two recent events held at Durlston: a performance of Zac’s music and a geology walk, both well attended and enjoyed by many.
photos by Howard Oliver
Commission: Fine Family Foundation Co-Commisssion
Location: Durlston Country Park & Walford Mill Crafts, Wimborne
Zachary Eastwood-Bloom is a multi-material artist working with and exploring materials such as concrete, ceramic, bronze, wood and resin. He combines both traditional and contemporary processes such as casting, CNC milling, 3D printing and laser cutting, making objects that question the delicate balance between the material and the digital. After discovering the possibilities of making and the three dimensional form Zachary went to study at Edinburgh College of Art where he began experimenting with 3D design software. He further explored digital processes and fabrication at the Royal College of Art graduating in 2010.
Zachary is a founding member of London based Studio Manifold and has recently exhibited with British Ceramics Biennial, The V&A Museum and The Royal British Society of Sculptors and his piece ‘Information Ate My Table’ is currently touring with the Crafts Council’s Lab Craft exhibition.
I am very keen to explore the diverse possibilities of using scientific data and instrumentation to stimulate form creation. The prospect of working and being in dialogue with scientists is a very exciting notion.
Digital Earth
Co-commissioned by Artsreach, Walford Mill Crafts and Fine Family Foundation.
Comments from Walford Mill Craft visitor book:
What a wonderful and inspiring exhibition, so innovative – fantastic
Extraordinary! Thought provoking. Very interesting talking to the artist and the volunteer. Well done!
Love the colour field prints! As a researcher of digital design and 3D printing I have really enjoyed the innovative use of technology to produce a fantastic and varied interpretation of the landscape.
Zachary Eastwood Bloom works with both traditional making methodologies and what he terms ‘post-craft’ processes of production. Access to landscape scanning processes used in geology have opened up new ways of working for Zachary which has resulted in both 2D and 3D renderings and models, as well as an innovative audio work derived from landscape scanning sources. Both the audio installation presented in the tower of Durlston Castle and the works at Walford Mills Crafts represent his keen interest in synaethesia.
Zachary was selected for ExLab because his work offers a fresh approach to craft and challenges preconceptions about what the term ‘craft’ embraces. He combines traditional haptic methods of making with highly technical processes of production. Often his work is actually about that collision between hand made and machine-made. ‘Information Ate My Table’ is a good example of this.
Zachary is a founding member of London based Studio Manifold and has recently exhibited at the British Ceramics Biennial, the V&A Museum and The Royal British Society of Sculptors and his piece ‘Information Ate My Table’ recently toured with the Crafts Council’s Lab Craft exhibition. His work utilises materials such as concrete, ceramic, bronze, wood and resin. He combines both traditional and contemporary processes such as casting, CNC milling, 3D printing and laser cutting, making objects that question the delicate balance between the material and the digital. Zachary studied at Edinburgh College of Art where he began experimenting with 3D design software. He further explored digital processes and fabrication at the Royal College of Art for his Masters, graduating in 2010. Having made The Journey (2010), a work that transcribed sound into landscape, for ExLab he has reversed that process, creating sound from landscape.
Zachary is now exploring a cycle of this activity with the New English Ballet Theatre – whereby the orchestra generates form and the performers respond to the resulting virtual landscapes. Zachary considers his work to be a form of synaethesia. He sets out to transgress the senses, creating sound from form, form from sound, images and sculptures from data. During his research for ExLab he worked closely with geologists and natural scientists at Durlston, all of which has informed this new body of work. He commented on how fascinating it was that all those he engaged with at Durlston had very personal, and different, experiences of the same landscape. That knowledge conceptually underpins how he works across mediums and how he experiences place – there is no universal ‘knowing of landscape’ that we all share in common, but only our ‘interpretation of a landscape’. This is also applied to the mediums he employs – there is no ‘correct’ way to use them. Many of the works for ExLab reflect his use of various mediums – high-end technology provides visual readings of landscapes – which Zachary has modified to create prints closely akin to colour-field paintings. He straddles the digital and the analogue, design, making and contemporary art. He makes things that have not been seen before, by merging and morphing media and material, the haptic and the hi-tec.
The diversity of his work is reflected across the two venues, which provide different contexts too. For example, sections of the Durlston landscape were scanned, generating digital data has been 3D printed- Fragments from a Digital Earth’- and exhibited alongside a sound piece – Rendered Earth – that has also been generated from the shoreline. They are installed together in the Tower that has it’s back to the sea. A range of prints derived from digital landscape scanning technologies and forms created from 3D renderings are being shown at Walford Mill Crafts between 27th July and 9th September and at Durlston Country Park from 14th September.
For Rendered Sound I have taken three dimensional data of Durlston Country Park captured from aircraft and used for scientific research to create a mesmeric sound work. The sound is generated from the emergence of the landscape up from the sea at Durlston Head travelling along the Jurassic Coast from east to west, crescending as the landscape rises away from the bay. The work created represents millions of years of geological metamorphosis, quarrying and the marks of human traffic stimulating an absorbing and emotional response to scientific data.
Summarising the experience of Zachary’s work, the key word is synaethesia. He presents a ‘visual’ arts exhibition, yet the visual is not prioritised. It is art, geology, technology – real and virtual. Zachary renders the digital as tactile, sound as seen and landscape as object. As the viewer, you may be expecting to look at works – however you will undoubtedly have to engage all of your senses, just as Zachary did in the making of the works.
Zachary Eastwood-Bloom would like to thank the following for their help and support Andrew Ford (Lecturer in Geoinformatics, Bournemouth University), The Rangers at Durlston Country Park, Ali Tuckey, Hamish Murray and Katie Black, Andrew Dawood & Jonathan Rowley at Digits2widgets (sponsorship for 3D printing), Neil Birch at Champion Timber (sponsorship for timber), Will Robinson at Everythingisnumber (invaluable assistance with computer programming) Sybil Fine (Fine Foundation Trust).
Commission managed by Yvonne Gallimore on behalf of Artsreach and Christine Fletcher-Jones on behalf of Walford Mill Crafts. Zac has been supported by Richard Edmonds (geologist), Ali Tuckey (Durlston Ranger), Andy Ford (3D imaging), Denys Brunsden and Will Robinson (programming) and others.
Commission Managers: Yvonne Gallimore (Artsreach) & Christine Fletcher Jones (Walford Mill Crafts) copyright for all images lies with the artist
