CALLY SHADBOLT
Cally Shadbolt
PhD 2026 Oxford Brookes University
Between Earth and Sky: developing aerial thickness through kite flying and other poetic pastimes
eThesis available (free) at https://doi.org/10.24384/d2bd-q785
Oxford Brookes University RADAR (Research And Digital Assets Repository)
Abstract
This practice-based research explores physical and imaginary experiences of air through developing and analysing a key construct I call “aerial thickness”. My construct comprises a thick “web” of aerial phenomena which are mediated through novel combinations of art-research methodologies and resultant artworks. Together, these present an imaginative and poetic perception of air that goes beyond its familiar encounter, created by researching the gap between representation and illusion.
Materials and making were essential methodologies for working with aerial phenomena, such as weather. My approach initially employed kite-making and then other creative activities I call poetic pastimes. Additional activities such as drawing, sound recording, and residencies came together forming a model for my practice-based research which I call aerial praxis. This model has enabled me to organise and develop my research in novel ways.
My key finding was that aerial thickness comprises weather, sound, light, spirit, breath, and ether, and that these aerial elements, expressed as and through artworks, question the perceived interchangeability between what is real, and what is not. The mathematician Charles Babbage imagined an aerial library of voices that could be retrieved with future technology. My grandmother believed she could communicate with the dead through the ether. Through these ideas, I made an unpowered, working, crystal radio and performed a séance, both of which invite a listener or viewer to believe, momentarily, that they can hear or see supernatural aerial phenomena.
My practice-based expressions of aerial thickness, as my original contribution to knowledge, sit alongside the practices of other contemporary artists working with aerial projects which involve sound, breath, and electromagnetism - or who use drawing, materials, and making as their methodology. Aerial thickness opens, further, the perception of air as a force of consciousness and creativity and enables a new picture of air which is both physical and mysterious, full of movement and life, with potential for communication, leisure, and pleasure.
Cally Shadbolt
2022
Drawing in the Wind
Available at:
Abstract
I am proposing that a sound can exist as a drawing in its own right.
How can sound be seen, and could drawing be used to render it visible? Could a drawing be made of an invisible residue, for example of a sound created by the wind? I have asked these questions through making ‘sound bows’ - a series of devices activated by air currents to enable a connection to environment and weather through sound.
The reasoning for the project evolves from the narrative of journal entries made during research in an island landscape. It begins with the use of kites as interfaces with the medium of the air. Then, due to adverse conditions, sound bows are built from local materials and used as ‘connecting devices’ to the wind. After initial trials with phone recordings of the noises emitted by the bows, a method of recording and experiencing sound by hand-drawing is developed which does not rely on digital machines.
The project aims to analyse the equation between movement and form through drawing. Translating sound into another medium such as drawing can only be rendered as an equivalence, but the experience of attempting to do this through hand-drawing enables me to know how it feels to be the wind.