Our last Kick-About together was inspired by the lavish pyrotechnical displays of the artist Cai Guo-Qiang. But who needs all those bangs, flashes and falling debris when you’ve got the extraordinary spectacle of the murmuration of birds? Enjoy this latest selection of ‘new works made in a short time’, inspired by one of nature’s most thrilling phenomena. For all previous editions of The Kick-About, click here.
Gary Thorne
“Murmuration caught my eye in the form of autumn leaves fighting a losing battle in their attempt to fly off and regroup. It’s as simple as that this week, with a reshaping of the format to a cinematic type ratio, and an enhancement of the already fiery colours on public display.”
James Randall
“Murmuration is crazy stuff – think I saw it on our recent road trip. So I was keen and took off on an animation investigation – and played with a soundtrack, but I’m afraid the result was a bit underwhelming. I was investigating ‘nesting’, so a bird link…“
Charly Skilling
“In the heart of the Chiltern Hills, surrounded by wooded slopes and rolling farmland, the Grand Union Canal reaches the highest point of its journey from Birmingham to London. Though no longer the major transport route it once was, the Grand Union is still in constant use for leisure and recreational purposes – boaters, anglers, walkers – and residential, with a thriving community of people who have chosen to live in narrowboats and barges rather than more traditional dwellings. In the little village of Marsworth, the winding country road crosses the canal, close by the last canal lock before the summit and there, in the angle created by canal and road as they travel their separate ways, lies Tring Reservoir, linked, man-made, lakes whose only task is to keep enough water at the summit of the Grand Union to enable boats to pass.
In summer, this area throngs with holiday-makers, walkers, fisherman and family outings, but as the year ages, it is left to the dog-walkers, the hardiest boaters and the wildlife watchers. And there, on autumn evenings. these hardy souls receive their reward – the most spectacular aerial displays.”
Vanessa Clegg
“Right, let me just explain that I have an ancient iPad and that’s it, so initial ideas of making a film combining all utterly failed, so here’s what I ended up with… I wanted to combine the soundtrack (provided by me in the end) of a heart murmur and a murmuration of starlings. Starting with the scrapings from my ink pot, I sprayed (very old) spray mount onto acetate… Unfortunately it wasn’t clear as you see. Then I stuck that on the window and took a couple of photos. The short ‘films’ are as near to the idea as I could get, as the hairdryer blew them off the sheet… and so it goes! This is why we love the Kick-About!”
Phil Gomm
“These impressions of whirling starlings against estruarial skies were created by crushing artist’s charcoal with a rolling pin and then sandwiching the resulting dust between sheets of transparent acetate. The sheets were then placed on a scanner; by tapping at the acetate itself, I was able to move the particles of charcoal about to produce different densities of ‘murmuration’. I sometimes used an old flat decorator’s brush to sweep the dust around with a bit more intention. Afterwards, my husband discovered me vacuuming the scanner…”
Itta Howie
“Sunset Ritual – Daily pocket-sized murmurations, imagined and drawn at dusk”.
10.5 x 15cm, charcoal.
Graeme Daly
“It is very much on my bucket list to experience the display of a murmuration of starlings in such a large capacity. I remember recently enough seeing Irish photographers witnessing a starling murmuration in the shape of a giant bird in county Westmeath. Some renders will have to do until I can get a shot for myself one day. I took a bunch of my photographs of varying landscapes scattered around Ireland and digitally painted little dots over the top while skewing, warping and morphing them into shapes reminiscent of such a spectacle.”
@graemedalyart / vimeo.com/graemedaly / linkedin.com/in/graeme-daly / twitter.com/Graeme_Daly / gentlegiant.blog
Marion Raper
“I was lucky enough to be given a present of some air-dry clay plus some tools for sculpting with. I discovered that they made some delightful marks and textures and have attempted to make a picture of birds in murmuration over the fields. Next I sculpted a single bird from clay, then laid it on a background of painted starlings to make a 3D picture. I have actually seen a murmuration once on the way to Devon. I glanced out of the car window as the birds suddenly shot skywards from out of a hedge, then twisted and turned as one entity. It was magical.”
Kerfe Roig
“My watercolor skies took on a life of their own, but then murmurations do seem to summon magic…”
wings scatter in light,
a mystery, their mission
illegible to
human eyes–tantalizing
visions of layered
complexity, a mirror
reflecting the wind–
following a rising path
toward the Seven Sisters
kblog.blog / methodtwomadness.wordpress.com
Tom Beg
“I recently rekindled my interest in coding as a creative medium by taking some baby steps back into it and learning from scratch again, starting with the most basic concepts and logic. After some playing around, I managed to write some simple code that generates these chaotic visual masses. It’s lots of random values doing random things, so not every image generated is a winner. It might not even be a winner of any kind, however, amidst the chaos, I do enjoy seeing things emerge uniquely every time the play button is pressed. There are probably dozens of better and more efficient ways of doing this with prettier and more complicated code, with prettier and more complicated outcomes, but it was fun to see some numbers and symbols come to life in an animated and dynamic way. Feel free to generate your own random mass of dots, too!“
twitter.com/earthlystranger / vimeo.com/tombeg / tombeg.com
And for our next Kick-About together, the work of Inuit artist, Kenojuak Ashevak…
Red's Kingdom 
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