CONSTELLATIONS David Ian Bickley with Gigi Salomon

I’m no longer using these constellations,
But only pebbles as stars.

The constellations are arbitrary,
And it is the symbolism of the seed,
The history of this mapping
Within circular charts
Drawn along the shoreline
By the cyanotype twins —

A cluster of stars.

(Additional ideas and words by Carolyn Thompson, Gigi Salomon, Carolyn Lefley, Carolyn Kennett & Stevie Cussons)

In November 2020 I joined Watching the Sun, a virtual residency with Mayes creative — an arts collective based in Cornwall & The Royal Astronomical Society.
On this residency there were around twenty participants, artists from many different disciplines. Together, through a combination of Zoom and Slack, we attended events and were given provocations to produce work and think in new ways about our process (primarily based on ideas linked to astronomy and archaeology, and in particular the Sun).
I spent a delightful five days watching the sky, developing collaborative relationships, and producing new works, mainly with painters, photographers and printmakers.
Using digital motion techniques and ambient music / sound design (also based on astronomical sources) I created a number of moving image collaborative works, of which these are just a few examples.
I also made what I call, „digital Haiku“ experiments — a series of short texts to accompany the collaborative audio visual projects.