I don't use Twitter, and considering I work in the media, that's actually quite a shocking revelation. At first it was probably something to do with the fact I'm a naturally verbose writer, and bring myself to boil my casual witticisms down into 140 characters, and by the time I'd started to come around to the idea, I'd basically missed the boat. Just because I'm not part of the system though, doesn't necessarily mean I don't understand it. Indeed, I understand that the concept of Twitter feeds into our voyeuristic tendencies in a manner that simply can't be sated by Facebook, where we can only see what our friends and acquaintances are getting up to. I also understand that it's worked wonders for ad land by creating a platform for responsive, quick-fix content. But it's the art world that has really taken those 140 characters and fashioned them into something worthwhile.
Morag Myerscough revealed at the Offset London design conference last week that the colourful tweets she spent 2 years tweeting had been a build up to an art installation project
Morag Myerscough is a case in point. The enigmatic artist and designer spent the better part of 2 years using her Twitter feed to post a series of daily colours, and she didn't once mention why. That was until last week at the Offset London design conference, however, when Myerscough revealed that the tweets had actually been a build up to an art installation project she was opening in a Swedish Hospital. She revealed that the colours she posted, correlated with the emotions she was feeling throughout the day (in hindsight quite an obvious answer), and this seemingly random series of colours has now been made into a pattern that will be hand-painted on to wooden panels, which will be used to decorate 200 metres of corridor wall space in Linköping University Hospital.
The “Temple of Agape,” another recent project by Myerscough (and Luke Morgan)
The art commission is part of a wider renovation project within the hospital, which includes a new building and refurbishment of the old building. The corridors will connect the two buildings, and Myerscough hopes to create a seamless transition between them with her designs. The “Colour Emotions” Twitter series is one of three different sets of colours that the designer tweeted daily for two years. She is yet to reveal what the other two sets of colours relate to, but she has also recently begun tweeting a series of numbers (also yet to be explained, though I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that they don't relate to the time of day). The piece was commissioned by the hospital and Ann Magnusson, a public art consultant and curator for Swedish arts commissioning group AM Public.
The seemingly random series of colours (correlating to specific emotions) has now been made into a pattern that will be used to decorate the Linköping University Hospital in Sweden
Morag Myerscough said: “Using Twitter seemed the perfect way to do an experiment and discipline myself to keep it up every day I wanted to do something about a journey. It is a very long walk from one end of the hospital to the other, which will be made by many patients and visitors. The piece is about making the journey more enjoyable. The pattern changes as you travel along the corridor, and is based on how emotions change and flow throughout the year. Although it is my year, it could be anybody’s year. I would like people to relate to the piece, but even if they just like the patterns and colours, I’ll be happy with that.”
Myerscough onstage at the Offset design conference last week
Printing the colours in rectangular stripes would have been boring according to the designer, so she has instead created an irregular, triangular pattern that changes in scale (as you'll see yourself in the cover image). The project is being completed in two phases; the wood panels will first be hand-painted by Myerscough at her London-based Studio Myerscough, starting in January 2016, a process that's expected to take around three months. The panels will then be taken to Sweden and installed within the hospital. The designer is not yet sure when the project will be completed, but it should be by the end of next year. Myerscough is known for rejuvenating public spaces with colour, and has previously worked with the Vital Arts organisation to transform the dining rooms at the children’s hospital within Barts Health at The Royal London Hospital.
Benjamin Hiorns is a freelance writer and struggling musician from Kidderminster in the UK. He is genuinely considering giving Twitter another try, though might require a little more convincing.
