Mark Timmings

Mark Timmings is a multidisciplinary artist who explores perceptions of place by appropriating data and enfolding them into the domain of art. He creates works that intimate an infinite and vital web of interconnecting natural cycles and human patterns by transforming field observations and aspects of science into aesthetic considerations and contemplative experiences. His bodies of work operate as conceptual machines that are driven by algorithmic systems. They are ultimately transferable and open-ended. Ongoing projects include Meteorologic (2010–), print works that conjoin grids and colour fields to track temperature patterns and personal memory; and The Tide Songbook (2012–), musical compositions that transform tidal predictions, moon phases and the solar calendar into illuminated scores and multilayered sonorous performance art. In 2014, the Vancouver Chamber Choir, under the direction of Jon Washburn, presented a performance of Mark Timmings and Stephen Morris’s algorithmic musical composition Narvaez Bay: Tidal Predictions for 2012 aboard Cedric, Nathan and Jim Bomford’s floating art installation Deadhead. The performance was commissioned by Other Sights for Artists’ Projects. In 2015, an audio installation of Narvaez Bay, including Timmings’s monumental illuminated score and a recording of the Vancouver performance, was exhibited in Montreal at Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain.

Timmings is also a graphic designer specializing in visual arts and cultural projects. His design career spans over three decades and includes collaborations with artists, writers, curators and cultural institutions from across Canada. In 1991, Timmings served as a board member and director of communications for the Congress of the International Council of Graphic Design Associations in Montreal. From 1994 to 1997, he taught design and graphic standards at the Université du Québec (Outaouais). Timmings has received over 100 international awards for his publication designs. He has recently collaborated on artist book projects with Roy Arden, Hank Bull, Geoffrey Farmer and Etienne Zack.

Mark Timmings lives and works on Saturna Island, British Columbia, where he is a member of the local community choir.

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