thespaceofabookmarkingnegativespace

A day of robotics at Kings – testing and talking – as ever I've come away with a note book full of words I didn't know existed and concepts that I have to reflect on. There was a wonderful moment when a room full of PhD students were fiddling with our creations – you could see their minds making connections and making sense, their sense.

A conversation about testing how the structures we have built affects its environment - (moving them in a tank of floating particles and observing how the particles move) connected with a thought I have had about the space a book inhabits – where does a book begin and end and could one cast that space? This led to the idea of working in negative space and the idea of searching for a place of not knowing. As a strategy I have realised that during this project if I am working on something and its becoming familiar I tend to move away from it into a place of not knowing. Lots of learning is taking place. 

breakingrulesmakingrules

Rules are interesting – either setting them from the outset and seeing what work/outcomes occurs as a result of following them or through reflecting on practice and realising that they are inherent in your work. a way of 'short-cutting' this is watching other makers, this acts as a form of mirror -  and then adopting – so I am finding myself relieved of the making-work-from-one-sheet-of-material-rule and allowing cutting with ‘random’ shapes that do not make a whole – some interesting outcomes so far. 

revelationandenlightenmentthroughvariableforces

An awesome day of insight, revelation and enlightenment. Our first sharing meeting after doing some work...... collaboration through sharing and creating new work between practices is already proving a rich learning ground. Finding out how somebody thinks is so energising, doing this while they are holding your work is fascinating – a real insight. I watched Nantachai as he ‘communicated’ with a small folded paper – feeling the variable forces within both the paper and then almost as a feedback loop into him!!!

Walking around the lab created so many starting points that i thought my head might explode- from wires and dynamics, to pumps and the potential of new material

The wildest thing i go away with is the idea that the objects i make can be ‘reduced’ to a formula based on the forces within it – wow and wow again – it has changed how i think about the folding both as intention beforehand, concentrating during and what the work could be as an after though during reflection.

twobecomeone

Received the first package from Naomi today – its interesting to see how others make, the activity makers engage in and the unwritten rules they create such as cutting and folding and curved lines v straight lines. This of course becomes all about how you make your own work. Her starting points have taken me on a journey of inside/outside – thinking about how organs/cogs/internal material will have to move within the confines if an outer case – is this just an old fashioned vision of what a robot should/could be?

foldingcircles

a morning of working on folding circles and attempting to join one circle to the other - got to love these people at http://wholemovement.com/ lots of possibilities. meanwhile when looking at the imagery it all gets a little nazigothicmystic.

handholdline

Reflecting on repetitive acts leads to revelation. When developing creative solutions to material problems makers often undertake hundreds of similar movements. There are a huge number variations within each piece which leads to a range of iterations of the wire/line pieces.