translationandrotationvariablestiffnessandmultipleforces

The complicated dynamics of creating collaborative work with 4 people from 3 different disciplines, working together over 500 miles apart who then purposely set out to gain enlightenment through not knowing has so far yielded a wealth of ideas and models. It has already promoted radically new ways of thinking and working that will inform our practices for years to come.

At the initial opening up stage we created over 200 models. We are now focusing our energies on developing a number of specific forms that explore particular ideas; translation and rotation, variable stiffness and multiple forces. The openness to possibilities has created a huge conceptual creative space which we are enjoying, contemplating the next stage, which also includes a return to our previous lives will involve evolving some conclusions which will bring us to exploring and then using materials new to us.

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.