cutcreasedfoldedandgathered

A day of stacking - looking at how the individual elements when cut, creased, folded and gathered together behave. The friction created is a form of jamming – the internal spaces created are intriguing and the pieces start to connect to some ideas related to ‘bookness’ - especially when viewed from the side - page, leaves, book.

alisttoundertake

Reflecting on the second day in London as part of the parallel practice project – we now have a list of activities to undertake as final statements – they include using the single ‘spinning’ element and using it to explore the making of structured sheets, the stack and the collapsibility, mapping the whole project (possibly through email without discussing it), making a number of films using the data Nantachai created with his wonderful coding and adding lights to the work and filming the movement. – all in the five days remaining. Some of the conversation focused on materials – what makes a finished piece? What materials say finished? What materials should the pieces be made with? I’m going to make a visit to the materials library to check out what’s possible – also it will be a good research trip in relationship to the teaching I’m involved in at Norwich University of the Arts.

afulldayfullofpossibilities

Yesterday was a full day full of possibilities – of starting points – if not quite of ending at least of rounding up – it was the day of the workshop with the phd students under Thrish’s supervision – this was full of intriguing conversations and a full exchange of ideas and cross interdisciplinary fertilisation took place – it was as ever fascinating to watch another way of thinking take place in front of you using objects you have made. But rather than viewing the science students as other, real connections and cross over’s in thinking and attitude took place and I felt I had more in common with these people than some closed art people I know who are engaged in the secret stifling the illusion of uniqueness. This fullness continued with the filming of us, the work and the models for the project, it is so important that the voice of Thrish and Nantachai are in the film otherwise it would not feel right – our experience is fully integrated to their experience and the learning that has taken place is because of all of us at this moment in time. Anyway we will see what happens

relentlesscuttingcreasingfoldingfitting

relentless cutting creasing folding fitting - a day of construction. the piece explores the negative space whilst friction enables the exploration of jamming/grinding.  

joiningaddingnarrativethroughmanipulation

the day was split into two - looking at ways of joining the spinning piece and thinking about how a narrative could be created through manipulation. the idea is to add colour to the shapes and by moving them the holder will be able to make different patterns.

negativespacerevealed

I’ve been thinking about the negative space that the structures create when folded – this changes as the work is manipulated so I’ve chosen one configuration and cast the space with plaster – making it physical – holding it and feeling the weight - intriguing but not a line of investigation I’ll follow on this project - something to work on later. 

activelyrecognisingcontrollingpassivity.

ok I think that i might of finally got this soft robotics thing – reacting to its context, structural memory in deformable objects – yesterday I brought in a structure to the meeting that I had already shown – but changing the parameters (making two elements longer) meant that I was able to manipulate it in one plane – in x and y axis – making it perform  in an exaggerated ‘flipping’ motion within a number of ‘other’ axis’s – this was an easy movement that I performed without thinking – I had not taken into account – body memory, variable stiffness or morphological computation - the model was then strapped to a xy table and initially a circle was coded into the movement of the arm – the uneven forces within the structure broke the arm which was attached to the structure – the structures construction meant that when the structure was manipulated it was revealed that the forces within it were distributed unevenly – something that was felt but overlooked and not fully understood when manipulated in the hand - then the movement of the arm was simplified into 4 points in space - a square, even though we had now worked out that the movement was octagonal – the 8 fitting onto the 4 sides each and with corners being taken up by an angle– due to the forces a second arm was broken – (robot war!!! my robots 2 theirs 0) – but with the addition of a spring the forces were subsumed and the structure moved beautifully – a case of passive actuation in practice.

The body makes and compensates for millions of movements continuously without recognising them – a robot which engages with its context has to undergo a similar process but it has to know – the maths involved in the coding is so mind boggling – I get it......actively controlling the passivity.

artandsciencetakingplacesimultaneously

Our 3^rd meeting – what a day as ever so many thoughts and ideas but somehow today everything gelled – some ideas are becoming concluded (for now) – others expanded (later)- the video of swirling data surrounding and swirling around and within one of our structures mapping light levels oooooooooooohhhh – it just looked like SCIENCE- this led to us thinking about mapping and documentation – so we are planning to document  all the structures we have made – reflecting on them and mapping the connections by remembering and creating links between them – thinking around the idea of genetics – the children of the parent structures – this will be undertaken in a number of ways - visually, with the knowledge of what led to what within a linear timeframe and also by applying code to map similarities. Some filming took place – we pretended to look and talk spontaneously – painful but it meant that myself and Naomi got time to discuss and plan for the next sessions (running a workshop for PHD students). Also the lab did look really cool – art and science taking place simultaneously both feeding off each other so that it was difficult to work out when one concluded and the other started. 

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.

joiningaproductionline

a day of refining and joining - the inevitable production line and eventually satisfaction. The work today was about trying to both explore ideas of multiple and joining whilst creating a more 'finished' piece that can be mapped and monitored next week at our meeting at Kings.