Integrating the spider web form into my 3-d geometric shapes...

After looking at Tomas Saraceno's work and deciding that I want to integrate the spider web form into my 3-d geometric shapes that I have been creating, I started to experiment with this idea by sewing the spider web form directly onto them. The sample created is sewn on a clear acetate box that does not have any of my drawings printed on them so it does work well, however, if I did this web onto a 3-d container that has my drawing already printed on them, I do not think the combination of the two would work. The combination of the two may be too chaotic and distracting to one another that I would maybe consider using the spider web form differently.

I have been making individual containers that differ in size, shape and pattern but have always kept the vision of working with them in multiples in the back of my mind because I think near to the end; this is where my ideas will lean towards. I began to consider using the spider web form as a way of connecting a collection of these containers together to form an installation or maybe a gallery situated piece. I used the spider web form previously created and hung one singular container from it, this itself pulled the web heavily down, making me consider whether the idea of multiples being presented the same way would work. For this to be a reasonable outcome, I would have to put major reconsideration into material choice and scale.

I did begin to look at other alternative sources of materials that could make an interesting web but the outcome was not as expected. As I have said I wanted to become more free and loose with the web form, I decided that hot glue draping into the form of a spider web could create an interesting outcome. The decision to use hot glue to drape came from the work created and produced by Yasuaki Onishi. Titled, 'Vertical Emptiness', the outcome is purely beautiful. However, my outcome failed, the glue did not drape as intended, nor connect together, and I just ended up with clumps of glue sporadically positioned. I did find that the glue reflected shadows that could easily portray clear visible imagery around a room.
 

          

Natural form- Spiderwebbs/ Tomas Saraceno's Inspiration...

The spider web form was explored at the beginning of the research stage but it was overlooked during the sampling stage because I quickly moved on towards shells. I wanted to begin exploring the spider web form again but in more depth because after being recommended to look at Tomas Saraceno's work, I thought I had dismissed it too quickly. Digitally drawing spider webs are visually pleasing, they hold pattern and fits perfectly in my theme of 'Order and Chaos' as my digital drawings portray chaotic designs that holds the aspect of order within the spider webs construction, each web is connected together.

Using my drawings, I wanted to create a tactile version of a spider web, I decided to use black cotton thread as my only source of material for this sample because it is a flexible material to work with, it is thin and most resembles the qualities found in spider webs, the cotton also allows room for manipulation and control. I hand tied strings of thread to reach to this sample below. It was time-consuming but the photographs are worthwhile, they demonstrate a clear with my theme of 'Nature vs. Manmade'. Some of my photographs are exciting to look at because I do think they resemble what they were clearly inspired by.
 

Improving this sample and taking the spider web form further, I would experiment with the idea of threads alongside vanishing film in order to create larger samples; I predict that it would also give the spider web form created more depth and detail. Using the thread on a loose stitch on a sewing machine would also give me room to become free with what was being designed; I could become more chaotic and free.

Tomas Saraceno's work (above and below) with the spider web form has been a major influence in my working with spider webs; his work is fascinating, beautiful and incredibly detailed. Saraceno derives inspiration for his pieces from all sorts of things such as; soap bubbles, air dust particles and natural forms. Spider webs inspired Saraceno’s work at ‘The Venice Art Biennale, 09’, the scale is colossal and the presentation is simple and elegant, nothing takes away from his work. I admire how Saraceno uses the web to suspend and present his pieces, this inspired me to want to include the spider web form in my work as way of suspending my 3-d geometric forms.

    

Julia and Mark's Tutorial Notes...

After seeing Julie and her advising me that I need to become more decisive on my context, I began to consider where I actually want to see my work. As I am interested in installations, 3-dimensionality and light, these are the concepts my pieces will involve and work towards. To be decisive, I have decided that my work will be produced with a focused contemporary installation in mind. Maybe a type of light installation that; could become a positioned piece in a gallery space or functionally used as a chandelier of some nature. My theme of ‘Order vs. Chaos’, alongside ‘Nature and Manmade’ will still apply as some of my ideas already produced; inspire aspects that could work on a larger scale to become my intended outcome. After taking a week out of my project because of my essay, looking back through my project after this break gave me prospective on where I want my work to aim.

I was slightly nervous at the prospect of today’s tutorial with Mark. After taking some time away from my project, to complete my first draft of my dissertation, I felt lost with what I was going to continue experimenting with. As seen from my blog and sketchbook, I stopped working with acetate as I felt like I had exhausted all avenues and began working with paper. Using paper is where my original experimentation work started to inspired me to work with acetate, by going back to the start by using paper again; I was hoping it would supply further inspiration as to where my project will continue. I created a few samples from paper but using paper did not supply me with any further ideas, I felt like my work was going backwards instead of improving. I began to go through my sketchbook again to pick out samples that made the most impact and this seemed to help but going into tutorial, I still felt unsure of what my next steps were going to be.

After optional tutors and a dentist appointment, it has been 4 weeks that Mark had not seen my work, so getting his feedback was beneficial. Mark suggests to me that I should read and examine my drawings further as this was where all my experiments were at its highest point, they informed my structural work. As I want to begin working with materials, Mark suggested I experiment with the laser cutting but directly cutting out and engraving into a variety of materials. This is something that has interested me, I have been aware of the laser cutter for a while but I did not feel ready, until now, I am going to begin using some of my existing drawings and experiment with them on the laser cutter and engraver, experimenting with a variety of materials.

As I like the transparency that the acetate has provided, I am going to continue using acetate along with other transparent materials such as plastics and Perspex. I also want to experiment with fabrics but not in as much depth, I just want to experiment with material qualities to find the one that is appropriate for me. I visited Aidan, the laser cutter technician and he was incredibly helpful on where I need to begin with illustrator, time scale for each piece and material sizes for testers. By Monday or Tuesday, I am hoping to have a selective range of illustrator designs, taken from my drawings, which I will then go on to the laser cutter with. From here, I think it will provide me with a lot more ideas on materials, patterns, scale and structure, to experiment with and maybe help produce some visualisations that all lead the correct way.

Paper Light Shade inspired by Thyra Hilden and Pio Diaz...

After deciding to work with paper again, for further inspiration, I re-looked over my project so far, to gather old inspiration that could be explored in more depth. I began experimenting with the pattern that I had come across during research into 'architecture design patterns’; the pattern was constructed and hand carved to add extra detail to the architectural space that it was positioned in.

I wanted to combine this pattern with light and shadow, the two continual themes that have been running throughout my project. I created this sample from paper and as I anticipated, it held structure and the shape aimed for well, the light extracted through the cut pattern clearly, allowing shadows to be portrayed, this pattern did project around a room but not on the scale that I wanted. The nearer the light source and shade is to a surface the clearer the pattern is portrayed, the further it becomes from a surface the more indistinctive and blurry the pattern becomes.
 

The pattern being projected around a room clear is an important aspect of where this sample was aiming towards and because it does not appear clear enough, I am going to have to re-think on how it can be. I think using a thicker material or changing the scale may improve on the projection. I want a clear projection that would be on the same par as that of Thyra Hilden and Pio Diaz’s mystical forest inspired light shade is.
   

  

A New Direction- Paper...

After working on the acetate boxes for weeks, I decided that I wanted to change the direction in which my project was going. To do this, I began by looking back over my learning agreement and starting from there. I decided that I wanted to start using paper again as this is where my project began and where it side tracked off into acetate. Paper is a natural resource and would therefore be beneficial to my theme of ‘nature vs. manmade’. Some amazing pieces have been created from paper and after doing some experimenting with it, paper reacts brilliantly with light, better than acetate does. Paper blocks the light whereas acetate allows light to pass through it, because of this using paper would be more useful for me when working with light and reflections. Artists who have used the similiar aspects of; light, paper cutting and reflections have made some incredible designs.  

Julia Lohmann used laser cut dry pieces of seaweed to create this amazing lampshade. She used Kelp strips and then sewn them together. If the kelp was not in the shape she wanted, Lohmann would re-shape them whilst they were wet to create new and unique forms structures. The structures would then be placed around a rattan; Lohmann believes the rattan to be how the skeleton is to our bodies, the inner structure that holds the form.  Lohmann believes that seaweed could be used as a form of leather and other materials.

Sean Davies designed this lampshade as part of SketchUp; it was then modified for construction in Rhino. Created from six large sheets of strong paper, the pattern was cut out by laser cut and fixed together using fabric fasteners. Tilted ‘Lamp X’, I find this piece effortlessly beautiful, the reflections portrayed in the images are exactly what I am aiming towards creating, they are visually clear and the amazing reflections created add decoration to a room. The decoration aspect is important for me, as I do want my work produced to be visually pleasing.

 

Working with paper is going to be amazing. By just how my sketchbook is presented, I think it is clear that I am precise about particular things and working with paper is going to be one of these times. I like to present and portray precise structures that I have found through research and primary photographs. Sticking with the simple cube net shape, I began by cutting out my simple form of a shell. When working with paper cutting, I like to work small scale because I think it makes apiece look better because it has a lot of linear detail, especially when working from one structure, if I was to work with multiple structures, working larger would be necessary. From my photo’s it is clear to see that paper reflects shadows so much better than acetate.

Now, my experiments are rough samples, to give this sample a professional look and to experiment with scale, I would try-out with using laser cutting as it would save time and give the paper a better finish and professional finish like the examples below.

Installation Design...

As the triangle experiment went well, I decided to create another version of it using a different net shape and a different natural form. I chose to work with a cube net shape to create more layers and the natural form that I selected to work with was a set of leaves, which would demonstrate a clear connection with nature. I created more of these boxes than the triangles so that my composition and scale would be bigger. I projected these without attaching them together because at that moment in time I was not completely sure on what composition I was aiming for. When photographing them and playing around with the composition, I began putting them in order of size. Size in order would clearly demonstrate the order within my theme but as the two photographs below show this composition would not work, it is effortless to a fault. Playing around with composition and scale is definitely something that will become more apparent in my major project.

Once that I had made all of these boxes, I was not completely sure on how I was going to use them. My aim for my outcome is that it would either be an installation or interior based so for this collection, I wanted to turn it into a small-scale installation that would be suspended from the ceiling and that is exactly what I did. Seeing this up, I feel a great deal of accomplishment, I created something that I was finally proud of and it represented my theme of 'Order and Chaos' alongside 'Nature vs. Manmade'. The precision of the boxes represented the 'order' as well as the man-made, as they were created by me, the 'chaos' and 'nature' was represented through the natural forms printed on the boxes as well as the presentation.

On a larger scale I would like it to be presented similar to that of Susie Macmurray's work 'Echo' because her work is something I have always been drawn too. I think this is because most of her work is installation based and this is where my passion lies. Macmurray's work 'Echo' looks stunningly presented, it is a beautiful site-specific composition that is placed in what looks like a church. As it is so stunningly beautiful, I was surprised that her installation was created by using violin bow hair and hairnets, unusual materials. I would like my outcome to be similar to that of Macmurray's, I would achieve this by making my collection a whole lot bigger, Macmurray's installation consisted of 10,000 hairnets, so my collection would be time consuming but would hold the same effect of Macmurray's, this being the fragility and delicateness of the collection.

 

A New Direction...

This week I have taken the advice that I was given in tutorial about making a collection of my net shapes. I decided to limit myself to working with one net shape and one natural form so that the collection did not become too chaotic. I chose to continue using the triangle shape inspired by Laura Binyon’s work, which I had seen at last year’s degree show. Triangles are a simple shape to work with and they do not create too many layers that would blur the digital printed images any further.

My initial concern about the collection was there composition, so I re-looked over primary images that I had taken last summer for some inspiration. This is where I came across my primary images of Yoko Ono’s work at the Tate Gallery in Liverpool. Titled ‘Parts of Light House’, this beautiful cluster of 55 glass tetrahedral prisms inspired my own composition. It was inspiring because it fit perfectly with my theme of ‘Order and Chaos’, this composition in conjunction with the layers of natural form worked chaotically together, with the element of ‘order’ clearly presented in the individual triangles.

 

Working with light is something I have always enjoyed, I think this is because I think light makes my work look better, it highlights my works good qualities but will also show my works faults. In my tutorial it was said that the qualities of the LED electronic lights that I was working with wasn’t bright enough so I thought I would use the projector light to photograph my work on so that I could get brighter and clearer photographs. From looking at my images below and others that I have, the projector was a brilliant idea, the photographs are much brighter and clearer and they portrayed aspects that were not visually clear before now. It clearly portrays a 3-dimensional appearance, which gives my work the classification I was after. It also highlights the layers of natural forms, which are visible through each individual triangle. Using the projector has also defined my linear detailed digital drawings making them visually clearer, they appear bolder and they appear more literal. Whilst photographing my work, I became intrigued by the refection’s that were being projected. Using the projector abled me to view my work as 2-d and from another angle, the bottom. I like that some lines are defined bolder than others are, it adds to the quality of my work being 3-dimensional.

Using the projector gave me a lot more to consider, this sample could work 2-d and the scale could be much larger as the projector could attain that.

I decided to add some colour to my photographs and the projections by using colour jells that I had purchased. I chose to work with the colour green because my theme is looking at nature and the colour green is a clear element of it. I like that colour was brought into it but I think for now, less colour is better. Using one bright colour like the images show was too much, it reminded me off kryptonite, something I was not looking to achieve.

Whilst I was at the projector, I began playing around with changing the composition. Because of the fixing agent that I used to attach the triangles together, they could be moved; I exploited this quality and photographed other possible compositions. I like how the triangles can be stacked upon one another, doing this has made me give some thought into scale. So far, I have been working rather small scale with the odd larger scale model but I envisage these compositions on a large scale. A large scale that would tower over the audience, by doing this my natural forms would become abstract. With the light source being a constant feature on all compositions, different flecks of light appears, creating a rainbow of beautiful slight colour. This amount of colour does not ruin my work; it enhances it by giving it more detail, maybe this is how colour will play a role within my work.