experimentingwithstructures

I have been working on the bookwork structures this week – experimenting with materials and looking for new ways of exploring them – this has led me to look at structure systems by heinrich engel – a wonderful book full of possibilities - meanwhile we are still deep into assessments at NUCA

lateralthinkingjournals

a week of assessments and tutorials at NUCA. i also gave a presentation to year 1 around the use of journals - lateral thinking and problem solving http://www.slideshare.net/l.bicknell/15-nov-lateral-thinking - was surprised to be slightly critical of Akran Kharn at snape this weekend - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfflMh2BBqo – a piece in several movements some of which were relentlessly wonderful especially the opening section – it is amazing how much visual mileage one can get out of a sheet of plastic and lighting and with the addition of pounding music by Nitin Sawhney it became a thoughtful experience. a site i have come across this week that will inform the teaching is http://bookshelfporn.com/archive as well as the really interesting work shown at http://www.probelog.com/ - scroll down to the SPAN studio link. i am going to start adding labels to the posts for ease of tracking -

conceptsandmeanings

friday - another faster than sound at snape and quite possibly the most sublime so far - called Spheres & Splinters – a collaboration between Tod Machover who together with cellist Peter Gregson, ambsonic sound designer Ben Bloomberg and United Visual Artists http://www.uva.co.uk/latest created a multi-layered 3D soundscape with stunning yet wonderfully reserved and considered visuals - the walk back to Iken Cliff afterward in the dark was truly awe-inspiring – the whole evening was something that i am still thinking about – did i witness the beginning of something truly new? http://www.fasterthansound.com/ today has seen me giving a presentation and running a workshop for the Eastern Region Textile Forum around the idea of concepts and meanings http://www.ertf.org.uk/ it was a successful event with much thinking and many starting points for the members to go away with – along with a simple yet loaded small book that was made in the workshop. it was also nice to catch up with last some of years MATC students. here is a link to the presentation in two parts - http://www.slideshare.net/l.bicknell/lecture-dragon-hall-part-1

http://www.slideshare.net/l.bicknell/lecture-dragon-hall-part-2

iloveTED

i have been in love with TED for 3 years, using it as inspiration for myself as well as the students I work with and on Saturday I finally got to sit in a Ted conference – a truly wonderful experience. Highlights at TEDx Aldburgh http://www.tedxaldeburgh.com/ see review here http://productionadvice.co.uk/tedx-aldeburgh-2010-a-rough-guide/ have to be being introduced to David Toop and talking for 10 mins about teaching and learning and then letting him know that Ocean of Sound changed my thinking about sound http://www.cortical.org/Toop.html . He talked about silence and the idea of when learning a language you have to learn the silence of that culture – wonderful focus for the day. William Orbit was truly charming and revealingly honest – I remembered that I had brought strange Cargo when it came out as Thomas Dolby (who had superbly curated the day) referenced it in the Q&A. United Visual Artists were a good taster to next week’s faster than sound. I had seen Tim Exile http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5SVhGg5UV8 at a previous faster than sound where he bombed but here his knob twiddling was awesome – if I get the chance to see him doing his thing live I will be there. The objectsoundinstallationmachine by Felix Thorn in the Hoffman building was mesmerising http://www.felixsmachines.com/ It was a joy to watch again thoughtful recorded talks by David Byrne http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se8kcnU-uZw , Itay Talgram http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9g3Q-qvtss and Derek Sivers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V74AxCqOTvg and to be inspired to tears by Benjamin Zander http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9LCwI5iErE
What a fantastically inspiring day.

materialitycelebrated

yesterday was a successful day at NUCA –i held a presentation and ran a seminar with Year 2 Surface Design around the assessment criteria in the morning and the afternoon centred around tutorials exploring the new report that takes the place of the thesis - I have spent the day creating a number of bookworks using folding sheet material that I had layered up and laminated during the week. i have been creating experimental structures in miniature that are quite formal and highly structured but the use of the constructed material to build the work has led to accepting and then celebrating the qualities of the material. so the structures sag and bend affirming their materiality – i was reminded of the idea of wabi-sabi found in the Japanese fashion exhibition at the barbican at the moment.

‘From an engineering or design point of view, "wabi" may be interpreted as the imperfect quality of any object, due to inevitable limitations in design and construction/manufacture especially with respect to unpredictable or changing usage conditions; then "sabi" could be interpreted as the aspect of imperfect reliability, or limited mortality of any object, hence the etymological connection with the Japanese word sabi, to rust.’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi

workingandthinking

working on a number of fronts - continuing the folding and developing new book structures - the education work has moved into the idea of practice and a session with Year 1 at NUCA looked at developing a context and presenting a interior, fashion and site specific brief. the weekend saw me at a celebration at Shotley in Suffolk watching a lone twin education project -http://www.lonetwin.com/about.htm interesting to watch one of the performances through the traffic from one side of the road to the other. thought that it said a lot about rural village life and the car – how about a straight theatre performance with the audience on one side of a road and the performers on the other