collectingthinking

I have been working with 3D printing over the past 6 months with a specific idea in mind. I’ve been attempting to create work that is on the edge of collapsing, trying to explore the ‘handmadeness’ within the process. The output of 3D printing often leads to the design route, making art with it is a challenge but when pushing its structural parameters, the work starts to reference natural structures. After a great conversation at Kings this week I realised that I have been working with ideas adjacent to the engineering concept that is "form-finding”, a design process by which the shape of structures and systems is determined. The idea is to achieve the optimal form that delivers dynamic stability, adaptability, and sustainability. It considers structural stability, functionality, and beauty.

A busy weekend - Managed to get to Dance East – I’ve missed so many dance events due to clashes - being away and friends significant parties but the double bill unknown realms was too much of a pull even on a Friday night after a busy week - not excellent but interesting. Prompted conversation about what's new in dance, focused on ideas of the modern and contemporary.  Next up Laurence Edwards and Alex Jennings at Jubilee Hall. Live sculpting while talking about creating characters. A truly mesmerizing experience, I was captivated, and the 2 hours just flew by, being totally in the room was exhausting, focusing on the experience of watching somebody make something in real time.

I reflected on the visual memory I have after experiencing all the museums and galleries I have encountered, and all the objects within. The idea of learning through making, how we experience the world through our hands as much as our eyes. Ingold argues that creativity emerges from within an ongoing, improvisational process between makers, materials, and other non-human things such as tools and the physical environment. Also, Ideas around public/private, the studio and the gallery v the rehearsal room and the stage, – something I’ve thought about with the scientists and the science spaces I have worked with and in. some words from a previous experience...........

“The glove box and the laboratory are very specific spaces. That they often protect the specimen within the experiment from us rather than us from it is an intriguing idea. These spaces created to manipulate objects are contained, clean, dry in an attempt to be 'non'.   Within this extraordinary space, specific materials and situations are monitored, ready to be recreated, actions controlled to be repeated. These spaces have their parallel in the art world: the space of the gallery, the white cube where the art is on show, an anonymous space where the art is supposedly the focus. Obviously, no space is neutral and each have their meanings, which can be read, but the aspiration to create a static continuum brings to mind the words of Heraclitus 'No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.'  It appears that science and art are constantly trying to create a time and space where the river is still”.