And what could be a potentially bad idea...

… I’m going to start uploading piano improvs of mine I record to my soundcloud account. Be warned - these are rough, unedited, untranscribed improvs and thus have mistakes in them. Should I ever manage to get a copy of Sibelius or the like for cheap, then I will possibly transcribe them and see if I can tidy them up. It has been 10 years since I’ve done any composition, so this experiment may not last long.

3DD - Skin + Bones

So, this week saw the beginning of our penultimate project - or final, non-graded, project. It is 3 weeks long, focused around the theme of “Skin & Bones”.

As an aside, I am getting increasingly frustrated with this course, and how suffocating it is.

Along with the standard research and poorly explained drawing tasks we had this week, I decided to create this sculpture - based on a representation of the microscopic structure of bone - to try and breathe life back into my work. We also have a Foundation exhibition on Monday, and I wanted to show something in that, other than a model I created back during the Carousel in September.

Inspired by an image of bone taken by a tunneling electron microscope, I did a quick sketch of the sculpture, deciding that I wanted it to be reasonably substantial & made out of materials I haven’t really played with yet. So, I settled on a thick (25mm) foam base painted in white acrylic, with an aluminium wire frame on which to wrap the mod-roc. The mod-roc itself needs a few coats of white acrylic paint, which I will do on Monday.

On the Thursday we were tasked with making collages, so along with a collage of Neto’s work, I decided to create a layered representation of bone again, this time just using layers of foam cut out using a scalpel. It is still a WIP.

3DD - Instructables

This week started out as ambitious, ended up as a disappointment.

The brief was to either search the “Instructables” website for a design and re-create it ourselves; or we could do our own design so long as we wrote an instruction manual with it. I went for the 2nd option.

Having decided I wanted to make some sort of jewellery, I originally settled on using some perspex & acrylic cut-offs I had lying around. So I went ahead and drew around them, and transferred the outlines onto tracing paper so I knew exactly how much material I had to work with. After that, I went to the library to find some inspiration.

I started investigating different ways of bending acrylic to my will, and decided that the easiest option would be if I could fix it to a fabric strip (both for comfort of the wearer, and for time’s sake - this was again a 1 week project). Joy (the sewing/fabric technician) introduced me to “Bondaweb” - double-sided glue for fabrics - and this seemed to work well for the acrylic.

The idea had ballooned into a fully fledged costume - hence the old cheongsam & skirt, which I combined to create a slightly longer dress. Some ideas I had included create a neck-dress out of acrylic/perspex complete with pauldrons. Ambitious, eh?

I created the pendant for the necklace out of rose petals (Joy suggested it may be interesting to trap something between the layers - she was right) trapped between persepx & acrylic, securely wrapped in a shimmering nylon fabric (”Crystal Organza White”). It was after this that I became unconvinced that I could ensure the acrylic necklace would lie on the wearer’s neck properly. I investigated two other options, both involving rose petals.

Option A: create a tube of rose petals trapped in nylon fabric, wrapped around an old silver chain
Option B: create a choker of rose petals, trapped between nylon fabric

I settled on Option B. I used velcro pads to secure the choker, although I would have preffered using a hook & eye.

I then attempted to do something similar using tulip petals, trapped between fabric layers for a belt. However, that all went pear shaped for two reasons: 1. I was mostly feeling my way through it; 2. The tulip petals hadn’t been left to press for long enough and we starting to go off by the time I was stitching the belt together.

What did I end up with this week? A choker made of rose petals & nylon, a pendent of acylic, perspex & rose petals, a flower press & a frankensteined dress. Now I just need to write the instruction manual. On the plus side, I’m hoping I may be able to take some other ideas further for the next project, depending on the angle the tutor is intending us to go. Exoskeleton, anyone?

3DD - Cause + Effect

Ok. So this first project back was a group project, with a brief to create a kinetic sculpture inspired by Fischll & Weiss’ “The Way Things Go”. We were all quite underwhelmed with how Fischll & Weiss’ work just petered out, so we wanted to try and create a grande finale to ours.

Ultimately, we settled on triggering a reservoir to empty into a container. Originally, this contain was to be vacuum formed around stylised lettering, but there were not enough sheets of clear plastic available. We adpated, and created a container out of perspex & acrylic (some of which was left over from projects last term). Unsurprisingly, the end container was not water-tight. So extreme measures were resorted to (I duct-taped a significant part of the container, and on advice of a friend used a glue-gun to help seal any other holes). It still leaked a bit, but not torrentially.

And that was only one section of the whole design.

A big shout-out to the group, who were awesome: Niamh, Jack, Ollie, Elizabeth, Georgina, Nathaniel, Ruby.

Once I’ve figured out the best photomontage, I’ll upload a shot of the final marble run/sculpture.

3DD - Holiday Project

I haven’t uploaded any sketches of mine for a while. (It is admittedly a wee bit of a hassle scanning everything in.)

These sketches show some rough ideas I had for an evolution of the Christmas Cracker.

I scrapped the connection with Christmas, and instead went for something that iterated on the idea of human interaction, coupled with storage.

Where did the shape come from? Hah. p-orbitals. Wha? Yes, p-orbitals.
Well, you can’t argue that the design hasn’t got chemistry.
… I’m so sorry.

The general principal of the device is that you have a softer (but ribbed), inner sack which can be used to store items. This is placed into the central node, and a hard protective shell is placed around it. This shell locks into place, and can only be removed when all 4 shells are simultaneously depressed.