I have been in total production mode now for the past few days making tiny structures at the suggestion of my critique earlier this week. It has been brought to my attention that I tend to make more discoveries when I simply play with the materials and question at hand rather than try to create something that I'm unsure of what I'm looking for.
"Play" has been interesting so far...and very frustrating...I was warned. I'm not sure in what direction that I'm making progress exactly other than I have the potential for tons of jumping off points for form, so in reality this is indeed my process.
Photos of my little structures will get posted tomorrow morning but as of right now I have made a few discoveries -
1. triangle = support - although this may be seemingly obvious a lot of my creations did not go well or were not able to support themselves because they did not contain a triangular shape
2. 3 is better than 4 - as I attempted to build my structures higher they all seemed to naturally develop a sort of base element, the ones that had 3 legs were more successful because the weight was more evenly distributed and the overall form seemed a little more forgiving than those which had 4 legs, as these had to be perfectly balanced and identical length and position
3. more height requires support - this is pretty straightforward, but it did depend on how I was making attachments. Attaching one wire to another by a single point didn't seem to allow there to be a strong enough connection for the next piece added to have enough support.
4. attachment of connections - when two or more pieces were attached to one another at any sort of an angle this connection had to serve several purposes. The connection must keep the rods from sliding out of the joint and also must keep the pieces from changing their angle of attachment to one another.
My choice of materiality for my "play" session was difficult because attaching the piano wire with this flexible wire did not work well because the two materials slipped when placed against each other. Basically I had trouble creating joints that kept everything in place, the angle would change shape the majority of the time until I braced the structure.
"Play" has been interesting so far...and very frustrating...I was warned. I'm not sure in what direction that I'm making progress exactly other than I have the potential for tons of jumping off points for form, so in reality this is indeed my process.
Photos of my little structures will get posted tomorrow morning but as of right now I have made a few discoveries -
1. triangle = support - although this may be seemingly obvious a lot of my creations did not go well or were not able to support themselves because they did not contain a triangular shape
2. 3 is better than 4 - as I attempted to build my structures higher they all seemed to naturally develop a sort of base element, the ones that had 3 legs were more successful because the weight was more evenly distributed and the overall form seemed a little more forgiving than those which had 4 legs, as these had to be perfectly balanced and identical length and position
3. more height requires support - this is pretty straightforward, but it did depend on how I was making attachments. Attaching one wire to another by a single point didn't seem to allow there to be a strong enough connection for the next piece added to have enough support.
4. attachment of connections - when two or more pieces were attached to one another at any sort of an angle this connection had to serve several purposes. The connection must keep the rods from sliding out of the joint and also must keep the pieces from changing their angle of attachment to one another.
My choice of materiality for my "play" session was difficult because attaching the piano wire with this flexible wire did not work well because the two materials slipped when placed against each other. Basically I had trouble creating joints that kept everything in place, the angle would change shape the majority of the time until I braced the structure.
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