Stitch and Scan.

Scan. Scans make them look a bit technical, and maybe a bit more unique, less generic after seeing parts of T.E. equipment on thursday, however, I would say these are more drawings as I have been missing the stitch lately, so thought I would do some labour intensive mark-making sessions...

Just some more aesthetic-issues to ponder about...

Thinking about stitching into more of my lazer cut work, but maybe with metalic wire, so its more looks technical and purposeful (?!)  as opposed to embellishment...

T.E things at MOSI.

I went of in search of telephone exchange equipment (the old stuff) at mosi, right in the last building 'Connected Earth' and found an array of very strange looking things, when photographed looked quite scary and alive...

They are all unacceptably bright photos with an odd video-arcade-ish purple glare on a few, BUT it's quite nice to see the detail of some of the older hand operated machines...

Remind me of the botanical collection drawers...

I think this is slightly newer than all the others...

The wires look alive! Could be quite nice to think about more detail,
or maybe its good to have a direct contrast with generic simple more- modern inspired things...

Planning.

I have been planning some more time on the laser cutter, this time I have been getting technical and mathematical!

I wanted everything to represent certain numbers and information I found about the telephone exchanges in Manchester...

In 1879- first list of subscribers for the T.E;s was 125 (a handwritten list)
In 1881- that jumped to 420, an increase of 236%... INTERESTING. Seems like an excessive increase...

So.. to keep in with being absurd (Eva Hesse- series are a way of absurdity, the huge crossbar exchanges look strange and art like themselves...) and obsessive , I have planned out everything and measured everything that has some link to these numbers...

EG 420 circles, 5 sheets of 25 squares (all representative of the t.e visually).

Hopefully this will start to form more meaning to the work, and I think as it is quite ordered in a different way, different to work that I have already done...Could end up being boring... or quite different...

Excess.

Telephone Exchanges
Non places
Communications
Excess.

'This need to give a meaning to the present if not the past, is the price we pay for over abundance of events corresponding to a situation we could call supermodern to express its essential quality: EXCESS'


Marc Auge- sees the world in terms of supermodernity, the world being filled with an abundance of events demanding that each of us individually INTERPRET it all.

This all got me thinking; telephone exchanges, developed as was necessary for the abundance of increasing phone calls, an excessive increase, which as my images in the last post show, an absolute excess of machinery (though very visually interesting).

Jump from hand to machine; hand operated calls to 'strowgers' and 'crossbar systems'.

So Lazer cutting- Hundreds of circles/squares representative of the Telephone exchanges, and maybe even non places

Plaster pieces- Reflecting the handmade, the condensed nature of the telephone equipment...

Both reflect the simple visuals of the telephone exchanges and generic non-places that we see today, so I want to continue developing these two processes, thinking of possible interactions with them, layering, bundling, stitching, hanging, using, placing....

Big sheets of cut out pieces, threading wires through? Plain basic colours...

Making rows of boxes and holes, to place pieces together, 'interpreting' the excess...

Plaster , stitch, laser, fabric, perspex? 

Thoughts

Laser Cutting. The results were very satisfying.

I had planned just to do circles and rectangles, visualy reflecting TE's (switchboards) and non spaces- repetition and all that.

And I really think they work. Which is excellent, because I have been having a few thinking troubles lately...

It led on to me thinking more about the history of the TE's as I did start to look at them right at the start, and so I have come full circle. Back to the very first thing I printed out. Sigh.

In a man-made nutshell;
-First exchanges in Manchester very important
-Began with manual switchboards, lots of women perched on chairs manually connecting calls...
-In 1881: 420 subscribers, 400 miles of wire and one day in March, there were 430 phone calls! (all this information is especially handy, as I have been trying to find some numbers/ some way of mapping, making maths=space, something like that etc...)

Visually the TE's get quite interesting which is where my laser cutting fits in. Handy.

These top two, actually Manchester. Exciting.

The buildings themselves, especially the last one, look like sculptures and remind me very much of swedish/finnish artwork I have seen...

LINKS to non spaces and dead places- now, there are not as many functions, had a history, unlike many non places. BOTH now dead, or condensed in purpose, both responsible thousands of connections and social interactions, lonely places, waiting places, spending time. 

Making things that have no function, has lost function, dead function, suggests function? Represent these places..

Series.

Dead networks...

Thinking about empty/non spaces/places, dead and lost functions (telephone exchanges, transient places)... and so straight to the stitch!

I have been using plain, boring fabrics, no identity as a representation of these non places, making little empty sacks or containers, and stitching little networks; organised ordered, bringing a feeling of function...

I want to bring these two themes together, telephone exchanges, lost empty buildings, their function has been minimized (literally, equipment has been made smaller, make way for modern technology!) They sit in solitude, almost unnoticed, connecting people, instantaneoulsy, repetitively, just like non places, (e.g car parks..train stations) waiting around, no identity just for function.

They are more like transient places...lasting only for a short time.

I think more research for T.E's are needed,

Words- connections...transient...repetitive.

FAT

Fashion. Architecture. Taste.

'FATs design, installation and gallery based projects explore the potential of objects to perform as critically engaged entities. Through material, form and use they develop a culturally rich approach where design is not only a solution to a problem but a way of describing the contemporary world.'


Fat is a pretty interesting design group, who are based in architecture but do a bit of design work too... 


The bit about ' a way of describing the contemporary world' caught me! And I think this what I am trying to do, or this weeks theme, trying to map and represent the dead and empty spaces in Manchester.
I am going to try and get hold of snowcrete and use plaster and maybe see what setting flour paste achieves...


Konran SHOP.


A few objects were made for the Konran Shop in London...

'FAT's Konran Shop was a range of products exhibited and sold at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Recognisable icons of design - Philippe Starck's Juicy Salif, the ipod, Alessi coffee pots - are crudely remade in clay. Lumpy, slightly grotesque and functionally useless, the pieces satirised our obsession with accumulating designer objects for the home, 

FUNCTIONALY USELESS. Makes me think about the telephone exchanges -LOST functions, DEAD FUNCTIONS. And makes me think about the non places, car parks, train-stations; the functions are to wait, strange transitional places and periods. 

Its all quite repeitive, the function, and the aesthetics of the places, which relates back to a little comment by E.H on the minimalist period of industrial, identical serials and systems

'Such systems were hardly rational, serial art is another way of repeating absurdity'

It is all absurd! 

Shopping Hour

'A magazine bringing art, philosophy, poetry and critical theory together in exposing the naunces or contemporary life and culture'

I bought this the other week and it has been an excellent read! The focus of the issue was 'the critique of science' which is rather fitting with all these thoughts of science and future designing buzzing around our heads.  

It has a mixture of short articles and interviews by scientist and artists (and it seems a fair few graduates of  MA Aural and visual cultures at Goldsmiths-note, possibly interesting course...)   and also illustrations and illustrated pieces. Lots of SOUND ARTISTS and alternative ways of thinking and exploring...

Best bits

-'We are just playing' -the observation and relevance of child's play in adult life and culture. (Jonny Briggs interview linked in with this, commenting 'all children are artists, the problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up').

-Mike Hulme - scientist and professor of climate change commenting on 'Transparency and the limits of the see-through knowledge' and world that we are living in.

-'The misunderstanding is that science is considered more precise than poetry'.

Its all very philosophical and questioning and in this issues quite sciency, questioning the effect of science in our culture, its necessary, but damaging...

Thoughts - No.? (unsure, but some more).

Sculpture and making things;

Serial  (things in series, sequences etc...)

Contradictory (e.g what a telephone exchange promoted-faceless communication, possibly more solitude, beginnings of virtual world...)

Sculpture/objects that accumulate history/surroundings (representing spaces/history of spaces)

I think there are possibilities for overlapping...

Tate = thoughts.

Reading RW 'Transient Spaces' and this has given light to a lot of ideas about space/architecture and objects/sculpture. 'Portrait of the original building'...'absense becomes presence'...'an object that accumulates history of the surroundings'...

Went t' Tate, there were a few interesting pieces that caught my eye...
Lucio Fontana- 'SPATIAL CONCEPT' neither paintings nor sculptures, creates holes in canvas, believes that making holes creates a connection to the free space, hence a connection to the spatial than material.

Eva Hesse- ADDENDUM Hemispheres placed at increasing distances determined by mathematical systems, and apparently this was the thing to do around minimalism (hanne?!) She commented that systems were 

hardly rational and that serial art is another way of repeating absurdity.

Carl Andre- Layed out 'activating space'. Observing that it becomes a record of everything thats happened to it. 

Empty.

Time consuming (lonely?) works.

Repetitive stitches, no thought, quite basic, as these dead spaces have become, and what non-spaces already are. Thought about creating a few container like pieces that are empty inside...

In terms of dead spaces (barren land, a few spots in salford come to mind...) they are huge expanses of space, some thing was once going on, and maybe there is inside, underneath.

The straight-stitch pieces can easily be removed- temporarlity. A feeling of change that is near.

And even with the long piece of fabric with the knots hidden inside, full of nothing, and something at the same time, waiting for something to come through. 

(to be turned inside out, stitching hidden)

(also time consuming, more representative of ideas about the telephone exchanges, confusing networks/webs connections, so more contradictory of the present nature of the building)