Studio Time.

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.