To begin this week I ironically had finished deconstructing my previous ideas and have began to reconstruct them, in which my main focus will be building instead of destroying my work.
Object Orientated Ontology – Graham Harman
To summarise this book asks, what is reality, really?
Are humans more special or important than the non-human objects we perceive?
How does this change the way we understand the world?
This in relation to my project is important as I investigate my relation to material and the wider world. This book made me think about my relation to animals and their perspective of home, whether that be home as a burrow or the wider world. How can i create this emotion and feeling in sculpture?
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/295/295720/object-oriented-ontology/9780241269152.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9RgkSGWuQk&ab_channel=ChadAHaagEcologicalHermeneutics
Sympathy of Things – Lars Spuybroek
Linking philosophy, design, and the digital, with art history, architecture, and craft, Spuybroek explores the romantic notion of ‘sympathy’, a core concept in Ruskin’s aesthetics, re-evaluating it as the driving force of the twenty-first century aesthetic experience. For Ruskin, beauty always comprises variation, imperfection and fragility, three concepts that wholly disappeared from our mindsets during the twentieth century, but which Spuybroek argues to be central to contemporary aesthetics and design.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sympathy-Things-Lars-Spuybroek/dp/1474243851 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28DgOqfTqzk
Vibrant Matter – Jane Bennett
Behind this research I began to think about the items around me. For example the laptop I’m writing on is made up of multiple components, each of which are made of different materials, materials found in different places, collected in different ways by different people. All of these then come together to make the items in my hands.
The book discusses these ideas in particular the politics of materials which they links to all of my previous research.
Development
Working on this week I started by looking in charity shops, in particular the “junk” which they collected. I found interesting to look at all the items that once belonged to someone and they have been loved and cared for only to now be in piles of other discarded items. Building on last weeks research I thought more about my waste and how in a way the waste is more nomadic than I considered myself to be, the second we are done with it we push it as far away from ourselves as we can creating mountains and oceans of homeless trash. These ideas link to OOO theory as if the rubbish isn’t in front of us it then is it truly perceived?
This week I’ve been collecting pieces of rubbish I felt I could use in my project. I’ve been oddly selective about what I save as I don’t simply want to collect it all as in-order to create something well crafted the quality is more important than the quantity. Looking at what I’ve gathered so far I’m starting to lean more towards using paper and plastic based rubbish.
Experiment
In one of my previous individual tutorials my tutor showed me this piece (unfortunately I do not know the artist) my instant reaction was that it was well crafted and it was enjoyable. The use of cards is relevant to my project as its a upcycled material, the use of a bird i find to be very symbolic to the theme of home as birds are free to the world and collect different bits and pieces that human may consider as unimportant to build their nests.
I looked at a rough tutorial on Pinterest and began to experiment with the material. However I fell at the first hurdle as I could find a good glue to stick it all together. Gorilla glue took too long, a glue stick wouldn’t hold the material together. Maybe I need PVA glue or something strong with avast drying time such as nail glue.
