Steeeve's Documentations

The ideation process

I’m generally interested in crazy and interesting-looking geometric shapes and so for this one I’m drawing most of the ideas and inspirations from my pinterest collection. Here is an interesting example. However, this simply is a collection of wood blocks that I glue together, which will be boring. So I decided to make this out of wood beams and well-cut joints, without any glue or nails holding it together. As a result, this is indeed some sort of skill show-off but I was fairly confident that I will be able to pull this off.

I was able to find a video making this exact shape but with glue, which provided me this 3d model here (I tried to figure the dimension myself and not to look into any diagrams or sketches he also provided).

This is very important for the whole process because this means that I was able to take some measurements and figure out the dimensions of this sculpture.

Here are some sketches that I did. Trying to figure out some of the early ideas (p1), the dimension of the sculpture (p2), and the joints (p3).

 

The fabrication:

The basic idea is that I cut the joints using the band saw and adjust the thickness and angle with the band saw or hand file them according to the need. I’ll walk through some of the more important steps using photos.

Ban saw + chisels to create the negative side of the joint (almost snapped some pieces because I was hammering too hard……) 

Test assemble one and then switch into mass production mode.

Test assemble 2 and proceeds to secure the joint with wooden skewers.

I worked in groups of three pieces at a time.

 

drill the hole and insert the skewer.

(could have used the clamps a little earlier……)

Test assemble 3 and readjustments. 

……

The final project, hanging from a rod with a chain of hooks.

The reflection:

This is my first attempt at precise woodwork and glue-less nail-less working. I definitely could have come up with (or found, to be honest) better joint designs that are stronger and don’t need the skewers, but I wouldn’t have the time nor the skills to make them anyway, so I’m happy with the design I ended up with. Also, the wood I used wasn’t the best in terms of the uniformity of the shapes and dimensions, so there were some more adjustments sometimes than I would prefer, especially when the wood piece I used to draw the guideline won’t match with the other pieces, which ended up in some of the gaps and jiggly-ness in the sculpture.  If I had more time I probably would improve the finish a little bit so that around the joints, the color of the wood would match better. Also, as Andy suggests, I should have planned on which corner of the sculpture I wanted to hang it, because then I would make the angle smaller to be a make-up for the force of hanging.

All in all I’m pretty happy with how the sculpture turned out and I definitely have practiced a lot of skills around working with wood and the tools, and also put my ability of spatial analyzation to test. And also lots of just working flows in general, like how you should plan things so it goes smoothly and how you make sure everything is okay before moving forward (–the test assembles! they are the best!). I think I learned a fair bit through this process.

 

codes: 

I used an infrared distance sensor to detect the distance then mapped it to the angle that the motor could rotate. The closer the distance is, the smaller the motor will rotate.

1. Messing with the texture: something to think about when encountering daily life objects is that what’s the material it’s made of and its significance. 

 

2. human-like (拟人): human minds are amazing, how some times the shapes formed by things which has normally no resemblance of human suddenly become understandable and even relatable to us. “We tend to find ourselves in many things” — Scott McCloud

3. “that’s firckin’ useless!”: especially pic 1, gave me a good laugh when toilet paper meets a box-greater

4. the resemblance: it’s funny how you realize later what they really are… even for pic 2.

5. chairs: I love how people come up with so many ideas about chairs. some are sarcastic, some take away the functionality, some are suggestions……

 

This short essay will talk about how I made sense of my project “readymade — pool” using ideas in Forms of Readymade: Duchamp and Brancusi by Rosalind Krauss. 

My project consists of an inverted mug placed on a surface and a pool of water that is put on the concave at the bottom of my mug. In the following paragraphs, I will talk about how did I choose to make it this way.

In the reading, the writer discusses the similarities between Duchamp and Brancusi and also attempted to make sense of “what is readymade” through close examinations of both artists’ works and work by scholars who studied them. One thing that stands out to me early on in the passage is that “fine object did not appear as something coming from the matrix of the sculptor’s personally held, ideas or emotions.” (Krauss, 72), which in other words means the project itself doesn’t contain my own emotion or attitude or opinion towards anything. This is very unusual for me because when I reflect on what projects I have done throughout my IMA career, I find myself being always driven by my opinions and emotions in real life. So in this project, I purposefully didn’t go for my former idea which is to combine a comb with some charging cables and cords to illustrate the frustration to sort out the messy cables in my bag. I realized readymade doesn’t have to have any connections with the maker’s personal or internal life. So I let my feelings go and let my imaginations flow.

The second point I got from the reading is that the art piece has to be “chosen” by the artists and that its original function as a pre-made object fades away. The former point I thought could really be applied to most of the artworks — especially contemporary — which has little to no meaning if not given by the artist themselves. But the second point I personally resonate a lot with. I Always thought that for a readymade object, one must deprive it off of its practical uses, otherwise, it seems that one is adding meaning onto an object with meaning by brute force, which feels fabricated. And this is the exact reason why I have the mug turned upside down — so that it can no longer hold water in any meaningful way. As the reading also suggests, “But for Duchamp, the work was no longer a common object, because it had been transposed. It had been “flipped” or inverted to rest on a pedestal, which is to say that it had been repositioned, and this physical repositioning stood for a transformation that must then be read on a metaphysical level.” (Krauss, 77)

One last element I found interesting in the readymades is that it is so reduced and so bare-bone, as noted “irreducible under traditional analysis “, that it leaves the observers to wonder: why is that an art piece? This is something I thought I could not achieve through my own project. My thought process was around the struggle on if I should add the water on top. Because if so it could convey more clearly its original use, but in the meantime it adds more context to the piece so that it no longer feels irreducible, and also the viewers can discern at least some of the context from this project and would not be left wondering WHY.

Those are my thought process in making this piece, I will keep altering the blog and the project itself if needed.

(or could I say it is with the decision of removing the water this project becomes the readymade I was going for?)

 

Added on Oct.1st:

For this project I thought that I should focus on readymade as much as possible and try not to look at other projects that may cause me to come up with too many ideas and unwanted contexts in this project. Because when reading the essay by Krauss, the biggest worry that I had was I may add so much context that it no longer feels simple, while the readymade projects of Duchamp feels reduced to atoms — which is one of the ultimate goals that I tried to reach. However in the end, I still chose to add that pool of water on top, mainly for exhibition purposes — to highlight the fact that it no longer holds water in a meaningful way, but by doing that, as I discussed earlier, introduced more context. So if I were to keep this project for myself to look at, I will remove the pool of water. Because to me the point that I want to highlight through the water is obvious enough, and also it’s reduced to the most possible. And for everyone else, the process that I put on the water and then removed it is enough — in other words, it is with the decision of removing the water this project becomes the readymade I was going for.