From 2D to 3D

I mentioned in the previous post about 3D colour illusions that the colour forms might be built over the remains of a previous set of structures, such as 3D forms made from the synthesis of two different materials and their structural possibilities. The development of ongoing projects designed to flow from one to another was another central feature of first term Foundation work. These could be quite complex as they were engineered to generate a wide ranging set of experiences, experiences designed on the one hand to help students diagnose their abilities and on the other to introduce essential issues such as how to work with materials, control colour or use drawing to develop ideas.

Because we tried to develop different ways of doing this each year, what we came up with tends to blur in my mind into an ever changing set of morphing projects. However I will try and single a few out and perhaps more importantly, explain how one would lead to another so that an idea of what we were doing emerges. Above all it was important to get over to the students the idea of how different processes could be used to drive ideas forward, in particular how the setting of limitations to work within could generate invention and create new forms.

Typically an initial drawing set-up would gradually evolve to include making and colour experiences. Each set of experiences would generate work that could be then processed to produce another body of work. Sometimes a stand-alone experience might be introduced in parallel to something ongoing and then fed into the mix. For instance students might be asked to select a small part of an existing line drawing. They are to then visualise this element as if it is extended or extruded into 3D space. They might be given a simple isometric or perspective box structure to visualise this within. Because the initial drawing is a plan view with no indication as to whether one side is higher or lower than another, students are asked to explore the various possibilities and to come up with several images, some looking at the possibilities as if the object is a solid, others as if it has walls and an empty interior. These drawings might then be left pinned to the walls and a variety of building materials introduced into the studio (these were typically large rolls and piles of cardboard, bags of lollypop sticks, balls of string, bags of clean matchsticks, rolls of sellotape, masking tape and coloured tapes, boxes of paperclips, drawing pins and other office equipment such as rubber bands etc), or a collection of multiple units that students had been asked to collect over the previous couple of weeks. (Typically students would bring in piles of egg boxes, cardboard boxes, lots of old books, piles of old cassette tapes, cans or boxes of matches). Students would then be asked to explore the possibilities inherent in the materials either given to them or which they had themselves sourced. (From what I remember, we tended to provide materials the more student numbers grew because we didn’t have the time to deal with the serendipity of odd and strange materials). Structural integrity and truth to materials were buzz terms and students were encouraged to engineer solutions to problems such as how tall can your object grow or how wide a span can it achieve? As students became more confident with the materials, secondary factors such as surface treatment and jointing became more important. For instance a student making a joint between two pieces of cardboard using paperclips might be asked to explore how the holes needed to accept the paperclips could become a surface texture, or how the metal of the paperclip could be twisted in a regular manner so that if lots of these were used in a regular and controlled manner, a joint could become a rhythmic seam. We tended to supply ‘office’ materials to make the point that every material had potential and that all materials carried with them a set of signifiers or associations that would affect the final read of something. Gradually the original materials would be transformed, sellotape now being used to create systematically laid down flat layers that are put together like plywood and jointed with rolled edges fixed with rows of tightly compacted elastic bands, or sheets of cardboard, sanded back to reveal their internal structure, perforated by regular holes  and jointed with string ties, piles of egg boxes sawn and sanded to reveal their internal structure with joints studded with drawing pins etc etc.

Once these objects had been constructed and of course critiqued then students would be asked to re-introduce their drawings into the situation and to see what would happen if the building principles they had invented could be used to construct the images they had previously drawn. What would happen of course would be that the limitations of the materials would change the forms yet again. Students were asked to think through the scale implications of the materials, matchsticks for instance, were unlikely to result in huge constructions. As these new forms started to arrive we would get students to ‘push’ the implications, how far could any particular quality be taken? This could be surface appearance, scale, internal structure etc.

The next stage in the transformation, would often involve team working, students using different materials typically being paired together and asked to create new forms from a synthesis between their two languages. At this point we often encouraged a more architectural or environmental approach, asking students to have an ambition for the work and allowing it to grow across the floor and over a wall. Considerations as to how one material met another was vital, a joint might perhaps start being made of regular hinges of twisted paperclips and then gradually become interspersed with elastic band ties, which would gradually take precedence until the joint was composed entirely of these ties. The same effect might be happening across the surfaces, a plane of drawing pins in cardboard perhaps gradually thinning out and being replaced by sellotape sheets. As constructions grew they would start to meet others and as they did so we asked the students to continue the structures using the same rules of engagement. (These structures might well be the ones that in a next transformation would become cut through with colour shapes, see previous post )

Again a whole raft of issues were embedded in these sessions. Process was of course key, draw something, make from it, change the materials, make it again, work with someone else, combine two different ways of working etc. Students would also realise that every situation is a source for materials, the office is of course very handy as a supply, but at some point this could be the factory, the garden, the farmyard or a dentist or domestic house interior. Students also learn that materials themselves also only gradually reveal their potential, sellotape doesn’t at first sight appear to be a good building material, but when you start to build with it you learn how it can be worked and how as a material it has huge possibilities. One key thing we wanted students to understand was that jointing and the ‘ending’ of forms are both vital. In crits we would point to how everything is jointed, for instance, the cuffs of shirts are stitched in a particular way and the material folded to take that stitch, you can then turn the shirt inside out and see how the same seam is very different in appearance on the inside. The cuff makes a natural visual ‘end’ to the form of the shirt sleeve and we would then perhaps look at other examples of this in the real world. How the sole of a shoe meets the sides, how a table leg is fitted to the table surface, how it meets the ground etc. etc. would be pointed to and we would point out how the visual ‘rightness’ of that moment often came with a change in the form. This could be as simple as a rubber stopper in the end of a metal tube or the frame around a door.

Critiques as always were vital and changes in meaning as each construction was examined were highlighted, especially when the unpredictable was happening, such as very ‘domestic’ materials being transformed to give intimations of a rocky landscape or a field being swept up in a windstorm.

The deeper issue was that by working through something and paying attention to every detail whatever was produced would have a certain authenticity and rightness. By using a process you didn’t have to have a preconceived idea, you just had to work through each problem as it arrived. The bringing together one set of issues (2D drawing) with another (3D thinking) was also opened out further in critiques, students being reminded that this was a fundamental tool for invention, and no different to the chance meeting of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table.

I shall return to this type of session again, because there were many variations of this idea and each year we tried to ring the changes in order to stop things getting predictable for ourselves. However as the course got bigger and bigger gradually some of these processes became embedded as core themes, especially if they could be handled by a wide range of staff all ‘singing from the same hymn tune’.