Hey everyone, I apologize for the lack of posts. I've had an awesome spring break, and I have a lot of free time coming up that I hope to spend working on some personal projects at Tockwotten.

Over break, I taught myself to use a sewing machine to some extent, and sewed a cap as padding for the stool I made earlier which I'm pretty happy with. I also made a sock-thing to hold plastic bags as a practice project. These were really fun to make and I look forward to trying to make more stuff out of the leftover recycled fabrics we have.

I also have a few tentative concepts for the spaces project - here are my main two:

A room that teaches you to juggle. This would involve some instructions posted and some setups that would be conducive to learning the necessary skills - I'm imagining a series of inclined planes that people can lean over (supported by something) and use to juggle in artificial slow motion by rolling balls along. Not sure if that would actually be easier than regular juggling, though.

A room that's conducive to sleeping/lucid dreaming. I think it would be interesting to try to set up the perfect conditions for sleeping, and then perhaps implement some kind of stimulus designed to help trigger lucid dreams. Kind of a room-sized version of the novadreamer.

Furniture Project

I learned an amazing amount during this project. I've always wanted to make useful stuff out of wood with my own hands, but I had only had that opportunity once before - thanks to Ian last semester.

This time I went all-out, and put in something like 15+ hours to try to make my vision come true. Miles introduced me to a solid dozen tools and building techniques that were necessary along the way. Going from a concept I wasn't sure would work to a tangible object that could support my weight was extremely satisfying for me.

I do agree with the general notion that the back and seat don't match very well and the whole thing doesn't have a very specific aristic language. This is probably because the chair's success rode so heavily on its functional properties. Now that I've confirmed that the concept is structurally sound, I would love to go at it again and give it a better look. This time through, having all of the measurements in front of me, I could build it in a different order and make aesthetic tweaks to the basic design. Seeing all of the hours the Bilt crew is putting in to monitor us, I just might do that on my own time.

I'm really looking forward to fully exploring my urge to work with wood. My father's side of the family were cabinet-makers, so I feel like by creating these things I'm carrying on a traditional passion hidden somewhere in my genes.

Update

I've really been enjoying our assignments so far. I'm also really excited to start using the vast resources available for my own projects, though. My second round of dough came out somewhat uninterestingly, but I had fun making aluminum foil gadgets.

While working on my foil, I rediscovered a few interesting shapes I thought I'd share with you guys:

Gömböc - the only known convex and homogeneous shape with just one stable and one unstable point of balance.

Yoshimoto Cube - actually two stellated rhombic dodecahedrons (mouthful, I know) that fit perfectly within each other to form a cube.

Sphericon - a three-dimensional shape with one side and two edges. Can fit together to make interesting systems that rotate around each other called lattices. It uses a trick similar to moebius strips (rotate and reattach) and klein bottles (invert and reattach) to get its one surface from a bicone.

Also, here's the animation of a universal joint I modeled my aluminum foil piece from. I think it's quite pretty.

First Impressions

First of all, I had a blast today. The four-and-a-half hour class, as expected, shot by in a blur.

I'm not going to say much about the recipe assignment, since I didn't try any of them besides Ashton's candies out of fear of possible nut contamination. It was a lot of fun though, and I enjoyed seeing what everyone came up with.

I really enjoyed the environment our class created during the dough project. I felt that we were exploring the properties of this material as a group without fear of judgment or failure. It was the perfect ambiance for constructive play to occur, and we had all of the materials necessary to do so. This was the second thing that struck me - the unexpectedly vast array of available materials. Copper piping, brass chains, cement, glass, string, aluminum foil... since many of my projects are inspired to a large degree by interesting or unusual materials, this bodes well. I feel that these resources will allow me to expand my projects into new directions.

I also appreciated the attitudes of Richard and Ian overall. They both participated in the experimentation, and I believe that this alone contributed substantially to the feeling of group exploration without judgment. I really enjoy juggling, and I tend to juggle most everything I can a bit - I was dying to juggle the dough as soon as I had made my first ball. I didn't at that point because I felt that it would probably come off as showy and inappropriate. I was later very happy to find that some of my classmates had some interest in juggling, and decided then to share my passion for it with them. I was delighted to discover that Richard and Ian did not think it was inappropriate, and even supported the notion to some extent. This sort of general openness is really great to find in an art class, and I look forward to exploring many new things with everyone this semester.