Material Shift
Material 1: Paper
Key words:
Play - Scribble - Performance - Purpose - Responsibility - Vagueness - Experimentation - Iterations - Transformations - Concepts - Aura
Documentation:
Photography
Sound Recording
Mark-making
Tactile Records
Video Recording
Verbs:
to screen to tear
to sketch to damage
to destroy to touch
to fold to jump
to break to mush
The first thing I thought when I saw the butcher paper was that I wanted to fold it, because I have done a lot of origami in the past. I was also sitting right next to the bright window, so that thought led to folding the paper into a kind of screen. The resulting piece I photographed in the studio, then took it home and took photos of the iterations of folding the paper.
Material 2: Aluminium Foil
My immediate reaction to the foil was a trick my grandad taught me with easter egg wrappers, to smooth them out to better appreciate the patterns. For this material, I was able to create the creases and scrunches. This added an additional layer to the process, of doing and undoing. One thing I didn’t expect, was that although my aim was to completely undo the creases, some became too deeply ingrained into the foil to smooth out. This created a type of physical history of the process in the material.
to scrunch
to crumple
to crinkle
to undo
to smooth
to repeat
Material 3: Black Plastic Cling Wrap
This material did not want to cooperate from the get-go. As it came off the roll, it attached to itself and became a sort of inflated rope. In transporting the rope to my work station, I wrapped the rope into a ball. That made me think of a ball of yarn, so I decided to arm knit the plastic. The resulting piece was still partially inflated, with more air gaps in the knitting. To further this experiment I pressed the piece for a week, then let it re-inflate, then pressed it again. In this way I made the material ‘breathe’.
