Furniture 2

The Tower Of Cubicle.

Building 6

Digital Ceramics 2

Term2 of Madam's course at the AA saw students exploring ways of producing 3d objects using the rapid prototyping equipment, and the old-school workshop, with lots of hands-on crafting action involving glazing, building, firing etc.

The work featured here was produced by the stellar Jason Chernak, who incorporated parametric modeling techniques into his process in order to array various ornamental motifs over the surface of his objects, which themselves were designed so that they stack three dimensionally, regardless of their various surface finishes.

See HERE for his thorough and exhaustive PDF booklet describing the full design and fabrication process.

Below are images taken from the PDF booklet.
Previous term here & here.

"Her Chambre Bleue" in Art-Licks Magazine

"Her Chambre Bleue", a piece first performed in The Hospital Club at the end of last year, and that I worked on with Ilona Dorota Sagar, has been featured in the third issue of ArtLicks magazine, a copy of which can be ordered from here, as well as being featured on HiveLondon.

Ilona has worked up the video below of the performance, incorporating some of the text, which thankfully replaces my previously posted temporary hatchet-job. The text is a part of what several "plain-clothes-performers" were intently telling people over a glass of wine as they moved around the performance space, the full text of which can be read on a post over on TextBin. 

MONUMENTALITY

This is a proposal by Madam for an installation at the inaugural exhibition at the Shanghai Architectural Culture Centre (designed by Ando), for which several practices were invited to develop responses to a given theme in relation to China and its architecture. We were given the theme monumentality, with the explanation:
"The desire for monumentality roots deeply in the spatial politics of China. All design techniques of creating monumentality in history, from ancient Egypt to 19th century new classicism, can be found, adapted to buildings throughout the nation. The aim is to embody the power and imagination of a regime."
We have been asked to alter the content and presentation of our proposal. Whilst we are happy to develop the formal themes of the work -the frame of its content- we are not willing to water down the main thrust of the installation, so we have posted the idea here.

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MONUMENTALITY

Monumentality is a quality derived from a combination of two factors being inherent in a phenomenon. The first is that its existence affects an unusually large number of people. The second is that those people who it affects are marked in some way deeply and permanently by it. Physical scale is not key -although often present- because Monumentality exists by virtue of the quantity of people and the degree to which they are influence. So for example, while a large building may affect only its immediate residents and environment, a small piece of parchment in the British Library, the Magna Carta, is referred to as the origins of all democracy in the Anglo Saxon world, and is revered, talked about, and Monumentalised by hundreds of millions across four continents.

^Magna Carta
The greatest edifice of our late modern world itself has even less physical presence than the Magna Carta, but similarly the Internet is transforming, for good or bad we do not know, the very structure of our relationships to each other, to our governments, to our society, and between cultures. Judged in effect, its scale is titanic, representing unprecedented opportunities for freedom of thought, expression and exchange of ideas without the need for physical movement. In this immaterial world of potential freedoms, the Chinese government have erected an equally colossal immaterial barrier, one that in scale of affect is proportionate to the internet itself. The Great Firewall of China restricts every single internet user within the borders of China, controlling what information they can share and access, what they can see, and what they can know.

^Map Of The Internet
The Berlin Wall held captive generations of Berliners, highlighting in its oppressive and ubiquitous presence their dreams and hopes for freedom of movement within their own city. At Checkpoint Charlie residents could peer longingly across to another world, and imagine life on the other side. The collective power of the checkpoint, the monumental longing that it encapsulated (bearing no relationship to its diminutive dimensions), was directly proportional to the scale and pervasiveness of the Wall, and the insidious system of control it was a part of.

^The Berlin Wall
The Great Firewall of China directly affects 500million Chinese Citizens, and more indirectly. This is no doubt colossal, but we propose that by adding one computer which bypasses this system of control entirely, one computer that is a gateway through the Great Firewall, publicly accessible to whoever wishes to use it, in a public space in Shanghai, that by doing this we would be allowing something Monumental to take place. Like Checkpoint Charlie, the power of this one computer and the freedoms, uncertainties, excitement and fear it encapsulates, will be in direct proportion to the scale of China’s censorship at any given moment during the laptop’s existence.

^The Installation was to be at the base of the main staircase of the museum
Our installation will be a gateway through The Great Firewall of China. At once solemn and celebratory, ecstatic and terrified, individual and universal, we propose a small but intense space to contain the censor-free-link. 

This aedicule, or small gateway shrine, is placed  at the centre of the museum’s circulation space, where in full sight, one person at a time, any visitor can step down an aisle of waiting observers, to explore on Chinese soil, exploration without limits.

...KISS ME: TEMPLE OF THE FAT LIPS

FAT-LIP

FONT

TEMPLE

Somnium Quinti

SUPERFICE 01

A piece that I made in response to a call by TBC collective for new work responding to the theme "Hybrid", and which was published in the fourth issue of the online Journal 12Pages (edited by Beverley Bennett). It is a heavily made-up self-portrait vignette that is at the same time an architectural capriccio and a rather histrionic still-life tableau. The scene is made out of paper models, whose textures were drawn on computer.
The scene was then photographed, which in turn was then reworked in photoshop, and drawn on to create an altar-like appearance, fitting the composition of the objects in the scene.

I've included the paper cut-out templates, above of the Horrified Peacock Spoon (the standard ikea tea-spoon slotting in at the base), below of the Facebox and below that of the SharpRoom.

And an image of the set below, which is around 400 by 400mm

Building 5

Furniture 1