makingtheimpossible

a great day in Cambridge - the day has seen a number of finished or I should say resolved moments with the work but it also presented a huge number of new possibilities - working with Richard attempting to wire up a bookwork whose structure initially referenced the glovebox, so that the form when manipulated makes contact between two 'probes' which will create a circuit so that we can play sound using graphine printing. We are looking to take this into two directions. The first is to have a spoken word piece around nanotechnology and graphine printing, the second is to work with a 'sound maker' to play a number of them within a sort of 'set'.The 3D printing with David is becoming very strange, we are trying to use the printer to create structures that explore the qualities of the printing. Next we are going to tessellate it to create a grid, exploring how the structure can be manipulated pulling it along different lines. Looking at the idea of impossible structures in our conversation today we realised that we had in fact printed a so called impossible structure. Whilst manipulating the piece we decided that the real work has become the projection or shadow created when a light is thrown onto it. This links with the work I'm doing with Duncan through crystallography, exploring projection symmetry. It was great to show some finished work and get positive feedback about how I have taken our conversations and made art

We had an interesting conversation around how material is categorised at a molecular level most people don't see and linking it to the topology thinking Pitt Rivers used around his work with museology and Darwin informed evolutionary morphology. Which of course led to The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge a fictitious taxonomy of animals described by the writer Jorge Luis Borges in his 1942 essay "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins" The list divides all animals into 14 categories:

Those that belong to the emperor

Embalmed ones

Those that are trained

Suckling pigs

Mermaids (or Sirens)

Fabulous ones

Stray dogs

Those that are included in this classification

Those that tremble as if they were mad

Innumerable ones

Those drawn with a very fine camel hair brush

Those that have just broken the flower vase

Et cetera

Those that, at a distance, resemble flies

multitaskingportfolioskills

today has been all about design - organising all the information panels for the exhibitions. attempting to find a language or a tone that explains both the art and the science is an interesting balancing act.

talkingwithteachers

It was informative to speak at The Making Material Matters Teachers conference at Ironmongers Hall in London. 

https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/visiting-and-outreach/outreach-events/making-materials-matter-teachers?wssl=1  The space was truly magnificent and the whole event was so well planned.  It was great to hear positive feedback of what we've been doing at the Maxwell. The collaborative nature of the project and the way it has enabled and nurtured voices from different fields especially from outside were seen as positive and in some cases revelatory. It was wonderful to hear the circular thoughts around material development in the future from Professor Mark Miodownik http://www.markmiodownik.net/ and the enthusiasm levels emanating from Professor Becky Parker http://www.iop.org/about/awards/hon_fellowship/hon_fellows/page_64158.html made me almost want to become a scientist. A link to the presentation.  https://www.slideshare.net/l.bicknell/presentation-for-conference-with-youtube-links

projectionofideas

I've spent the day in the studio 'printing' the work for corridors around the rooms that house the microscopy labs in the materials science and metallurgy building on the West Cambridge site - looking good 

evidenceofthinking

Here are some of the equations from the experimental experiment workshop last week and a link to the process https://www.slideshare.net/l.bicknell/end-equations  

whatistheperfectexperiment?

I ran an extraordinary workshop at the Maxwell Centre - what makes a perfect experiment? only extraordinary because of the participants - I had been thinking about a workshop I run at Camberwell with art students around trying to create an equation based on the idea of finishedness - attempting to define when a piece of work is finished. It was interesting to note that often the science students used imagery to make sense of the problem and communicate complex ideas.  In terms of concerns there were many parallels around the idea of satisfaction and a need to collaborate with people alongside the idea of flow and beauty. Before the session many people told me that scientists would be unable to undertake the task but the session was great because, as ever the students were interested in working with ideas. A link to the workshop https://www.slideshare.net/l.bicknell/finishedness-for-science-75940134

testingtestingandthinking

Spent most of today in Cambridge measuring and testing out work in the spaces that I'm attempting to display work in. I could not of done this without the support and positive energy of a number of individuals who have got involved in this project - everybody is so positive and helpful - I genuinely think that it's going to look splendid.  From the austere blank corridors around the microscopy labs in the materials science and metallurgy building to the Maxwell museum cases via the coffee areas of the Maxwell Centre and modern glass cases in the Cavendish.  The work covers a range of activities and I have been trying to use the opportunity of exhibiting to extend their usefulness/meaning.