There comes a time in every creative project to turn off the ideas, the intellectual refinement, and even the prototyping, and turn on the muscle, so to speak. That moment has never been clearer than in my experiences here. Two weeks ago, a conversation with one of the staff members about why one of my castings was cracking (is it the clay? Does it need to have paper pulp or molochite to hold together better? Is it me? Is my barely-developed technique still a little too flawed?) I mentioned another project I had just sketched out.
Oh yeah? Lemme see it.
M’kay – let’s move to the computer.
I showed him this:
Which was a study of different conceptual systems for transforming bollards into street furniture: prosthesis, wubby-organic shapes, and finally gamescapes. And in 30 minutes, a clay body and mixing receipe for – yup – paper pulp and molochite (the fibrous pulp binds the clay together better, and the molochite controls shrinkage so I’m told) had been designated as had been a rough work plan outlining the 23 initial steps to address before even touching the clay. This list included simple things like ‘get drying rack in studio’ and not-so-simple things like ‘learn how to mix clay’ and 'make patterns that calculate for shrinkage'. And before I knew it, I had started my final project.
Big thanks to Marina for her tough love and insistence that I go back to the site I’d chosen and study it more and make more drawings before she could thoughtfully comment.
I can’t, I have to start making things tomorrow.
Take a day, and make more drawings. You’ll be happier that you did.
Of course I was too overwhelmed the next day to go near the clay. The list was exhausting. So I went and took more pictures and sat the ideas in situ:
And thus, a MicroparkTM was born for the mean streets of Den Bosch. I also have to say thanks to Georg and Stephanie – Stephanie’s another resident here, and Georg, her boyfriend – who are both architects and coincidentally enough teaching a class at the University in Aachen using video games to develop architectural strategies. They were a willing set of critics, who, after looking through
my series of rhino models, lego studies, topographic drawings, and brick pile, kindly saidWhy are you trying to build so much?
I had been considering a system of ceramic blocks that could be added to any pile of bricks to make well, a more artful pile of bricks for sitting. The idea hadn’t been settling well for a week, although I liked the idea of a system leveraging castoffs. Georg continued: You didn’t invent Ice Cream or Karaoke, why are you trying to invent all these big things? Why don’t you look for places that already exist in the city for intervention?
Of course.
Iinstead of creating brand-new terrorist-barrier systems – at least fresh out of the gate – and habitable ones at that (for an inspiring example, though, go to Rogers-Marvel NoGos) – how about trying to transform an existing ‘security environment’ into a social environment? I know that even this much information is too much, but stay with me, and know that I’m having a hard time keeping up, too.
This is getting long again, so I’ll skip ahead to the current sketches I’m working with:
I’ll also say that now that I have an idea of the work involved (and money, too: yipes!) I will most likely only be able to make one cluster of the park in clay over the next 6 weeks. The bottom piece of each large hill measures about 90 cm x 40 cm x 3.5 cm, and each hill requires 20 pieces. I can make 9 pieces at a time now – which take about 3 hours of clay mixing, 6 hours of clay pounding to fashion it into large slabs, which like cookie dough can then be cut into elliptical rings in 5 hours. Allowing 2 days of drying time after pounding and then cutting before moving, that brings us to approximately 5-6 days for each 9 pieces. To make the 30 -35 pieces necessary for a large hill, small hill, flower and cloud, we’re looking at 2-3 weeks’ production time. All those pieces then need another 2-3 weeks to dry before firing which will take upwards of 2-3 days in the kiln, and blammo, it’s time for me to leave.
There’s a chance, then, that the resulting group will be too wimpy for the busstop. On drying days, I plan to go scout for other, smaller, bollard groupings that might be suitable for the hills. There’s a cluster near the drawbridges – yeah, there are a long string of them along the canal and they’re in heavy use during the week. So might be a nice place for a perch. We’ll see.
In addition to the parkscape, I’m planning to make smaller ‘narrative objects’ to activate a large radius of space and begin to give information about the world from which the landscape pieces come. What does that mean, Nancy? Could you speak English? What that means is that I’m thinking about the elements of danger (obstacles) and power (energy to fight the obstacles) in video games (space aliens, ghosts, tanks, dudes with guns; and power: cherries, pretzels, power pills, magic tools, secret doorways, buried treasure) and those elements in our own lives – strangely, they’re not too different: terrorists, presidents, natural disaster, war vs. family, love, chocolate, protein shakes, good books, etc etc – and how they might be represented in game language. I imagine the microparkscape becoming a moment of repose in the fantasy version of our own lives. After all, isn’t that what we’re all a little bit looking for? A place that’s not too terribly different, but feels a little safer, a little bit slower, a little bit magical? Or is that just me?
Oh and did I forget to mention that in a head-nod towards developing a series of studies for microparks composed of lace hillsides? Another story for another time as they say, but I will show this first study:
Anyhow -- that's where we are. Glass empty and half-full all at once.
