I feel a bit tired after being out in City Square nearly every day for a week, rather in a positive way as I enjoyed the warmer weather and the interesting people which stopped by. Besides experimenting a bit with my structures, I also changed the 'shop' name from Antigravity Tensegrity several times - first to 'Magical Sticks'n'Strings', lately to 'Magical Thingamabobs.
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| Magical Sticks'N'Strings including Chinese translation |
I tested also an alternative location in case of rain and/or too much wind, in a subway passage to Flinders Street Station. There's enough light to work, yet many really rushed people unlikely to take some time to stop by.
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| Melbourne's Smallest Art Gallery |
The signs consists of laminated A4 prints, easy to attach via blue tack to most surfaces. Thingamabobs seems to describe my sculptures best, and removes the stench of sciency stuff from them. When people start to handle them, the magical parts becomes much easier to understand.
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| Pointing towards seemingly impossible 3d objects |
I want to improve the display of the sculptures. Arranging them in a not too overwhelming or chaotic way poses quite a challenge, especially when I have to consider wind, which often introduces complete chaos. Larger object like the one below wont stay 'up' in gusts, keeping me busy chasing after my sculptures.
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| Cup of Hope |
This sculpture emerged from building larger objects mainly to attract attention, and isn't gone with the wind, but found a happy new home. Some structures lasted only for one or two days, until I decided to rebuild them in a different way.
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| 4 colour Vector Equilibrium |
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| Red green honey pot |
The 24 strut Vector Equilibrium shape still fascinates me, and I have only realised a single four colour combination.
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| 432 VE |
One of my latest experiments were three 6-strut icosahedra with 10cm struts. Besides the added step of sawing sticks in half, the result looked quite amazing. As I tried them on a relatively windy day, the juggling suitable didn't turn out too well, the cuteness factor meant two were gone before I closed shop.
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| Icosa Fence |
Joined with only four additional strings, the three icosahedra build a stable structure. With equal tension, four sticks build a compression rectangle, three of them with three modules connected. The idea invites itself to be extended in 2d with 5 modules, and 3d with seven.
Without people appreciating my work enough to take it home, I wouldn't have come across some of the structures build lately. I found new material, and more inspiration which shapes to materialise. I get the impression that my art is multi-dimensionally interactive - the exposure in public extended the range of shapes, and kept me busy exploring colour variations for more familiar geometries.
So I'd like to say thank you to all those who supported my work, by keeping me company, having a chat, donating or buying. Your interaction became my inspiration, so you're only playing with art but also with the artist.
I wonder if it's possible to create arches, domes, geodesic spheres. It would need is something stiffer than fishing line, less elastic.
ReplyDeleteHello Paul, the models you see here use elastic string - fishing line isn't an easy material to use, at least for me with only little fishing experiences. Arches can and have been build based on this principle, and you can find lots of spherical tensegrities on the portfolio page. According to Fuller, geodesic domes are a form of tensegrity, as the solid elements provide both tension and compression. If you build a tensegrity sphere only partially, you have a 'dome', in a similar way geodesic domes are derived from geodesic spheres.
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