Thingamabobs

I took up residency with my Magical Thingamabobs nearly a year ago, and many things happened in the open air shop in Melbourne's prestigious CBD since then. I encountered all four seasons now, and could observe the change in angle of the sun towards our planet.

Some people claim that my art work isn't 'emotional', which might hold true to a certain degree. Nevertheless, I experienced the gamut of fear, anger, grief, love, sadness and worry while patiently and persistently doing my work.

The 6 strut icosahedron and the 12 strut octahedron remain my most popular objects, but there's some shapes I discontinued, and a new set of objects to reassemble each time around. As my camera equipment doesn't work too well, I probably missed the opportunity to document some objects I haven't build since then.

Close encounter - 6 strut tetrahedron

I noticed that reassembling some of the objects creates some wear, and a loss of tension. The model above has reworked to have single-string connections to each corner. The 20cm Pars inspired tetrahedron has been painted a little bit to look even more distinct.

Japanese Butterfly - 12 strut tetrahedron

I love the shape of the 24 strut cuboctahedron, and build some colour variation with it. While four colours bring out the four intersection double triangles in the structure, using black as only colour works aesthetically well.

Checkerboard - 24 strut cuboctahedron

An icosahedron with suspended wireframe tetrahedron act as the current 'eye-catcher' for the front row. The transport made the doubled strings a bit weaker, the suspended centrepiece brings it back into good shape. 

Captured tetra - 6 strut icosahedron with suspended tetrahedron

The dodecahedron gets really wobbly as 30 strut structure. I found two variations for it, though. The first one consists of an 6 strut icosahedron, joined like the one above. By connecting the ends of the parallel sticks the strings outline 12 pentagonal faces. The other variation starts as 5 strut prism, with five more sticks outside the girth of it. 

10 strut dodecahedron

Painting the end of the sticks black adds another dimension to the structure, and works well for many basic shapes. The model below has already found a new home, but as I enjoy playing with this one most, it will have a rebirth soon.

12 strut octahedron with elastic and non-elastic string

The amount of 'un-playable' objects increases. The latest one of those offers plenty of potential for all sort of variation. The outer tendons shape a tetrahedron, the sticks are attached to its corner and miss each other in the central hub made of four tendons.

Black flag post 4 strut x-module based tetrahedron

I have two of 4 strut pyramids on display - the 15 cm version above, and a 30 cm one. And some more at home, one version with aluminium tube as struts. I want to explore whether I can use these tetrahedral modules to build a star tetrahedron, that might be a nice project for a rainy day.

I took some of the photos here from the blog Hello Mrs. Morris, who wrote a nice article about me and my work.

Intermezzo

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

4 colour Vector Equilibrium

Red green honey pot

The 24 strut Vector Equilibrium shape still fascinates me, and I have only realised a single four colour combination.

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.

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. 

Is this street art?

You can touch this has been rebranded for the street market. As I still want to popularise the concept of tensegrity, I started busking my work in a public place, at City Square in Melbourne's CBD. 

Besides bringing about 10 build up structures along, I have string, scissors, ruler and sticks to build more. It's still only few sculptures per day that change hands for money, yet so far I haven't had any no-sales day.

Working in public is fun, and gains quite some attraction. I had plenty of inspiring conversations, and witnessed mass outbreaks of awe when school classes passed by. From of those, I heard the most interesting question so far: Is this street art?

My answer was simple: "If you think it's art, and it's definitely on the street, so yeah, you can call it street art." It has a bit the character of an exhibition as well, a temporary of course, with new objects every day.

I made friends with a chalk artist who is quire regularly nearby, and enjoy that he shares his experience on the street. It must be about the worst time to start this experiment - short daylight hours and not really pleasant weather. Especially the wind keeps me busy, but with a limited amount of models on display I still managed to chase up anything blown away.

The 6-strut icosahedron, plain or in 3 colours, and the octahedron go best, but I sold also the 12 strut tetrahedron, and some 9 strut joined tetras.

Besides some chalking, my setup is very basic. I still would like better display options. I could probably chalk some info, but a good looking solution that portable and easy to transport could improve my sales.

Sunny days bring out interesting patterns casted by the structures, and generally bring more smiles and interactions. I'm still hoping for the rain to cease, I build a tetrahedron as donation hat, and crave to try it out.

Busking tensegrities

Since I started building tensegrity structures, I got hooked. When I succeeded for the first time, I experienced something I couldn't have imagined before. In a way, I encountered the difference of what is called 'book wisdom' and 'experienced wisdom', and it blew my mind.

Now I'm certain that the concept of tensegrity will be part of my life. It is, scientifically speaking, anyway - from the way the cells in my body maintain their shape, to the interaction of the musculo-skeletal system, it's just a fact of life.

As I enjoy the process of building physical tensegrity structures, in various sizes and shapes, using different materials and strategies, I soon ran out of space to keep or at least collect my own work. For more than two years, I managed to tackle this challenge partly by going to a market and sell some of the structures I build.

I even went to live in the bush for a while with the hope to fill space with bigger things. This only meant limiting the amount of audience - instead of familiarising a larger part of my community with this beautiful way of representing fundamental principles within the universe, I engaged in some sort of (not really satisfying) form of artistic wanking.

Being involved in the Friday Free Shop in Melbourne's City Square gave me a better opportunity to gage the attraction of my work - I donated some of my structures each week I went there, and usually all of them found some new owners. Success! Even without knowing the term tensegrity, about thirty or forty tensegrity toys ended up in unknown curious hands.

Encouraged by the ease to sell my work for free, I decided to make City Square my new market place. As often as the weather permits, I will offer a variety of tensegrity structures there, as well as building new ones while I'm there.

The short time of sunlight restricts the amount of time I can spend there, nevertheless I will do my best to be available for a chat, and a build to customers preferences at City Square in Melbourne. Pick up a sample of my work for free on Fridays, or meet me, weather permitting, trying to get some of your hard-earned money for my honest craft on any other day without rain.