A sculpture per day keeps the blues away

Since I managed to have sufficient amounts of building material around, I feel a daily urge to build something new. During the Easter break I explored a variety of spherical shapes, after successfully constructing a bucky-ball out of 90 struts. I spend some time to paint 30 of them black, they now point to the 12 pentagons of the structure.

I realised that most spheres can be constructed by chiral twisting of all edges ending in each vertex, thereby stellating it. The cube's eight vertices nicely triangulate, the stellated octahedron opens into squares. Let's go through the shapes I build so far. Tensul, x-module, stellated tetrahedron, icosahedron, prism, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron as sphere and as 10 strut tensegrity, vector equilibrium, truncated icosahedron (the bucky ball with 90 struts), icosahedral sphere (frequ.

So I went through all five Platonic 'solids' which as tensegrity unveil their spacious, airy qualities. I still try to get my head around the fact that the dodecahedron is the dual of the icosahedron, and what kind of truncation of the icosahedron constitutes the typical 30 strut sphere. Yet the actual geometry is still of second concern, although I notice how much embodied knowledge of this archetypal geometrical shapes I acquired.

The increasing size of projects made the craft aspect of this infatuation of mine more apparent. Preparing struts and strings usually takes much more time than actual assembly, and precision simplifies it, while lack of it might make assembly impossible. And while I at first started off very end-gaining, concerned about spectacular results, I begin to enjoy the sensual aspect much more. Finding more efficient ways to process individual yet similar pieces of bamboo, cutting it to length, smoothening the cut marks and sawing small groove with similar depth, cutting and knotting strings or elastic cord to similar length, became an opportunity to observe myself in activity.

When I succeeded more often in having a feel for the construction of structures, my focus shifted towards the use of colours. Besides the transparent elastic cords I have three colours for the nylon available. However, with the abundance of structures being mainly bamboo or oak coloured, with sprinkles of pink, orange or yellow string, I got a bit bored. After finishing the 90strut sphere, I noticed that 30 struts could be coloured to make the pentagons stand out more.

Using a sharpie to blacken the strut took some time, it turned into an interesting challenge. Bits of the bamboo structure remain, and it has a matte finish. It's not a deep, consistent black, but I'm quite happy with the combination of the variety of bright bamboo struts and blackish ones.

The next go on colour happened when the stellated cube collapsed after falling from the sky. I had non-toxic red paint and some brushes picked up in a $2 shop. I thought threading the struts between two strings could make painting easier, but the struts kept slipping out, and I had to roll them around a lot to cover all parts.

Painting the struts with a brush probably takes even longer than with the sharpie, and I left out the tips which wasn't a good idea. I tried string to hold the struts together again for applying spray paint, with similar messy results. My favorite method for now is cutting some rubber band as connecting string - it worked quite well, though I still have to take care to go all over the struts to avoid blank spots.

The spray paint leaves a quite glossy finish, and thus very slippery grooves. When recycling one of the first failed attempts to build an octahedron, about four build attempts slipped out of my fingers before making the last two connections. When I finally made it to the last connection, I had to find out the hard way that the tendons were about 5mm too short - one strut split due to too much tension.

I want to use more than one strut colour to bring out more of the structural aspects. The octahedron can be build with two colours in varying patterns, I still have to find out whether I need three or five colour for icosahedral shapes. Colour requires more planning, at least when drying time is involved. From imitating shapes I saw on pictures, I developed to a stage where I can start combining the various shapes in organic ways, and easily build regular polyhedra. I still have some far reaching ideas about materials I want to use, yet colour introduces already another dimension.

I still wonder how healthy and wholesome my artistic ventures are. So far I manage to lay down in semi-supine when I lost focus or noticed pain during the repetitive bits. I certainly spend less hours idling on the internet while working on sculptures. and it's much easier to observe my use in this new activity. A lot of thoughts and internet activities now focus on materials for the next generation of sculptures, while human anatomy still seems far away.

The satisfaction about finished objects and the process of getting there became a sort of meditative pleasure. I failed often, yet each failure offered just a chance the reconsider the means of the creation process. Without any 'dead line', and the knowledge that I have more than enough material for the upcoming market stall, waiting a day or two before an idea is materialised doesn't matter anymore.

After getting proficient at some of the necessary hands-on skills, my curiosity can drive the exploration into colour, shape and movement. Colour enhances the aesthetic value a great deal, transforms the natural aspect of bamboo into something virtual. RGB will look great on models that map into three colours, as might black, red and yellow do.

Sensory appreciation

Before I had a turn with Jenny, Carina worked for 10 minutes on the table with me. I noticed some holding in front of my hip joints, connected to my idea of 'free neck'. It might be part of the pattern to 'park' myself in positions. Jenny's hands helped a lot to find out about some aspects of my faulty sensory appreciation.

I wanted to do some chair work with Carsten, but after a few tries we ended up talking. I asked him to feel his weight and describe where it goes, and he insisted that FM didn't want us to feel. Of course, FM subscribes not to trust our sensory appreciation. Restoring reliable sensory appreciation as an end is certainly not FM's idea either, yet I think it's indispensable for a prospective teacher to overcome sensory amnesia to a large degree.

I wonder if I did this in a similar manner like Duncan in some of my private lessons. Carsten seemed to want the hands-on part, but I didn't to manage to prevent him from going internal. During our conversation his mind still engaged a lot, yet he seemed a bit more present.

In a way, I explored already the topic for the reading: the evolutionary influence of sensory appreciation. I think the of concept of 'sensory amnesia' (borrowed from somatics) offers a better accessable term to introduce the sad state of skewed perception. Alexander's language seems out of time, however, maybe the strange terminology encourages inquiry.

Briar, who just started this term, stumbled over the classic 'means-whereby'. I tried to explain the difference with the difference between 'what' and 'how'. AT doesn't care too much about the 'what', Chyna's as AT high heel guru exemplifies this convincingly. Inhibition allows us to choose the 'how', one of the core skills taught to bring more consciousness into our daily life.

We looked at writing in Matt's group. I was surprised how tense my wrists felt when writing. I have faint, kind of unpleasant memories of learning to write, and I never really had a 'nice' hand writing. Awesome area to explore some of the older habits I acquired.

In Jenny's group I became more aware of the influence of speaking while putting hands on. It became a less big stimulus for me to put hands on, now I can get back to organise my intent beforehand.

Proof of concept

If I had to earn money with some of my leisure time projects, I certainly would need to learn to do better estimates of the time involved. About a week after I prepared all the struts needed for my first geodesic dome, I dared to attempt another proof of concept.

I spend about two hours to make sure that each and every strut retains in the connector, gaffer taping the ends to prevent slipping. I hoped that as long as the structure remained connected, I could assemble it entirely. To my surprise, it worked out well, just the idea to document the build failed.



Next time, I rather trust that I hardly notice the camera working on a minute interval. After 14 minutes I wondered whether the camera worked as desired, and stopped the sequence incidentally... however, it took me somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes to get the structure up, and about 20 minutes to deconstruct the frame again.

Although the hose connectors don't stabilise the structure much during assembly, once everything is in place it feels quite sturdy. I could carry the structure around easily, but I certainly have to skip the idea of decent door opening. If it becomes a shelter, I rather climb through a lower triangle than endangering structural integrity.

Pegging down, probably already at a very early state, might be a good idea as well. I wish a had a tarp around, or better some house wrap, to test the integrity with a bit of wind and a skin. The surface area doesn't seem to big, though I want to have quite a snug cover, repeating the shape of the frame. I can't really say whether I want to trust it even with skin as a shelter, but I'm more than curious to cover it decently.

While I managed to do my directions in some of the various dull stages of this project, I happily forgot about directing today. Yet all the crawling around, squatting and bending has left no pain, the only thing I notice is more exposure to midday sun. Any dome project will offer plenty of opportunity to apply the technique - heaps of repetitive tasks, most of them unfamiliar, so there's heap of opportunity to stop and reason about the means-whereby.

That doesn't in any way mean that I spend much time thinking about the means. It's hard to tell how much end-gaining was involved - I remember being calm and collected most of the time, having time for a chat with a curious passer-by. I felt primed for success, with the absence of real set-backs (two rods slipped out before during the assembly of the final pentagon) not too much exhilaration did express.

I enjoyed some minutes sitting in the shade of the tree in the middle of some sacred geometry I materialised in my neighborhood. Without a skin, a dome provides a space that seems sheltered and open at the same time. an amazing experience.



I couldn't really stand up in it, the apex was about 165 cms (rough estimation, not measured), which means that in 2v dome the radius approximates the height quite well. So as long as I don't tackle the stability problem (or the strut length), it's rather a personal shelter than a communal space.

The next challenge is finding some clever material for the skin and testing the stability under wind... Still haven't found a shop that sells Tyvek, and shelling out $90 for some other house wrap doesn't tempt me yet. I need about 30 sqm's for the skin and ground cloth, with about 10% waste included.

It has been an amazing adventure so far. From building smaller models to go large-scale, dealing with all the set-backs on the way, finding flaws and eliminating them. I know it's still a long way into my own dome home, yet it's feasible.