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.

Toying with tensegrity

About half a year of weekly Alexander Technique lessons I doubted a bit about their use. My teacher told me that our body works as a tensegrity system, and I got hooked again. Even more, I decided to get on a teacher training myself - finally I could integrate Buckminster Fuller's ideas actively into what I want to do for a living.

The notion of tensegrity reappeared lately during our anatomy sessions, and I realised that most people seemed to have no idea about tensegrity. I had yet to learn that conceptual knowledge has to be embodied for a full understanding.

I had seen a good instruction for building a tensegrity table, and I wanted to give a shot myself. I decided to start with a proof of concept, using PVC instead of copper, trying to translate the imperial measures into metric, adapting a bit for the conversion.

The first prototype didn't work well, the cord length of the main triangles of the tensules was too long. The second prototype taught me about the importance of prestress for the connecting diagonals, and dampened my hope a bit to soon have a nice self-made coffee table.

So I researched the web a bit to stumble across the building instructions for a tensegrity tower made of wooden dowels and plastic cords, and the next visit in the hardware store was due. I don't consider myself a handy man, but I usually don't shy away from manual tasks. Sawing a dowel, drilling some holes and knotting some strings appeared easy preparations to gain some insights to the dynamics of tensegrity structures.

Working on this model allowed me to work on myself as well - I had no time constraints, no boss, no obligation to finish the project, nothing but my curiosity that motivated me. I felt quite proud after cutting the dowel into twelve pieces of similar lengths (2mm tolerance on 20 cm). surprised about the difficulty finding an easy way to drill the holes and about my patience following the instructions step by step. I prepared everything for four tensuls, again translating from imperial to metric measures and improvising with the chocie of materials.

I didn't find stretchy plastic cord, and used nylon string instead. When I tried to assemble the first tensule, the nylon cords wasn't stretchy enough to put the model together. I realised some frustration about preparing more than 30 pieces of string I couldn't use, but decided to make some bigger loops, this time only enough more one model.

I started off with main triangles, and thought about reusing some of the loops already prepared to see how it works out. The first structure that emerged rigid still looked very crooked, I used different length for the connecting diagonals. But I had entered the third dimension, and now wanted to find out a decent length for this 3d puzzle. I unhooked one diagonal, and due to the tension and flopped over from rigid box shape to a messy bunch of rods and strings. Wow.

I found a good length experimentally and prepared the next set of loops for the remaining tensuls. Fixing the orientation of the rods with rubber strings made the assembly easy and fast, and I had four tensuls ready to be piled on top of each other.

The nylon string didn't stretch easily, and I needed some force to threat the first two tensuls together. Although the lower triangle of the upper tensul hung around without tension, the combined tensuls showed increased rigidity.

Finally, I could tune my first tensegrity tower to balance it out. Stunned by the weird thing I build, I took some photos - unfortunately too blurred to be usable. However, as a picture cannot really capture the surprising qualities of a tensegrity model (unless explicitly designed for artistic purpose), I didn't regret capturing this historic moment for me with a crystal clear digital image. The experience I gained provides me with an embodied memory, and images will accompany the next part of the story.