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Thursday 29 January 2015

Laniakea: Form Experiment 1


In my concept, each clay object represents a single universe. They might be the same, or have similar shape, but different size, or totally different. The concept is still in the middle of developing, while I was suggested to make some prototype. Because sometimes, sketches are one thing, but making them into 3D and specific material.

Here is the original sketch. I designed four types of them. The one in the right-hand corner on the top shows disc like universes, on the separate branch of 'world trees'. Sand fro the top universe will drop down to the universe below. And for the one in the same corner on the bottom, they are mountain like the universe, representing ridges of the mountain. Their triangular shape and the way they distribute are more or less inspired by religious, or monumental architectures, such as Torii at the entrance of or within a Shinto shrine, or Egyptian Pyramid. 


I decided to start with the triangular one. Mainly because I am more sure about the concept of this one. 

In the beginning, I rolled a slab and carved it into the triangular shape I want. Then I built the structure on the side. After that, I rolled another slab, forming the details and attaching them together. 

The effect was not too bad, but there were some problems. The two slabs collapsed to each other, which twisted the form and caused standing trouble. I should have let the clay dry a bit more before connect the two slabs. 






Then I made the second one, letting the first one dry before I do any adjustment further. Because I want a cut-off effect on the hypotenuse, so I started to build the object from it this time. I cut slabs into different size and shape, and built the two walls of the object at the same time.


I got more control in this way. However, when I made it stand upright, there was something wrong with the shape of the bottom that it was not stable enough. It was alright when it was wet, since wet clay is more sticky, but not after drying. I need to find a way to fix this next time.



Besides, I made some simple paper model to get a rough idea about how they might look like when I put them into right position.






Then I started to manipulate the model. Paper was too flexible in this case, but it provided me some new perspective. 





These are some small samples I made when I designed the form, so that they look quite different from each other. There were made of Milliput Clay. It was not the best option to work with in this case, and these samples were too small for me to control the shape. However, I found them quite interesting. 




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