plastic rope

these are the first experiments of my trying to construct arches with plastic sheet.


in the later ones ive put a wire centre to hold it in shape, it can still be a little flimsy though, but i think it should be ok becuase when they are all joined together it should be more stable

-the rigidity is better, when i get back i wanna make it in fibreglass
-the detail is important, especially the rose windows, but i dont just want to rebuild an entire catherdal

and then: i wanna try out some video and stage lighting stuff, and make up a storyboard for my superdupercool video. i see this plastic cathedral as a large maquette mainly for the purpose of being able draw from it and do a few stage lighting tests that i couldnt do on a small model, so ill try not to make it flop, but if it does a little it doesnt matter too much.



i can definitely fit some more detail in this rose window, but we'll see. i think this could cast a really cool shadow, but i'll to play around a bit.

I'm going to hang my arches in the garden outside, there is a nice path in a cross shape with a circle in the middle so its perfect.

here is the church, here is the steeple, open your eyes and see all the people

for this maquette i wanted to rebuild a whole cathedral, not of any particular existing cathedral, more my own design. and see how far i could push it adding more and more detail. well i couldve gone further of course, but i didnt see the piont any more. i think the best structures are in some of the images i posted in an earlier blog. because though its not a complete cathedral the reference to it is enough. and the illusiveness is better.

the only conceptual thing that developed from my making the wire maquette was the way it cast a shadow, and was like a drawing with light. it was there, but not there. i quite like this idea. i think this perhaps has something to do with Derrida.
and if i was to show only the shadow, the viewer would know there was a structure there even though they can't see it

i like that it should hang just off the ground, i dont think it should be grounded.




































































































































so now i wanna make it big. im making it 5m high out of homemade 'rope'. i dont want it to be ridiculously huge like a real cathedral thats really overbearing, but big enough to still perhaps get some of the effect of a cathedral. but we'll see if it works. a personal size cathedral.

im thinking of the place to hang it.
inside a room -
outside, just somewhere random, or amongst the trees that are copying the same arch form
or half inside and half outside, so theres an integration of the binary

and im thinking of ways to create the shadow, and other ways to draw in light.

its nearly time to start thinking again

ever had that feeling tht you're not really part of the world?

its happened to me before, i would feel like i was disconnected from myself, like i was viewing things from above. well not literally viewing from above like levitation, but a detatched kind of feeling. like being not completely present.

today i was biking home and it was a strange feeling. there was a sparseness in the place. the clouds in the evening sky created an odd kind of atmosphere, a half glowing reminiscent feel. the wind whistled, the cars seemed far away but would arrive more quickly than you anticipated, a chain rattled against the flagpole. the trees in their deep silence would bend slightly as if they were about to say something. the passers by would turn their heads slightly to look at me strangely.the lady feeding the roosters and the old man waiting at the bus stop. the young guy standing in line for the bank machine when i biked past the shopping centre, the walkers crossing the street. the arab kids playing football on the basketball courts, even the dog looked at me with inquistion as i pedalled past him. and my bike would make the clunking noise it makes in the background.

we had critical mass at school today. i wish i could understand dutch. i spent the whole day looking at the other students in my class's art work and listening to them explain it in dutch and trying to figure out if the lecturers intense responses were a good or a bad thing. i quietly got some students to translate for me after each one what the conversation was about. its really strange to be in a place where all the people around you are speaking these noises that make sense. it really freaks me out when i dont know the difference between dutch and the other languages of minority groups that are spoken here, its all just derka derka to me.
its getting embarrassing now how often i have to say 'sorry i can only speak english' when the checkout chicks ask me a question and i just make this dumb face at them like omg you are honestly just talking nonsense. the other day i was waiting in line and the guy at the counter started talking to me while i was off in lala land. it took a while for me to realise he was talking to me and i said 'oh sorry! i can only speak english' then he proceeded to talk to another customer about me, something about 'engels', i have no idea what he said to them but they had a good laugh about it. far out!

well its pretty hard to get integrated into a place when you dont know what everyones going on about. my fault though. i should have learned dutch i think. it was all good for the first couple of months, and now theres only 2 months left so theres not much point.