toast rack [2007-2008]

This resolutely mundane project proposed some appendages to the existing toast rack in the house I was living in at the time. The intention of the project was to precisely explore the qualities of an environment that actively provokes customisation from its user - an crucial element in the interactivity of Gordon Pask's Musicolour and Cedric Price's Generator.

The toast rack is given the ability to sense when it is loaded with toast. The longer the toast is left on it (and the colder the toast is getting) the more agitated the toast rack becomes. It starts tapping on the table. The longer the toast is left the harder and more freequent the tapping becomes. If the toast was left there all week the toast rack would be bashing on the table quite furiously to the extent where it would make an indent on the table. Over time these indents would form a palimpsest on the table which would be a recording of its use. Thus the toast rack reacts to its use in order to provoke me to (choose to) act.

drawings: http://picasaweb.google.com/bensweeting/ToastRack20072008#

allotment calendar [2007]

This project is set on a small allotment belonging to Tony set within his cousin's garden which has been in his family for 300 years. The intervention is sited as part of the entrance sequence across the lawn between the steps and the gate. The main context of an allotment is time - the seasons, the length of the day, the time spent working there and how this fits in with the other events of the day. The intention of the proposal is to articulate this context more explicitly.

The calendar consists of a mechanism attached to a simple pergola which scratches marks into the lawn. There are two sorts of mark. The first is an abstract representation of the year in terms of the length of daylight each day. The length of daylight is scored to scale into the grass each day. The mechanism is therefore always located at the present time on the present day within its representation of the year. The second sort of mark is made into the ground whenever some activity is recorded on the allotment (the movement of tools within the allotment would be recorded by fixing RF tags to them). The mark is made at the appropriate place in the calendar for the appropriate amount of time - and therefore of the appropriate length. The mark making would be proportional to the vigor of the activity on the allotment - digging it over creating a deeper mark than doing some watering. This records the activities on the allotment within the context of the seasons and the length of the day. Because the mark making of the calendar occurs simultaneously with the activity on the allotment the link would be clearly discernable.

Over several years the calendar would generate a palimpsest as older marks fade and new ones are made. Perhaps patterns would emerge, perhaps not; either way the recorded event is placed within the context not just of time, seasons and daylight but also of similar events.

drawings: http://picasaweb.google.com/bensweeting/AllotmentCallendar2007#

see also: 'Communication in Design, Communication in Architecture: A Project for an Allotment Calendar' in Communicating (by) Design, Proceedings of the colloquim 'Communicating (by) Design' at Sint-Lucas Brussels from 15th-17th April 2009. Chalmers University of Technology & School of Architecture Sint-Lucas, pp. 539-543, 2009.

unitled [2007]

This is really a set of drawings rather than a project. The drawings are set on the kitchen table of the house I was living in at the time and so this can be seen as a precurser to the later toast rack project. The drawings are for everyday kitchen items although I still remain undeclared about what exactly each one is. The project was much more about drawing itself and as such a continuation of my earlier, and also rather ambiguous, MArch project.

I was developing an attitude to the resolution of form in a drawing where this was contingent (i.e. where it could equally well be resolved in various different ways). My intention was to try to retain this contingency within the final appearance of the object - to make it look like it could have equally been different. My method was to sketch many different possible versions of the same thing over the top of each other and to then choose between these, mixing and matching together from different versions, at the last possible moment with the use of layers of hatching. I find this set of drawings interesting because in their unresolved state they display this process.

drawings: http://picasaweb.google.com/bensweeting/Untitled2007#