Wednesday 27 January 2010

Planning the next PLAYWORKS workshop...

The Fandango Foundry


13_02_2010


>> Inspired by the British tradition of amphigouri and literary nonsense, we will conduct a tour of the ICA, looking for quirks, details and curious objects in & around Carlton Terrace. Following this we will temporarily transform the Fox Reading Room into a Fandango ‘foundry’, where we will concoct PLAYWORKS ‘Fandangos’- miniature nonsense objects that tell tall tales about the building.

These images depict an inspiration behind this workshop- London Design Committee’s ‘Plastic Fandangos’, conceived as non-sense products; visions of quotidian items from a parallel universe that parody and expose the oddness of our own familiar gadgets. I am interested in how they have coalesced and juxtaposed manufacturing techniques in order to learn about the materials themselves, but also to create curious beautiful objects.
Domestic Viewfinder, 2008

Plastic fire alarm base, plumbing fixing, pink toy rolling pin, dolls’ house window, cork knob, resin peg,wind-up mechanism.

The ICA has become an architectural palimpsest as a result of its continual and fragmentary refurbishment. In response we will be making our own hybrid 'thingymajigs', using the paraphernalia of old and new objects, surfaces, spaces and functions of the ICA as our palette.

We can either re-imagine and hybridise real uses or things we have found, or create a new fantasy amalgam. We will use our imagination as well as factual reference for inspiration.

By making critical selections about what intrigues them and interpreting that information into new objects, children (and myself) will ba able see the building and its spaces, surfaces and functions in a new light. The intention is to discover how 'architectural objects' can inform new architectures.

Once our nonsensical hybrid objects are made, they will be used as centre pieces in the cafe for the rest of the day, causing curiosity and bewilderment amongst customers... and thus stir intrigue about PLAYWORKS among those who discover them.

Fandango: n.
  1. A lively Spanish dance for two people, typically accompanied by castanets or tambourine.
  2. A foolish or useless act or thing

Brendan Lee Tang describes himself "playing with looking at how history is really malleable and how it can really shift. We almost think that history is this kind of static story that's unchanging, but it's not.”

In his Manga Ormolu series Tang enters the dialogue on contemporary culture, technology and globalization through a fabricated relationship between ceramic tradition (using the form of Chinese Ming dynasty vessels) and techno-Pop Art. The futuristic update of the Ming vessels in this series recalls 18th century French gilded ormolu, where historic Chinese vessels were transformed into curiosity pieces for aristocrats.

Sunday 24 January 2010

Playful language
Nonsense Verse & Wordplay

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Jabberwocky
Lewis Carroll

Technically termed amphigouri, ‘Nonsense verse’ is the poetic form of literary nonsense, normally composed for humorous effect, which is intentionally and overtly paradoxical, silly, witty, whimsical or otherwise strange. It is particularly common in English, due to the typically absurdist streak in British humour. It is playful in its disregard for conventional use of language, and spawns a new ‘nonsensical’ lexicon of its own with new meanings and associations.


Wednesday 20 January 2010

The Institute of Play:
An Architecture of Play & Playfulness


Lobster Telephone

Salvador Dali, 1936


Herbert Read, one of the founders of the ICA, has said in 1947

"
Such is our ideal- not another museum, another bleak exhibition gallery, another classical building in which insulated and classified specimens for a culture are displayed for instruction, but an adult play centre, a workshop where work is joy, a source of vitality and daring experiment."

In response to my own definition of play I propose my final Diploma project to be a conceptual refurbishment of the current ICA and Carlton House Terrace as it was originally conceived, a 'Playground for the Arts'... a multivalent facility for cultural activities, art and leisure: a play centre for everyone. Thus it will be a new proposition which houses, provokes and embodies the literal and phenomenal characteristics play & playfulness in both its architecture and inception.

"An activity is play if it is fully absorbing, includes elements of uncertainty, involves a sense of illusion or exaggeration, but most importantly, true play has to exist outside of ordinary life. Play’s purpose is to generate more possibilities for play."

Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: The Playing Man

The new 'Institute of Play' will be a place to play but will also be generated through playing. For example I will play 'consultation games' with visitors and staff through PLAYWORKS, but also the site and existing building will become 'objects of play' making the my project a 'product of play' in itself.

Friday 15 January 2010


buildingPLAY



Drawing the building boundary together