MALLEABLE DEFORMS [2024]
SMQB Artist Residency, University of Birmingham |
Exhibited at Encoded Realities, Centrala
Exploring destructive plasticity through clay, glass & AR sculptures
Augmented reality sculptures and material experiments investigating
destructive plasticity — transformation that comes from rupture and loss —
in the context of stroke and somatic trauma.
Glass functions as a material agent; its tendency to shatter or deform under heat
echoes bodily disruption and neuroplastic change.
destructive plasticity — transformation that comes from rupture and loss —
in the context of stroke and somatic trauma.
Glass functions as a material agent; its tendency to shatter or deform under heat
echoes bodily disruption and neuroplastic change.
Material Approach:
Physical and virtual glass forms crafted through melting, thermal tension, and digital augmentation as speculative models embodying rupture and regeneration.
Physical and virtual glass forms crafted through melting, thermal tension, and digital augmentation as speculative models embodying rupture and regeneration.
Technical Implementation:
QR code–accessible AR sculptures are viewable via browser with no downloads required. Interaction allows the audience to walk around the sculpture, scale it up/down, and imagine touch, encouraging a somatic encounter with fragility and adaptation
QR code–accessible AR sculptures are viewable via browser with no downloads required. Interaction allows the audience to walk around the sculpture, scale it up/down, and imagine touch, encouraging a somatic encounter with fragility and adaptation
____ Catherine Malabou explains that wounds and traumas do not create form in a positive sense. Destructive plasticity, which transforms the psyche, is a form of plasticity that involves destruction or annihilation. It does not add to or reconfigure what existed before but reveals something new through loss and destruction. This concept contrasts with the mainstream view of plasticity as a form of triumph over wounds.
[Malabou, Catherine. 2012a. The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain Damage. New York: Fordham University Press] _____
Studio last week > material experimentation inspired by ideas around plasticity and stroke. Thinking of maladaptive plasticity led me to encourage destructive behaviours in artworks.
Experiments with folds and collapse > making paperclay with flax tow, buff stoneware clay, pigment, bleach, paper. Melting glass, exploring thermal tension, breakage, de-forming.
Wounded hands - digital manipulations, shapes based on gesture recognition system, therapy exercises, spastic hand postures.
Studio soundtrack: Alphaville | The Bryan Ferry Orchestra | Babylon Berlin (2017).