How Plastic Talks to You
a little story about the making of
For a long time I’ve had the vision in my head of casting the space between you and your computer. I imagine filling a whole room with jello and then taking the person and the machine out. I picture what’s left, the space between. On my first day in Brighton I saw the plastics lab. I’d never been anywhere that had it’s own plastics lab before. This is the place I thought, they might be able to help me make this space, or negative space as it is.
I met Kelly who told me to talk to Tanya. Then I had lunch with Nick who said Tanya was his wife and she would know what to do. A few emails later I meet Tanya who said I’d need a technicians help. She introduced me to Jon, and I explained to him what I want to do. He was excited by the idea, and up for the challenge. It seems no one has ever wanted to do something like this before.
What I thought was simple was actually quiet a complex mold making challenge. But Jon was on board and very enthusiastic. He asked me lots of questions from a technical standpoint trying to understand the shape, which ended up being interesting conceptual questions for me. Where do the hands come out? Are there keys pressed? Whose hands are they?
Thursdays became our plastics day. It was a slow process of positives and negatives and positives and negatives. I learned all about all sorts of materials, tools, and health & safety. Each week was a new challenge. Some things came easy, some completely failed all over the floor, Jon remained optimistic, I remained naïve.
Finally the big day came. It’d been weeks of preparing, it was time for the big resin pour. “How long do we have to wait in-between each layer” I asked. “I don’t know” Jon says “at this point the material is going to dictate to us more than we can dictate to it..” So we start… and it fails… smoke is rising, cracks are cracking, it gets doused with ice water (twice), and then we have to stop or we might ignite a small explosion. The next day we re-group. Debating options, fillers, hollow, fiberglass… but no, this is what I wanted. Jon is up for round two, so am I, so we start again, much slower, much more controlled, and still in progress.
Meanwhile the cracked, half molded 1st attempt sat next to me. I sanded the edges and polished it up a little bit. When I carried it across the courtyard back to my studio I was stopped by a guy who was so intrigued by what I was carrying. I explain it was a failed attempt at a casting and it has huge cracks. But as I started explaining and looking at it I realized, it’s also kind of beautiful and appropriate, he agreed. |
