Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Materiality - Detritus and decay

Following on from the materiality of bark - exploring its nature and form - I began to think about it's natural decay. From here, I found detritus was the key to space and form for me, not the bark specifically. i began to investigate forms found in everyday settings that would become part of an 'urban decay' - fallen leaves, dropped papers, decaying natural and unnatural objects, hornets nests etc.

I also experimented with how they may be recepticles for space and time, or vice verse... movement, reflection, shadow... change... all actions decay takes on:

ambient decay - reflection/refraction
natural decay - organs disintegrating
element change - soaked, dried, discarded papers etc.

I added some of these 'actions' to my detritus objects (leaves, bark, hornets nest, papers), such as movement, lighting, burning, hanging, preserving etc.

Preservation of detritus seemed like such a contradictory action, that I would base my further explorations on this.












I took a fair few photos against a lightbox, and even took a few of myself on there, which became a new area of investigation in terms of decay, space and form.