Unit X Hanging Objects Tests

Unit X: Tests

Hanging Objects

Wednesday 26th April 2016

After discussing ideas of what we want to produce for the unit X brief, we discussed the idea of testing how it would look. This is because we had decided the materials we were going to use but had not seen what it actually looks like. I.e. hanging a book by fishing line.

Therefore I gathered the materials and created a test on how the objects appear by hanging them from fishing line. I hung books and paper (I bought from a local charity shop) with fishing line from a drying rack.

Hanging these objects brought forward practical problems on how they would hang and how to achieve what we want. Because we wanted to make the objects within this ‘tornado’ to appear that they have frozen in time to capture motion.

I had to also think about how the books would hang, when I used the spine and a single length of wire, the book would be hung at an angler and closed. However, we would want the books to be open to allow the pages to ‘escape’. This meant I had to use additional line to hang the pages and hold the covers open. To achieve a dynamic pose for these objects we would have to consider the lengths of the wire that one would have to be longer than the other; the object would hang at an angle.

As the paper is extremely light, the wire does not become straight and returns into a coiled position. We would have to consider this if we would use additional line to lower the paper or use a weight for the line to hold. 

I also considered the possibility of a draft and how that would affect the objects; therefore I recorded videos of the objects without any draft and another with a fan turned on. This added movement to the objects which could support the idea of a tornado and give life to the installation. On the other hand the installation could be even more striking if it is ‘frozen in time’ and having the objects sway in the breeze would not achieve this effect.

All of these questions will be discussed with the group at our next meeting because we can face these problems together incorporating each other’s ideas to find the best solution. These will have to be solved in good time before the installation because the time we install is limited; therefore we must have a plan be ready. The only time we should spend in the space is to put up the objects, not to experiment and discover, we can spend time doing that now.