Doing Words with Things

Spools for the wire. There have been very bad tangles without them.

Some of these cut-up cardboard tubes might get incorporated into the structure if they’re reluctant to come loose from the wire. We’ll try them out this weekend and see how they work.

They make me think of Simryn Gill: tubes for words in anticipation of their use.

Alex and I met yesterday for another rehearsal. It’s back to wire again: the wire remembers my movements so it allows a more articulate ‘vocabulary’ than the string I was working with last week.

This week we worked most on developing our respective vocabularies: mine in manipulating the material and his in describing my manipulations. In this video we’ve found a good breadth of movement and the timing looks fine, but I’m keen to reintroduce more grammatical and functional signs to clarify the distinction between my gestures and his. Last week we were having difficulty keeping our gestures sufficiently synchronized; this week I think we’ve gone too far and caused them to match too closely.

Doing Words with Things (rehearsal four)

Alex Nowak and I getting knots out of string last week.

Doing Words with Things (rehearsal two)

These days I’m making models, mainly out of wire. Here’s a first attempt, incorporating forks again.