ucs

when I first started working with sugar it kept crystallizing and as I had never worked with the material before it took a few experiments to correct it, after failing quite a few times to get the sugar to set properly and stop it crystallizing I eventually did some research and found that for a “hard crack” which is what I needed my sugar to be I needed to heat it to around 298f to 303f, after I sorted that problem I then had to look at why the sugar was crystallizing I found something called inverted sugar but it was extremely expensive almost £20 a kilo.

bearing this in mind I then researched what made an inverted sugar so special and why it then didn’t crystallize, this is what I found;

“Inverted or invert[1] sugar syrup is a mixture of glucose and fructose; it is obtained by splitting sucrose into these two components. Compared with its precursor, sucrose, inverted sugar is sweeter[2][3][dubious – discuss] and its products tend to retain moisture and are less prone to crystallization. Inverted sugar is therefore valued by bakers, who refer to the syrup as invert syrup.[4] It is similar to high-fructose corn syrup.

In technical terms, sucrose is a disaccharide, which means that it is a molecule derived from two simple sugars (monosaccharides). In the case of sucrose, these monosaccharide building blocks are fructose and glucose. The splitting of sucrose is a hydrolysis reaction. The hydrolysis can be induced simply by heating an aqueous solution of sucrose, but more commonly, catalysts are added to accelerate the conversion. The biological catalysts that are added are called sucrases (in animals) and invertases (in plants). Sucrases and invertases are types of glycoside hydrolase enzymes. Acid, such as lemon juice or cream of tartar, can also accelerate the conversion of sucrose to invert.”

“Inverted sugar syrup can be easily made by adding water and roughly one gram of citric acid per kilogram of sugar.[5] (Lemon juice is 5% to 6% citric acid, with a negligible amount of ascorbic acid, so this would correspond to about 20 grams of lemon juice per kilogram of sugar.) Cream of tartar (one gram per kilogram)[5] or fresh lemon juice (10 milliliters per kilogram) may also be used.

The mixture is boiled to get to a temperature of 114 °C (237 °F),[5] and will convert enough of the sucrose to effectively prevent crystallization, without giving a noticeably sour taste. Invert sugar syrup may also be produced without the use of acids or enzymes by thermal means alone: two parts granulated sucrose and one part water simmered for five to seven minutes will convert a modest portion to invert sugar.

In confectionery and candy making, cream of tartar is commonly used as the acidulant, with typical amounts in the range of 0.15-0.25% of the sugar’s weight.[9] The use of cream of tartar imparts a honey-like flavor to the syrup.[8] After the inversion is completed, it may be neutralized with baking soda using a weight of 45% of the cream of tartar’s weight.”

after finding that it could be created easily I started adding lemon juice to my sugar solution and could play with the sugar as much as I wanted without crystallization, I then started to make the work.

I knew I wanted to work with the concept of materials and the relationship between the process and the work, I then started looking into where this concept would lead and looked at fetishism although interesting didn’t yield any ideas, but one thing did strike me about the concept it was something my tutor said about the whole idea “wood is only wood until you install an idea on it”. that stuck with me because it is the same with human beings a person is just a person until you impose an idea on to them.

this research lead me on to the conservation of mass “The law implies that mass can neither be created nor destroyed, although it may be rearranged in space, or the entities associated with it may be changed in form”

this then spurred me into looking at the circle of life of everything including the materials of my work, I wanted to continue working with elements found within the human body and sugar caught my attention because of its scientific properties the way it is clear when melted and the way it can be endlessly melted and retransformed into new projects.

ok so here goes, its been a while.

so recent news I successfully joined the ma course at my university, and so this begins again.

a quick recap on where I was and where I am going

I previously have been just focusing on what makes up the human body atomically predominantly working with charcoal and the idea that it doesn’t matter who you are were all made from the same things.
I have now moved on to looking at another material also found within the human body, sugar. I choose sugar because it is one of the few materials that you can turn into a piece of work and then back into usable sugar, this process interests me because it is scientific and also because the circle of process is important to my work.