Sketch model: wrapped up

If you want a seperation from the environment using a physical barrier to remove or reduce visual or audible distractions it can be done literally and poetically with the form and decoration. Plastic barrel seating, acrylic leg rest/paper guard, fabriano paper roll.

Studies: Random abandoned and broken chairs

Study: hidden garden seat

Studies: One person benches

Studies: Smoking chairs

Outside buildings up and down the country we have seen the emergence of the outside smoking seat. It is usually the worst seat in the building and invariably left to suffer the elements and bear the scars as if some warning to the ardent smokers of hard times ahead. These are never situated in the nicest of places often hardening the resolve of the smoker and as a way of embracing the never say die spirit will revel in the dubious glories these places and objects have to offer, whilst reminicing over the stench of bars before body odour, stale lager and piss dominated. And admimre the mini landsacpes of turner-esque powdered ash stubbed into the red brick textures on the walls, and provisional ashtrays beligerently decorated all around with fag butts.

more here and here

Prototypes: Panoptigon broken chairs

some of our public seating is arranged in anti-social (back to back facing) format. Around a tree the format gives all users uniterupted views but in stations and other public places they seem anti-social or defensive like circled wagons. In stations they are a reminder to me of the years of the threat of terrorism and a population trained to observe and suspect each other.

Prototypes: Prayer stool

This is a basic prayer stool crudely constructed from layered cardboard. I broke the form at the middle of the horizontal section and from these two identical components I have created a series of new prayer stools that require different postures which may be suitable for different forms of prayer. I would also like to examine the effects of posture on the psychology of the user, which forms lend themselves to certain postures that affect the type of spritual worship can be adapted to the object. The prayer stool in its christian form seats the user in a subordinated position. On ones knees, eyes to the floor in submission or to the heavens in wide eyed awe.

An aspect of this prototyping will involve an element of "auto destructive art". The original plan was to cover the pieces in text and leave to disintergrate in abandoned and derelict places of worship. I also intend on taking the forms and using different materials start playing with size and ratios relative to the various postures of worship to produce a series of prototypes for prayer based on these forms (and others not shown here). What is interesting is the potential additional limbs or support structures that go with the form. Some forms require additional limbs, some bizarre postures others require additional objects (other furniture/chairs/stools) and some require physical structures (buildings, caves, trees, cliffs, vehicles - floats/carnivals/fiestas) these relationships echo the nec relationships developed between the individual and these aspects of beleif and all its paraphernalia.

Prototype: Heron stool

A broken shop mirror, a multilayered cardboard block, some picture frame clips wire and aluminium tubes. There are two places I'd like to locate this, on a roof like the solitary smoking chairs you see from buses and bridges or in a stream/river. See also rooftop studies, heron statue, underwater chair and underwater lanscapes and these



























































more heron studies here

Study: Location - fence seat

Study: Location - hidden hedge seat

Prototype: tested in King lear play

The Torture Chair was used by the Sanford Co-operatives recent production in the king lear eye gouging scene. It was made with a motorbike frame, bed springs, a piece of wire fencing and metal tubing from a fold up bed. It was fixed with no welds but a few bolts and a few twists of wire. The whole thing pivoted back for the eye gouging and held the weight of two people.

Prototype: torture chair

pain has been described as the "archetype of subjectivity". Subjection to sensation is possibly one of the more interesting subjects permeating modern life through politics (privilage, torture, hope - for change), the entertainment industry (escape, desire, prosaic)...etc ...The things I am looking for are the things that isolate through the experience.

Prototype: torture chair wire cushion

weaving the seat for a 'torture chair' for the play king lear