10.12.20 - Mould Making and Deconstruction

This morning I made a gel-flex mould of my clay horseshoe crab, which I will be casting with plaster or concrete. I'd like to have modern looking things embedded into the surface like wire, so when I come back on Monday I'd like to make some samples to see if this would work. The idea is to place the objects in the bottom of the mould before pouring the plaster on top, and I could use an ice cube tray to test this out. If the objects don't show through I could try sanding it down until they start to emerge, like a mini archaeological excavation, and hopefully it will have a fossil-like effect.. 

 

I left the mould to set and went back to taking things apart, starting with a broken keyboard. I took the back off and there was a sheet that had dots connected by lines which looked like a futuristic constellation or a map of a complicated train route. Underneath the keys were little rubber things which all fell out and were really dirty from years of dust falling through the gaps, so I rinsed them with water and they looked really strange like little jellyfish or tentacle suckers. I removed some of the keys that I found interesting and relevant to my project such as the words 'End', 'Delete' and 'Home'.

Next I opened up this computer fan which was full of different shapes and colours and I thought they were like the machines organs, with wires for veins and batteries for lungs. They also remind me of forms in architecture like chimneys, cooling towers, houses and walls while the fan guard looks like a piece of modern furniture and works as a coaster. The circuit board reminds me of a satellite view over an industrial city showing buildings with roads connecting them all.

This toy was simple to open up and inside it has very traditional mechanical parts like cogs and a metal coil, showing that old fashioned technology is not quite obsolete yet - although children are growing up with iPads and the internet, they can still be entertained by the same things that previous generations of children were. With the rise of carbon emissions, I wonder if we will ever have to revert to these more manual ways of doing things that don't require burning fossil fuels - e.g. travelling by horse and carriage, using mills and buying hand-crafted products instead of relying on factories.

This disc drive had been painted white by a previous student, so it looks really striking against the black background. It reminds me of a plaster cast, so I wonder if I should leave my horseshoe crabs white and place them against a dark background. I managed to separate all of the pieces and then open them up to see what was inside, and there was even more stuff there to take apart. I think its really interesting because the exterior looks so simplified and clean but on the inside there are hundreds of components and it's really busy and complex. My favourite part was inside the disc reader where there was a little blue lens with pieces of glass that reflect the light really beautifully.