ADP - Wk4- Play and Place

Theme: Play and Place

Context:

“For Borges, the core of reality lay in books; reading books, writing books, talking about books. In a visceral way, he was conscious of continuing a dialogue begun thousands of years before and which he believed would never end.” – Alberto Manguel

A mind could go insane if it is trapped inside an enclosed environment for a long time. I suppose we all feel the same way in this time of self-isolation.

What else can we do to pass the time which seems to be eternal? Something trivial, perhaps? Or maybe something requires time and focus such as crafting.

I wanted to be a bit crafty this semester so I decided to practice paper engineering. My start point was paper folding mechanism.

I first watched several videos on YouTube about popup card and popup books. One of the artists who appeared in my head was Peter Dahmen. He produced a range of paper mechanisms which were not only creative but quite peculiar as well. It was challenging to figure how it was made from the video alone. If money was not a problem, I would buy his books and learn from them. Another artist who had amazed me was Matthew Reinhart. He was known for his project on popup pop culture book series from Disney princess, Star War to Hogwarts. He combined mini version of the V-fold mechanism into a larger and elaborate mechanism with 2-3 sets of folding. Robert Sabuda used a similar method but was not very clever with hiding the seams.

Then I came across Circus Zingaro (Cirque Bohémien) popup book by Tina Kraus (faltmanufaktur). As I followed the unpacking video of one of the book’s buyer, I studied the paper mechanism of the book’s each page.

Since I could not access a decent coloured printer, I had to use my office black-and-white printer. I directed my style into Victorian book illustration. I remembered when I was little, I picked up a book from my Grandpa’s library. It was a copy of Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Although it was just a non-original copy, it has Sir John Tenniel’s drawings. It stated so on the cover therefore, I recalled it with ease. I looked up Sir Tenniel’s work and from there, I found Steven Noble. He was not a Victorian man but a modern era artist who enjoyed to draw in the style. Through a long search for references, I discovered the Illustrated London News and George Cruinkshank. Cruinkshank was the artist who illustrated Oliver Twist.

As my references were accumulating, I thought of what should I do. I looked at the sky out of my window and saw the image of sun flower flashing through my mind.

Method:

I gathered different pngs pictures of Victorian elements. If I did not have what I needed, I just had to draw and line them with ink stroke brush.

Nonetheless, I must figure the mechanism first. I started to fold and took notes of the creased lines and faces in order to form a template. Then, I traced the lines in Illustrator and decorate the new template in Photoshop. Later, I used clear tape and clear wraps to cover the printouts before cutting out the pieces. Finally, I assembled everything with glue and doubled-face tapes.

Response:

The final result is the windows to a garden of sunflowers with a tabby kitty cat on the window bench.

Reflection:

In my opinion, this small exercise is a notion of solitary play. The majority of the time, I was tinkering by myself with materials found within my apartment’s territory. I like the solitude since I am an example of an absolute introvert. I may look friendly and talkative but I really dislike social interaction. It is not that I do not enjoy the sight of people, it is just that my life has been like a Telenovelas, which we all know, is insane. When people take their turbulent moments reflect on themselves versus their environment, not only will they be forced to confront who they are, they could learn a little bit about how to out-manoeuvre some of the toxicity that surrounds them in a social setting. That said, folding paper is an intensive exercise to train one to be patient. It requires precision in creasing because if one crease goes the wrong way, it could damage the mechanism thus making it very challenging to complete the final piece.

Objects are put together using simple materials such as paper, envelopes, fishing line and pencils. As these are resources that families have around the house, there is no need to go out and buy expensive things (Aguilar, 2019). Working with limited resources has forced me to learn to adapt. It helps my brain to think creatively of solutions to resolve different problems. It rather seems to be similar to return to basic and innovate from there. For instance, the crafting activity takes me back in time to my childhood when joy is simple and the imagination is boundless because everything is possible if I can spy the odd ones amongst the norms.

By imagining the possible, we defeat the impossible with strategy. We apply illustrations and guidelines for putting ideas into practice through in-depth analysis of actual workshops where crafting strategy via certain metaphors has been employed. To be clear, we address how the embodied metaphors are used in organizational diagnosis, organization development, creative strategizing as well as principles for effective play, designing method for such interventions and other factors involved including benefits and limitations of the process (Heracleous & Jacobs, 2011).

References/Bibliography:

Aguilar, D., 2018, “The Nature of Play: A Handbook of Nature”, Fanny and Alexander book, 2019, p. 3-4

Heracleous, L. & Jacobs, D., C., 2011, “Crafting Strategy: Embodied Metaphors in Practice”, Cambridge University, 2011, p. 16