Things I'm Working On At The Moment: A Giant Hyperbolic Mass, In Super Bulky/chunky Yarn. This Is 12

Things I'm working on at the moment: a giant hyperbolic mass, in super bulky/chunky yarn. This is 12 balls in. (It takes about 40 minutes to get through one ball). And some geometric crochet - beginning with a simple series of Platonic Solids. Currently layering and layering fabric stiffener onto one triangle for the tetrahedron to see how many coats it's going to take to get a sturdy enough facet.

Writing a poem which you can’t read to anyone Is just like dancing in the dark.

Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto IV.II.33-34 (via thoodleoo)

I wonder how important he thought it was that it actually be "read" in the literal sense. Would Ovid think that the stitched Iliad is like dancing in the dark? Or would he say "okay, poems that can't be seen or heard."

But I understand his pain: some people write poems or books or create art for themselves, or to express themselves and having expressed themselves, they don't care if they actually expressed themselves *to another* person or not. (Indeed, they might prefer it if they knew they hadn't). Other people do it to communicate: they do it to express themselves and they need or greatly desire that *someone* see/hear/feel what they did.

Some people see art as self-expression and as having value intrinsically as self-expression, some people see it as having value only insofar as it allows or succeeds as communication with another person: do you create art for yourself, or for others? (Of course one might argue that even if creating art to be understood by others, it's still ultimately being created *for* the artist, to satisfy their desire to communicate...)

I've also been playing with wire crochet again.

Timaeus 1: tetrahedron prototype.

I’m the kind of person who’s too impatient to wait for there to be good daylight and make sure there’s no crap in the background for me to take photos and post them, so here are some photos taken at night, under artificial light, with some bags in the background (my office is my studio is my lounge. Mess is inevitable).

Anyway, somewhat delightfully ironic to call this a prototype, since prototype can mean both the first thing you make which you then go on to perfect, or the thing from which all future models are derived: almost like a platonic form. The form which is to be perfected in future models and the perfect form from which all later (imperfect) models will be derived are represented by the same word.

Why is that ironic? Because a tetrahedron is one of five Platonic solids (tetrahedron, hexahedron [more commonly known as a cube], octohedron, dodecahedron, icosahedron): it's a platonic form. It's the prototype for all tetrahedrons. Except I'm hoping that the next ones I make will be more perfect that this. My prototype/Platonic form is imperfect and rough. But it is still the first manifestation of the basic concept from which all the others will be built.

I will (hopefully) explain more about the Timaeus (A Platonic dialogue where these solids are mentioned) as I make more and expand/explore/refine.

This afternoon I am giving a talk at UCL about the Stitched Iliad. It is open to the public, if you happen to be in London at around 4.00pm

I'm running a workshop (co-designed with colleague, who is a star and also did most of the prep whilst I was busy talking about the Stitched Iliad at UCL's Homeric Summer School) this weekend at the festival as well. I'll post photos from that later.

Book 1 & 2 exhibited together at the Beyond the Borders festival.