Experimenting With New Materials

Playing With Sand

Since the pottery plaster I had been experimenting with doesn't set, I started looking towards other materials, or potentially purposefully using the pottery plaster and utilising its nature. I liked that a material known for its solidity had become unstable, and decided to experiment with other materials that were similar in nature and that could be built with. 

I looked at using clay, another material known for its structural integrity, but rathe than letting it dry solid, I looked at forcing it in fragility, knowing that letting it air dry would make it crack.

I decided to lay clay overtop of a wire armature of a leaf with the hopes that it would eventually crack and crumble off to reveal the wire structure beneath. 

It was a very rough and quick experiment, but would serve to help determine if I wanted to continue with the material. I added simple designs on the outside just so that it was more obvious that it was a leaf.

When it had dried, it had begin to crack. Unfortunately, however, it hadn't cracked as much as I had thought it would, and it also held on to the wire quite well. I feel if I were to conduct a similar experiment using this method again I would need to make the wire structure and have more gaps on it.

After my experiments with clay, I decided to try using sand, with the idea of creating a structure using the sand that would support something on top. Sand is a notoriously unstable material, so I was interested to see whether it would hold up after it had begin to dry, or if it would simply crumble.

My work for this project, while still focusing on the change of materials, now focuses on how the type of material used can inflict change on the piece. In this case, I would be using something that had a very unstable structure and is extremely likely to change as the materials state changes, in the case of this experiment, as the sand would dry.

I started off with damp sand that had been soften so as to get any big lumps out of the mixture. While I am observing the change of the material, I wanted it to be a fair experiment without things that could compromise the materials stability.

I damped the sand just enough so that it would hold together when I squeezed it in my hands. If it were too dry, it would crumble too easily and would be hard to build with, and if it were too damp, the water content would make it difficult to work with and maintain structure. 

The sand as relatively easy to work with as long as not too much pressure was applied, and as long as it didn't build too high. It may have worked if I were careful, but as I built the sand up, the column became thinner and thinner.

Also, if i lost concentration on what I was going, I was like to apply too much pressure and knock it over. While building it, the sand collapsed a total of three times until I was able to get it to a hight I was happy with.

Once I had got the sand to how I wanted, I then laid a wooden plank over the top carefully, so as not to knock it over. This would enable me to put something on top of the sand while distributing the pressure. In future experiments, I plan to place an object directly onto the sand.

The object I put on top was one f my previous experiments with pottery plaster. Because it hadn't set properly, it was heavier than it usually would be, but the flat side it had on it meant that I could stand it up in the wooden plank. I placed it in the male of the plank where the sand column was so that there was less chance of the wooden plank falling off.

After this, I decided to test out some research I had done into the Japanese art form known as Hikaru Dorodango. While I knew there was a limited chance that it could work considering I was using sand instead of dirt, I decided to try it anyway.

Using the damp sand, I just moulded it into a ball and then patted layers of dry sand over the surface to strengthen it so that it wouldn't crumble. And then I left it to dry

I made another ball using this technique to see how water affected it when applied o the sad in different ways. At first, I stood the sand ball in a thin layer of water to see if it would crumble as it absorbed the water. While it did start to absorb the water, the process was taking much too long, but would be good in the future to experiment with. 

It would be a good idea for an exhibition piece to stand a sand object in water and let it slowly absorb and crumble and then build it up again.

The second technique I tried was pouring water over the top. This caused the sand to fall apart almost instantly.

I then tried applying water to it in small amounts using a syringe. Interestingly, this did wash away some sand where the water ran down the sand ball, and created small ridges.

When water was applied slowly using the method, it was create small pathways on the surface, but when applied quickly, it would knock away a large crater in the surface. The more water added, the more the sand would fall apart until it eventually split. Out of interest, I decided to see if I could create a hole running through the sand ball using this technique.

I like using this material because it gives me plenty of options and experiments to conduct. It has also fuelled my curiosity into combining stable and unstable materials together to create a piece or experiment that gets destroyed as it is made. or maybe even to preserve solid or non solid materials in solid or non solid shells. I am also going to begin experimenting with materials that go from being liquids to gels, like cornflour, gelatine and mouses.