From clay to mosaics, a video documenting the creation of Moroccan terracotta mosaics or Zellige (الزليج). A beautiful form of Islamic art used in Moroccan architecture consisting of individual cut geometric clay tiles intricately arranged and set in a bed of plaster.
Terra Cotta – Basic Methods and Basic Materials
A series of bowls made of sand and flour, baked in a home oven.
This project was born from the desire to explore a simpler world, leaving aside the huge amount of possibilities that technology and materials allows us. A research after african tribes brought me to understand that by combining basic methods and basic materials, it is possible to build an amazing and inspirational culture. In attempt to track their way of life, I choose the materials, traditional techniques and workspace that modern world considers as basic and obvious. This combination led me to create a special series of bowls, each piece different from the other.
Dust Matter’s
House dust is commonly perceived as dirty, intrusive and repulsive. We know it as fine grey dry powder consisting of tiny particles and waste matter collecting on surfaces or carried in the air. It is often associated with unkempt and neglected environments, where as a clean environment is considered as civilized and proper.
‘Dust matters’ aims is to re-evaluate this ‘dirt’, and convey the value of dust as an indicator of our environment, showing how it reflects our daily life and traces our journey through the world. Focusing on the individual’s private sphere as the research arena, I have collected samples of dust from various homes, observing and analysing the different inherent components. The physical value of those components was discovered to be substantial.
This value is brought to life with as an unusual coating layer on ceramic objects. Using “dust matter” technique, I created a range of bespoke vessels that display the different sampled environments, and ultimately tell a story of their origin location.
Rust and Vessels
The collection’s varied surface patterns are obtained by mixing different metal particles with water-based resin and plaster. The metal dust used for the pieces originates from key cutting and other metalworking workshops across London.
“It takes us about three days to complete a piece in RUST. That is not considering the rusting time and the high variability of the process — I often reject and recycle pieces in the production when I’m not happy with the result. But every time I go to my studio I’m excited to see the objects’ changing textures. It’s like each one of them was alive and mutating with time.
The shapes I chose for the RUST range are extremely simple. I wanted to let the material and its visual articulation be the heroes of this series of products”
ROTO JAM – A Unique Approach to Casting Forms
Particle jamming is amazing. Take a balloon, fill it with some granular media like uncooked rice or beans and suck the air out with a vacuum. The balloon stiffens and holds its shape. The stiffness of the bladder is easy to manipulate and quickly changes from a completely floppy state to something as hard as a rock. The higher the vacuum, the stiffer the jamming bladder becomes. Of course, the granular media that you put inside the bladder also affects its performance. Fill a balloon with jelly and it’ll remain relatively malleable even with a high pressure vacuum. On the other hand, if it’s filled with glass marbles, you’ll won’t be able to shift its shape whatsoever once a high vacuum is pulled. That’s the magic of particle jamming.
With that little piece of magic, we developed a process to create custom molds for thin shell casting using various granular media. We worked with two primary variables. The granular media and the shape of the bladder. The thin shell casts take on the form of the shaped bladder as well as the granular media, crystallizing the intricate texture created by the relatively coarse grain. Choice of granular media affects the stiffness of the bladder, the stiffness of the cast, and the texture of the cast. Glass marbles casts have a stiff structure with a hexagonal pattern of craters while rice creates a fragile structure with an irregular speckled texture.
3D Ceramics – A Surface of Sound
Solid Vibrations is a collaboration between Ricky van Broekhoven and Olivier van Herpt. Ricky specializes in sound design. His projects are often landscapes of noise that live briefly in the mind. To combine the temporal sound driven nature of his work with 3D Printing would let noisescapes become things. A moment in time, a song a sound, they can now become objects that encapsulate the moment forever. Vibrations turned into shapes by the 3D Printer. A specially constructed speaker rig mounted below the build platform produces very low sound.
These amplify and create Moiré patterns on the 3D Printer. Olivier had noted previously that the printer produced Moiré patterns naturally. This error was an interesting one. Rather than eliminate it, he turned to sound designer Ricky and teamed up with him to see if they could make objects from sound waves.
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