Sculptural Evidence

1. Outline of Project

‘Evidence is evidence, whether words, numbers, images, diagrams, still or moving. The intellectual tasks remain constant regardless of the mode of evidence: to understand and to reason about the materials at hand and to appraise their quality, relevance and integrity.
Science and art have in common intense seeing, the wide- eyed observing that generates empirical information. Beautiful evidence is about how seeing turns into showing, how empirical observations turn into explanations and evidence’.
Edward Tufte, Beautiful Evidence, Graphic Press LLC,2006

TASK
This project will ask students to develop a project, which considers the structure and nature of a selected inanimate object.


DESCRIPTION
Using observation and analysis students will investigate the form and potential meaning of a found object, (or series of objects).
Students will use processes of replication and adaptation as they develop a sculptural project, which considers the form of the original object and then develops new meaning as a result of actions performed.


PROCESS
The project will involve firstly an initial process of information gathering that will be followed by an evaluation of this material along formal lines. Students will practice using the language of sculpture, considering ways of looking that consider

• Tension: mass and potential, surface and volume
• Scale: contextual and formal
• Material signification



Ideas developed in this process will then be experimented with though individually formulated sculptural activity.
Workshop practice is intended to reflect and provide the means for this experimentation.
It is expected that by the completion of the project students will be able to show an idea developed from a stage of initial research through to physical experimentation that results in three completed works.

All work will be designed to incorporate the studio as an aspect of the work. Examples are:
• The use of furniture either as armature or plinth
• An incorporation of the immediate environment’s surfaces to extend the work



MATERIALS
• Each student should decide on their own materials but these should be open to manipulation and useful alongside the materials used in the workshop processes.
• Students should consider time-frame when considering materials and processes
All projects will incorporate skills learn't in the 3D workshops allied to the paper:


ASSESSMENT
To achieve well students will need to demonstrate:
• An active process of research, which incorporates new information into art making processes
• Making that involves the learning of new skills in a manner that has an effect on the work produced
• Evidence of a body of thinking that is achieved through artworks. This should retain significant moments but also results that tell the story of a developing idea.
• A development arc that indicates a reflective and analytic process