16 miles of string experiment

After researching into Marcel Duchamp and photographing images of our string work, I came up with the idea to use the human form with in the string. I began by creating a clay human figure to place around certain parts of the string to show what I saw with in each particular area of the string. For example I first placed the human figure on an area where I thought it looked like some kind of bed/hammock, however shortly after testing this idea out, I found out that using clay for the figure was too heavy for the string and couldn't hold the weight of the clay. So resulting in this failure I then created a new figure using paper which was a lot lighter and easier to use.




These are the images I have taken of my sixteen miles of string work. I used my paper man to place around the string, as if he was walking on certain areas and simply stood on them. After experimenting with the figure, I then discovered something interesting whilst I was placing him in different areas, the shadow of the man was quite interesting when the man was angled. So I left the room full of string and hung him in front of a white board and turned the light of. Afterwards I turned the projector on and this created a rather strong shadow of the figure. I also placed some thick string in the background but dangling slightly for a different affect. Also I took images as the paper moved and turned every now and then to get a different shadow each time. I did this to see how the human figure could be included with in the sixteen miles of string and I feel it worked well.





This is an experiment I did using multi coloured string. I simply drew a new human outline but printed the figure in a different position to my first figure  as I wanted to focus on the lines where parts of the body crossed or lined up. This is shown using the thinner red string with in the body. Another experiment I did was simply buying a wooden figure and wrapping string around it, however there was more to this experiment as I enjoyed seeing how parts of the figure e.g the arms and legs lined up using the string. I was also fascinated by the pattern and the way the string was sprung across the figure's chest and the design it made. This links with all the string work I have done as it includes the string and the human figure but with  a little more thought into it.


After completing my experiments I finally put a piece of work together showing what Ive done and how it all links with the 16 miles of string theme and my own ideas. Ive placed photos of my work on a sheet of A1 paper. The photos include images of the figure hanging, the areas I put it in and the shadow it creates when hanging. Shortly after photographing the shadows I decided to simply draw around the shadow just to see how it would look. The outcome was in some way abstract and slightly strange, I found it difficult to trace them over the shadow as the figure was still hanging so a gentle breeze would move the figure and change the shadow completely. However I feel it added to the sketches and made them less boring and simple.




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