Patterns of interlacing
As an exchange student with no previous acquaintances, I was rather be-wildered at the beginning of the studio. All was new and all people were strangers for me. I looked over and around, and it was then that I noticed the acoustic slabs on the ceiling, with their intricate patterns of wood wool made of thin spruce wood chips and attached by cement. They looked fa-miliar, and they reminded me of patterns of interlacing, that had always in-trigued me both as form and as process. The previous year at Bezalel, Je-rusalem, I had produced a homage to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream by an installation entitled ”metamorphosis”, related to the trans-formations from a tree in the forest to wood i n the carpentry and through
“magic” – to a musical instruments. It was very much in vein with Focillon’s position that connects form, matter and technique or process, although when creating the installation I was not aware of the theoretical affinity, which were to be discovered later in the semester (Focillon, 1934 in Ad-amson, 2010, 362)
Interlacing as topic
When in Copenhagen on my study trip assignment to find inspiration, I took many pictures of plants, trees and bushes. Following, I decided to adopt i nterlacing as the experimental topic of my semester project.
Forms in the glass medium
My interest in the idea of interlacing went hand in hand with my experi-mentation with glass as material. Coming from the area in the world where glass was invented, I was fascinated by this material that had been around for more than 2000 years. I was aware that for the recent hundred years
and more, most glass work was industrial. In my view it lacked passion in it. Most developments provided synthetic materials that gave similar re-sults in s hape and met predetermined functional purposes. In contrary of that I thought of the making of objects in technologies of human blowing or casting, i.e. old processes that gave the objects more individuality and their makers’ touches. Such processes resulted in f orms, in the sense that a form “always goes beyond the practical function.... [and has the inherent power to] reach us most directly and deeply” (Arnheim, 1954, 96).
A studio research question
I had to formulate a research question to guide my proceeding work in the studio. Given my decision to adopt the concept of interlacing and my hope to create a form in glass, my question was: How can I create interlacing in GLASS, both as FORM and as PROCESS?
To answer my question I proceeded in parallel: working with glass and conducting research of the idea of interlacing . I advanced associatively, one finding leading to the other.
Glass precedents
In English interlacing is related to lace: delicate, pliant. In Hebrew – it is related more to intertwining, spinning or twisting together. Combining the idea to glass as material poses a challenge. I searched for precedents.
The last work I looked (Figure 1) manifests the twisting and intertwining of glass, as expected by the concept ‘interlacing’. The thin threads caught my interest.
Figure 1. Vision Award produced by Tom Jackson
First test in glass
The first test in glass was grabbing a bunch of canes with color inside, twist them to get a random pattern, gather transparent glass over them and blow it. This technique was difficult to control, but I liked the result: some strings spread and became blurry.
Between the object and myself as maker
I really felt that an exchange was taking place between “the objective qual-ities of materiality” and myself, a craftsman-artist-designer-maker in the making and my will. (Adamson, 2010, 4)
Interlacing as metaphor in Ersilia
At the back of my mind interlacing was also a metaphor of people and their interrelations, and to places. Italo Calvino wrote about Ersilia, that envis-aged such relations as threads.
In Ersilia, to establish the relationships that sustain the city’s life, the in-habitants stretch strings from the corners of the houses, white or black or grey or black-and-white according to whether they mark a relationship of blood, of trade, authority, agency. When the strings become so numerous that you can no longer pass among them, the inhabitants leave: the hous-es are dismantled; only the strings and their supports remain.”
Excerpt From Invisible Cities (transl. William Weaver) by Italo Calvino, 1974 p.76
Images of Ersilia
Artists produced images of Ersilia. “Transference into another medium may prove the greatness of the original inspiration, as in the illustration of a great poet by a designer” (Fogerty,1937, in A damson 2010, 367)
Figure 2. Image of Ersilia by Janice.
http://drawinginthebackroom.blogspot.com/2011/09/
new-print-ersilia.html
‘Inter’ as being with others (Gehl)
As opposed to Calvino’s story of Ersilia, there are situations when inter-lacing patterns of human relations are thin, underdeveloped and lacking.
Then, “string interweaving” of relationships becomes a need, not a burden.
When I arrived alone in Bornholm the whole environment was unfamil-iar. I felt really disconnected. After a while tough, I felt more “inter(laced)”
with everyone, looking especially in informal situations, which contribut-ed a lot to my wellbeing.
Jan Gehl relates ‘inter’ to “Life between buildings offers an opportunity to be with others in a relaxed and undemanding way” (Gehl, 2011).
This aspect of in-between associated with i nterlace later influenced my site specific installation.
Meanings of ‘interlacing’
I looked at the word “interlace” for its different meanings in English, as this was the language I used during the semester and communicated to the studio colleagues and instructors.
Synonyms and Antonyms of interlace Synonyms of interlace
enlace, entwine, implicate [archaic], intertwine, intertwist, inter-weave, ininter-weave, lace, ply, twist, inter-weave, wreathe, writhe Words related to interlace
braid, plait, plat, pleach, blend, fuse, join, link, mix Near Antonyms of interlace
disentangle, uncoil, untangle, untwine, unwind Synonyms of interlace
intersperse, interweave, lace, salt, thread, weave, wreathe Words related to interlace
insert, intermingle, mingle, mix, alternate, juxtapose, amalgam-ate, assimilamalgam-ate, blend, combine, commingle, embody, fuse, in-corporate, integrate, merge
Synonyms of interlace
entangle, intertwine, intertwist, interweave, knot, snarl, tangle Words related to interlace
jumble, scrabble, scramble, braid, enlace, entwine, entwist, in-weave, plait, twine, in-weave, wind, wreathe, writhe
Near Antonyms of interlace
unknot, unravel, unscramble, unweave Antonyms of interlace
disentangle, unsnarl, untangle, untwine, untwist
late Middle English: from Old French entrelacier, from entre – ‘between’ + lacier ‘to lace’
OLD FRENCH entre
between
OLD FRENCH lacier
to lace
OLD FRENCH entrelacier Origin
interlace
late Middle English
Association to Merleau-Ponty
A common English phrase is ‘interlaced fingers’ which brought to mind Merleau-Ponty’s insight about perception, and how the body is always sensing and sensed, but not the same part of the body at the same time.
“... the moment I feel my left hand with my right hand, I correspondingly cease touching my right hand with my left hand..” (Merleau Ponty, 1968, 9).
Figure 3. Images of interlaced fingers
This “two sidedness” of the body was associated in my mind with connec-tion between the inside and outside. This aspect of interlace of inside and outside was later a basic aspect of my proposal for a site specific installa-tion, as the final assignment of the studio.
Kiln work and hot blowing work
For interlacing in glass – I adopted two ways of making in parallel: kiln work and hot blowing work.
I started by pulling thin canes with white core (Kugler, 2061), slump-ing them separately over horizontal cylinders both in at right angle and randomly, on 710 °C for 15 minutes. After cooling down, I arranged the slumped canes randomly on a flat kiln shelf and fused them together at 850 °C for 2 hours. The resulting interlace was not satisfactory, mainly be-cause it was lacking the feeling of depth.
Association to Merleau-Ponty
A common English phrase is ‘interlaced fingers’ which brought to mind Merleau-Ponty’s insight about perception, and how the body is always sensing and sensed, but not the same part of the body at the same time.
“... the moment I feel my left hand with my right hand, I correspondingly cease touching my right hand with my left hand..” (Merleau Ponty, 1968, 9).
Figure 3. Images of interlaced fingers
This “two sidedness” of the body was associated in my mind with connec-tion between the inside and outside. This aspect of interlace of inside and outside was later a basic aspect of my proposal for a site specific installa-tion, as the final assignment of the studio.
Kiln work and hot blowing work
For interlacing in glass – I adopted two ways of making in parallel: kiln work and hot blowing work.
I started by pulling thin canes with white core (Kugler, 2061), slump-ing them separately over horizontal cylinders both in at right angle and randomly, on 710 °C for 15 minutes. After cooling down, I arranged the slumped canes randomly on a flat kiln shelf and fused them together at 850 °C for 2 hours. The resulting interlace was not satisfactory, mainly be-cause it was lacking the feeling of depth.
Figure 4. Hot blowing work (above) and slumping of thin canes with white core (below)
Learning from a glass master
The glass artist Louis Thompson visited our studio. I had the chance to talk to him. He listened to my ideas and recommended to pull thin Du-ro white stringers, cutting them to smaller sections, and grabbing them cold on a hot bubble, in layers with transparent glass in between, to get the depth desired.
Figure 5. Interlacing the version taught by Louis Thompson. (above and below)
The site for my site-specific installation
Following a field trip with the studio participants and instructors, I chose Campus Bornholm in Rønne as the site for my specific intervention be-cause in my view it is a place and a social institution that realizes interlac-ing and interweavinterlac-ing between people, skills and life-worlds.
The proposal of my site specific installation was comprised of the idea of actively involving the users of the place and giving them a symbolic-met-aphorical view of the interlacing/s – interweaving/s of the Campus Born-holm Center, its contemporary context and all its user groups .
Figure 6. Campus Bornholm, view of entrance façade. Courtesy of CUBO Architects
The site-specific installation: Contain
I named my site-specific installation ‘ Contain’/ It consisted of two wide, very shallow bowls with asymmetrical patterns of interlacing threads.
When one looks through such a bowl an effect of fisheye lens is experi-enced, contained within the interlaced layers of white glass threads. One bowl “assembles” the outside – the green open space in front of the build-ing and the more remote landscape of Bornholm. The other bowl “assem-bles” the interior of the Campus, the Bornholm people that are tempo-rarily interconnected for the purpose of learning and training. A person standing between the two bowls, looking once through the right one, and then through the left one would experience the awareness of the outside and the inside.
The site for my site-specific installation
Following a field trip with the studio participants and instructors, I chose Campus Bornholm in Rønne as the site for my specific intervention be-cause in my view it is a place and a social institution that realizes interlac-ing and interweavinterlac-ing between people, skills and life-worlds.
The proposal of my site specific installation was comprised of the idea of actively involving the users of the place and giving them a symbolic-met-aphorical view of the interlacing/s – interweaving/s of the Campus Born-holm Center, its contemporary context and all its user groups .
Figure 6. Campus Bornholm, view of entrance façade. Courtesy of CUBO Architects
The site-specific installation: Contain
I named my site-specific installation ‘ Contain’/ It consisted of two wide, very shallow bowls with asymmetrical patterns of interlacing threads.
When one looks through such a bowl an effect of fisheye lens is experi-enced, contained within the interlaced layers of white glass threads. One bowl “assembles” the outside – the green open space in front of the build-ing and the more remote landscape of Bornholm. The other bowl “assem-bles” the interior of the Campus, the Bornholm people that are tempo-rarily interconnected for the purpose of learning and training. A person standing between the two bowls, looking once through the right one, and then through the left one would experience the awareness of the outside and the inside.
Figure 7. Location of the site-specific installation Contain
The installation was intended to take advantage of the quality of the archi-tecture of the site, and to imply bodily action: “Authentic architectural ex-perience consists then, for instance, ...of looking in or out through a win-dow”. (Pallasmaa, 2005, 63).
Figure 8. The glass bowl with interlacing (above), and the fisheye view through the interlace-pattern bowl (below). (Photos by Ariel Aravot)
Instead of resting horizontally, the shallow bowls open upwards, suspend-ed on two stainless steel cables from the ceiling and fixsuspend-ed to the floor with two other cables. This unusual position and orientation, “will bring to the fore a new structural skeleton, which gives the object a different character”
(Arnheim, 1954, 103)
Figure 9. Contain Installation – people looking through the flat bowl.
The name of the installation – C ontain – expresses the actual physical situation of the bowl as a container, and the idea of human relationships within a safe and friendly emotional space.