Value Container

Our first assignment for studio was to think of values by which we asses the world, be it intellectually, materially, spiritually, etc. Then we had to chart those values, provide physical descriptions of them and begin to see links between them. Finally, we had to think about what it means to contain something and by next Thursday we have to build a "container" to house one of the charted values.

The example of a value the professor gave was fun. She likes to have fun. She sees fun as some sort of bright color with maybe some textural interest, maybe interactive. This example really helped bring the project out of the clouds for me. We presented several of our values in class and gave some ideas of forms we thought they might take.

The value that immediately took form for me was "purity". Originally I thought of purity as a word to describe why I don't like processed meats so some in the group suggested I change the word to "untainted" to get rid of its moral implications. But the moral implications I think are appropriate. Plus, untainted as a word seems too tainted. I had seen an image of a wall of drinking straws that embodied purity in my mind. I played around with different ways to fasten them together - glue and string - and different ways to stack them. Here are some images of the project as it has developed. The straws have been rescaled and are now embodied by hollow glass tubing. I even built a loom in an attempt to weave the tubing together. The loom worked great, but the tubing was just too thick.