Chelsea Fringe Material Tests

Yesterday Sasha and I started work on our first 1-1 scale material tests for the Chelsea Fringe Festival.
I took a train to Highams Park to meet Sasha as she knew a quiet area just on the edge of Epping forest for us to begin exploring form, structure and the material qualities for our installation. Without too many distractions from passers by we were able to have quite a productive few hours working on various ideas that had come to mind over the past fews months of working in sketchbooks.

No matter how many hours you spend drawing or simply discussing what where how?
 Personally I find many of those questions are quickly answered once the practical work begins. It's so much easier to work through problems on site or at least outside the studio.

The main purpose of this visit was to see how we could go about creating a framework.
How this particular weight fabric was going to behave outside and did it posses to qualities we are aiming to achieve, and to begin working on the form. 












The main points we picked up on were:


Points of contact between framework to fabric, fabric to fabric, fabric to ground.
The immersive quality we are wanting to achieve
The diffusion of light and transparency 
The form of the framework and fixtures
Invisibility and elevation 




During the next few weeks we are expecting more material samples to arrive from three more companies as the fabric has to be fire retardant and waterproof but still maintain an element of fluidity to it. 
And we are still on the search for a sponsor..... or a material sponsor.........