Re-imagining tools for making

Project Lead: Lynn Tandler

Number of participants:  24

Duration: 5 days

Project Outline

Tools are an essential part of our everyday activities. Very often they are also crucial agent in our creative practices, when we rely on them for the execution of our ideas, thoughts, feelings and ambitions. There is an unspoken trust that the tools that we use will always do the job we prescribe. But at times, our creative practice may suffer due to the limitations that come with the designed functionality of some of these tools. Indeed, we rarely stop to question how suitable is a tool for a specific job?

This project welcomes students from all over the college to critically explore the relationships that exist between tools and practitioners. Working in small groups – and changing briefs thought the week – students will be encouraged to disrupt some of the associations that we have come to rely upon when using our tools for making.

Timetable:

DAY 1:
AM: welcome and introduction to the project with talks from two guest speakers – Dr Peter Oakley, Reader in Material Culture, School of Arts and Humanities (the evolution of tool making) and Dr Irene Posch, Researcher into Media and Computer Science (bespoke tool making)
PM: working in groups according to a given brief

DAY 2:
AM: working in groups
PM: talks from two guest speakers – John Slyce, Tutor in Painting, School of Arts and Humanities (the philosophy of tools and the apparatus) and Prof. Roger Kneebone, Surgeon, Imperial College/RCA (tools and context)

DAY 3:
AM: Rotating groups – working to a different brief
PM: working in groups

DAY 4:
AM: Rotating groups – working to a different brief
PM: working in groups

DAY 5:
AM: Presentation preparations
PM: Groups presentations