that juggling thing

… thinking about the stuff I did at Joshibi, looking at what I think I achieved in light of this earlier post.

Remember, I was looking at the way I work and trying to apply that to the situation at Joshibi.

The Set Up:

The group had been asked to use the paper pulp in a more experimental way. At least I think that’s what they had been asked to do: certainly the pre-amble had included references to conceptual art.

I missed the first session because I was being taught a traditional technique by one of the other tutors. So, that left me one afternoon to get experimental in.

soggy paper pulp balls

I made myself some small balls of soggy paper pulp and three simple rules:

  1. I can juggle with the balls, but I am not allowed to move my feet.
  2. If I drop a ball, then it stays where it lands.
  3. See what evolves.

I moved outside to give myself plenty of space and worked on a tarpaulin so that the paper pulp could be used again – I planned to use a lot of pulp, but not to keep any of it beyond the experiment.

The Results:

Phase 1: Juggling by myself
I was stood in the middle of the tarpaulin and a ring was just starting to develop around my feet when I acquired an audience…

Phase 2: Teaching someone else to juggle
A difficult enough task as it is, but made more interesting through trying to communicate across languages…

Phase 3: Another participant
This time throwing the balls to each other across the tarpaulin. Two more zones start to develop.

zones begin to form

Phase 4: Bedlam
By request, the rest of the group joined in. I couldn’t really formulate a strategy for this, so we just let people get on with it ’till we ran out of pulp.

bedlam begins

Did It Work?

As a piece of work it doesn’t really stand as much more than a tentative experiment. Ideally I’d do away with that nasty blue plastic and use an obscene amount of paper pulp. I’d like to see it splatted all over and into the place where the event takes place and at least knee high. So much so that you’d really have to climb out of and over the stuff when you decided it was time to call it a day.

and then we ran out of pulp...

I hadn’t really bargained for the extent to which other people would want to get involved. Bringing in extra people raised interesting points about communication etc etc, but diluted the splat-pattern(s) starting to emerge. If this were to become a piece of work then I think it might be best to stick to one person in one location.

As for the way I was working, I really liked the set-up of defining the rules of the system and then leaving things to work themselves out. Emergent systems? Something to think about later. This methodology harks back to earlier work I have done and I think it could well be an interesting line of enquiry to follow up on.

Proposal

So, how would this become a piece of work?

Well, we’re gonna need one hell of a lot of paper pulp. [does it need to be paper?]

debris

This will either need to be prepared in advance, or prepared in situ as the event unfolds. [ok, so I seem to be thinking of this in terms of a performance piece with the resulting splat-mountain acting as some sort of documentation.] If the balls are prepared in advance, how does this affect their splattability? If the balls are prepared in situ, we’re going to have to think about a support team and facilities. Hmmm, not necessarily a bad thing – might add to the spectacle!

Who would do the juggling? Surely more effective if the person doing the juggling can’t actually juggle?

In a public place, you could recruit someone who wants to learn to juggle: they are furnished with the pulp balls and the same rules as before:

  1. They are not allowed to move their feet (except perhaps for toilet breaks).
  2. If they drop a ball, then it stays where it lands.
  3. See what evolves. It finishes once they have learned to juggle.

The splats become a record of their learning a new skill.

So, the recruit has learned their new skill and the splats have been splatted. What happens next? Are they left where they are [environmental implications?] or can the whole thing be dried out, picked up, and transported elsewhere?

It might be quite nice to have the event taking place near steps or something. Then, when the mass is lifted away, you are left with the negative space of the steps. Ha! A new way of casting!