NAT CHARD
INSTRUMENTS NINE AND TEN
Methodology
1. Operational Methodologies
The early instruments developed a series of folding picture planes as a means of taking possession of an image projected onto that plane. These mechanisms were highly effective but were also entirely predictable. A switch to projecting latex paint in place of optical projection opened up a whole new range of relational possibilities, implicating the operator in a number of ways. The instruments are developed piece by piece. Each component learns from previous versions and the last component to be manufactured. Instrument Nine employed laser-cut and water jet-cut instruments; while the four instruments that make up Instrument Ten used CNC machining (33–6) for as many components as was practicable, so that the incremental process allowed lessons to be carried from piece to pieces, and between equivalent pieces in the most active parts between one instrument and another. Before Instrument One was made, there was a drawing imagining how a series of instruments might work (although these were significantly different from the result). Since then, there is not a single drawing for any of the ten series of instruments that describes neither their production or their performance. This evolutionary process that learns through making has been key to developing the instruments.
Through this body of research, I am placed in a phenomenal relationship with the issue that is being studied, while also learning from didactic instruments in astronomy and the natural sciences. There are two further methodologies employed: one is the construction of tacit knowledge, related to indeterminacy in architecture through developing and working with the instruments; the other relates to the ways in which the predominantly tacit knowledge constructed by the instruments can be shared.
33–6 (overleaf) CNCmachined components for Instrument Ten.
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