Methodology

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.

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.

33–6 (overleaf) CNCmachined components for Instrument Ten.

Operating Instrument Ten provides its most vivid form of representation. A typical session is as follows: the four instruments are set up in an arrangement relative to the characters who might occupy the chairs (37–9), and with a sense of the reciprocal and nonreciprocal relationships between them. Protractors on the deck of the instruments hold string tensioned by plumb bobs so that the angle and distance between them can be recorded. The catapult of an instrument is set for line and length, both with the settings on the arm and the number of elastic bands to power the throw. The dedicated paint spoon is loaded with latex paint, and the camera and high-speed flash are placed in position and primed for action (41). The aim of the throw might be compared with the architect’s prediction of how the situation might be occupied. How the paint behaves deviates from this in varied and unpredictable degrees.

The action of firing the remote camera cable just after the catapult is charged with intense concentration, as the biting point of the trigger is slightly unpredictable. When the paint has been thrown there are a range of questions: What does the splatter of the paint that has collided with the drawing piece and the picture plane tell us? Did we capture the flying paint in the high-speed photograph, and if so how does the behaviour during the throw compare with the aftermath of the splatter? On average, the camera captured one in three throws of paint, how does the result compare with what was imagined?

The use of high-speed flash photography was initiated soon after early trials showed that everything was happening far too quickly to appreciate the processes taking place. High-speed flash photography for research was pioneered by the English physicist Arthur Worthington and was popularised by the MIT professor Harold Eugene Edgerton. I also employed high-speed cinematography to further understand the throws of paint. The resulting slow-motion films were most revealing of the behaviour of the collisions between the paint and the drawing pieces but the process negated all the experiential benefits of the photographic registration (19). Tests were made at 250, 500, 1,000 and 4,000 frames per second.

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37–9 (overleaf) Three simultaneous drawings of the chairs being occupied.

40 Chair drawings with Instrument Ten.

41 (overleaf) Instrument Ten set up for paint throwing.

2. Sharing Tacit Knowledge

I open the work to the phenomenal experience of viewers by frequently showing the instruments in public exhibitions (43–9). One of the objectives of this work is to find ways to share research that produces tacit knowledge. An attempt to force a translation of tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge risks devaluing it by being overly reductive. Tacit knowledge is powerful in situations of acute sensitivity and multiple variables, the sort of conditions where nuanced understandings are vulnerable if their fullness is abstracted through explanation.

Beyond the thematic and conceptual drive of each set of instruments, I ask another question about how their content can be discussed in their own voice while avoiding literary telling. The example of the habitat dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History and the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven (32) – the high point of this type of didactic instrument – suggests their capacity to translate explicit knowledge tacitly to the visitor. This translation is likely to include content that is intended and some that is beyond or even contradictory to those intentions.

Patterns of interest and thought become apparent beyond the content of a particular set of instruments through their presence, the evidence they produce – splatter paint drawings, photography and films – and their evolution from one series to the next. For those who choose to engage, a more intense and intimate understanding is available through working with them. As with the dioramas, this transmission of knowledge is to various degrees unreliable and unrepeatable, as is the content they discuss.

42 Stereo depth registers on Instrument Nine.