Some ideas that I started with for this project:

Large scale fiber work- I knit & crochet kind of a lot so I’m looking to work with a more familiar technique, but at an unfamiliar scale. I acquired a good amount of 5/16″ rope from TAIT over winter break, which I crocheted some samples with with a 30mm crochet hook (very large).

This created some cool results, as the rope is not stretchy but the act of crocheting it lends it some give. The fun thing about technora rope is that it has a ridiculous breaking strength/working load limit, so I have the idea in the back of my head for a person-sized-load-bearing installation. (AKA someone sits or lays in it) TBD on application, we’ll see how it goes.

I want to put my installation in the pictured corner of the Purnell lobby; it’s a highly-trafficked area in the building but the corners often get overlooked by students. Wanting to use the columns as structural supports; I also have ratchet straps (that can support a person) for securing to the architecture.

Freshman year drama production students are assigned an installation design project in Purnell, so I thought this would be a fun full-circle moment for me as well.

In terms of the actual installation, I’m thinking of having webbing of rope stretched across the columns at about head height. The person interacting would stand below the webbing and pull at it in different spots, and suspended above the webbing is a floaty piece of fabric that is connected to the webbing through simple pulleys.

I did a larger-scale crochet sample but I simply do not have enough rope to span the columns, so I pivoted to a hand-knit webbing instead which should give me more bandwidth.

Hopefully this post is ok to encapsulate checkpoints 1 and 2. Apologies for the delayed updates.

I’m going to start installing tomorrow (Tuesday) and work with the space as it presents itself; I’m pretty excited to see where this is gonna go.