Current work

Projects

26
Project Theme Tags Status Date Selected
CS50 Studies computing, problem-solving, formal course Live Apr 26 Yes
Road Trip Radar Tools web app, APIs, travel Live Mar 26 Yes
Wine Cellar Monitor Builds sensors, microcontrollers, food & drink In Progress Jun 25 Yes
Bird Box Nature woodwork, wildlife, outdoors Live Mar 25 Yes
Macroeconomist's Holiday Planner Tools behavioural finance, humour, web app Live Dec 24 Yes
Underworld Professionals Collections film, noir, curation Live Oct 24 Yes
Stockholm Transport Tool Tools APIs, travel, real-time data Live Aug 24 Yes
Sculptural Barometer Builds sculpture, philosophy, weather Exploring Next Yes
Raver Headwear Builds wearable electrics, creatures of the deep, cyberpunk Exploring Next Yes
Sidecars Collections cocktails, discovery, perfect partners Live Feb 26 No
Capsule Wardrobe Collections menswear, AI-assisted, planning In Progress Apr 25 No
Blackcurrant Bush Nature growing, edible plants, seasonal Live Apr 25 No
Interests (personal webpage) Studies web, writing, self-reflection Live Mar 25 No
Training Schedule Tools fitness, planning, routine Live Jan 25 No
Zambretti Weather Forecaster Builds Raspberry Pi, weather, analogue systems In Progress May 25 Maybe
Race Day Play playful, mechanical, systems Exploring
Leith School of Art Studies printmaking, art, creativity Exploring
Science of Well-Being Studies psychology, habits, well-being Exploring
Alligator Candle Builds craft, product design, nature-inspired Exploring
Barcode Mutants Play mobile, game design, experimental Exploring
Off-grid Weather Scout Nature sensors, outdoors, installation Exploring
Starburst Trading Game Play social, systems, game design Exploring
Many Thanks! Tools app, mindfulness, gratitude Exploring
Global Markets Trend & Vol Tools web app, finance, market regime ID Exploring

Functional Sculpture: objects whose use, meaning and social life are continuously negotiated.
Modular chameleons, reconfigurable systems, kinetic objects, multi-functional relationships.
A review of ideas on making, naming, interpreting, and living with these constructions

29
Title Author Guiding question / concept Theme Form
Tier One — Ontology (foundational practice) — How are things made?
1.1 The Craftsman Richard Sennett Making is a form of thinking: skill, repetition and attention allow the hand to educate the mind. Intention Book
1.2 Making Tim Ingold Objects emerge through collaboration with materials rather than the imposition of preconceived form. Process Book
1.3 The Shape of Time George Kubler Every object belongs to a longer historical sequence of problems, adaptations and inherited forms. History Book
1.4 On Longing Susan Stewart Objects accumulate memory, desire and meaning beyond their immediate function or utility. Attachment Book
1.5 Vibrant Matter Jane Bennett Materials possess their own agency and participate in shaping outcomes alongside human intention. Agency Book
Tier Two — Legibility (permission, opposition, articulation) — Why are these things allowed to be called sculpture?
2.1 Sculpture in the Expanded Field Rosalind E. Krauss Sculpture extends beyond monuments into a broader territory between architecture, landscape and object. Permission Essay
2.2 Passages in Modern Sculpture Rosalind E. Krauss Modern sculpture's evolution explains how contemporary object practices became possible. History Book
2.3 Art and Objecthood Michael Fried An essential counter-argument that exposes tensions between art, use, presence and lived experience. Opposition Essay
2.4 The Poetics of Space Gaston Bachelard Intimate spaces shape our emotional relationship to objects, containers and acts of dwelling. Domesticity Book
2.5 One Place After Another Miwon Kwon Site is not merely location but a network of social, cultural and institutional relationships. Situatedness Book
Tier Three — Context (institution, reception, historical positioning) — What systems receive and interpret them?
3.1 Ways of Seeing John Berger The meaning of objects is constructed by culture, power and the conditions under which they are seen. Vision Book
3.2 Inside the White Cube Brian O'Doherty Exhibition spaces are never neutral; they actively shape how objects are understood. Institution Book
3.3 Relational Aesthetics Nicolas Bourriaud Art can be understood as a framework for social interaction rather than a discrete object. Participation Book
3.4 The Return of the Real Hal Foster Contemporary practices are situated within longer histories of repetition, critique and return. Historicisation Book
Tier Four — Accountability (material reality) — How do they survive being used by other people?
4.1 The Design of Everyday Things Don Norman Good objects communicate their use intuitively and accommodate the realities of human behaviour. Affordance Book
4.2 How Buildings Learn Stewart Brand Objects and environments acquire meaning through adaptation, maintenance and continual change over time. Repair Book
4.3 The Thoughtful Making of Spaces Adam Thorpe Making responsibly requires attention to human experience, sustainability and long-term care. Care Book
4.4 The Nature and Art of Workmanship David Pye Quality emerges from the relationship between precision, risk, judgement and the maker's skill. Durability Book
4.5 The Social Life of Things Arjun Appadurai Objects continue to change meaning as they circulate through different social contexts. Consequence Book
Tier Five — Practice (artistic process, reflection, evolution) — How do established sculptors think and work?
5.1 Gravity and Grace Antony Gormley & Martin Gayford Sculpture made from the body rather than of it collapses the distance between maker, material and subject. Embodiment Conversation
5.2 Barbara Hepworth: A Pictorial Autobiography Barbara Hepworth Landscape and place are not backdrop but source material — absorbed into form through sustained inhabitation. Environment Autobiography
5.3 Henry Moore on Sculpture Henry Moore, ed. Philip James Sculptural truth is found in natural form — its rhythms, tensions and masses provide a grammar prior to style. Organic form Essays
5.4 Brancusi Friedrich Teja Bach Radical reduction is not simplification but intensification — each removal concentrates rather than diminishes meaning. Essentialisation Monograph
5.5 Donald Judd: Complete Writings Donald Judd A sculpture is a specific object in actual space — it neither represents nor refers, but simply is what it is. Specificity Writings
5.6 Eva Hesse Lucy Lippard Process, impermanence and bodily vulnerability can be the primary content of a work rather than its incidental condition. Materiality Monograph
5.7 A Potter's Book Bernard Leach The vessel is not a lesser form of sculpture but a testing ground where utility and beauty make competing demands on the maker. Function Manual
5.8 Destruction of the Father / Reconstruction of the Father Louise Bourgeois Psychological material — memory, fear, desire — can be metabolised directly into form without being illustrated or explained. Memory Writings
5.9 Writings, Interviews Richard Serra Space is not the setting for sculpture but its material — weight, scale and site-specificity are the work's primary arguments. Scale Interviews
5.10 The Infinite Line Richard Long Walking, marking and the trace of physical passage through landscape constitute a sculptural act without object or permanence. Landscape Artist book

Ideas

Teardrop one arm bandit toaster Marc Newson aluminium construction?
Radio anglepoise Enriching light waves with soundwaves with a bluetooth loudspeaker and a thick ring LED lamp
Pyramid bedframe Wooden four-poster bed for a room with high ceilings
A-level cathedral shell structure The result of circa 80 developmental charcoal sketches
Long exposure photography with light bulbs Fishing rods and reflections from very early morning bodies of water
Architectural bird boxes Salvage driven constellations... And more natural exteriors, with internals designed for birds rather than humans
Egg Toast Coffee — product design Inspired by Bialetti, a device for synchronised breakfast production. Possibly an electric steamer, V60 and toaster with solar?
Egg Toast Coffee — sculpture Exploring the shape and movements of the cooking and brewing processes
Past Participle

Installation and slow motion video of a handful of confetti being thrown through a large ring, behind which are smaller rings, p...

A large arrowed x and y axis on the floor echoes a compass and captures the coordinates of some of the pieces, with the final...

Three different throws with three different colours, representing hopes, loves and losses

One Wheel Wheely Cover it… and make a poster
Anvil combine 1) Anvils as balloons, 2) or, tethered to a yoke and counterbalanced with a computer mouse in tension in Calder esque fashion

Working practices

Playing with scale Micro towering over Macro, Panamarenko shapes and proportions
Curvature and organic shapes As per sketches with charcoal smudging… Process/tools influencing outcome

Reading lists

Redundant heterogeneity
  • Normal Accidents — Charles Perrow
  • Antifragile — Nassim Taleb
  • The Difference — Scott Page
  • Governing the Commons — Elinor Ostrom
  • Range — David Epstein
Requisite variety
  • Introduction to Cybernetics — Ashby
  • The Human Use of Human Beings — Norbert Wiener
A pedagogic sequence of PPE

Intuition and entry-level frameworks (fairness, incentives, inequality)

  • The Undercover Economist — Tim Harford2/10
  • Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? — Michael Sandel3/10
  • Think — Simon Blackburn4/10
  • The Worldly Philosophers — Robert Heilbroner3/10
  • Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman5/10

First serious normative ideas (liberty, society, morality)

  • On Liberty — John Stuart Mill6/10
  • The Communist Manifesto — Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels4/10
  • The Open Society and Its Enemies — Karl Popper8/10
  • Why Nations Fail — Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson4/10

Classical political philosophy (state, rights, legitimacy)

  • The Republic — Plato6/10
  • Leviathan — Thomas Hobbes9/10
  • Two Treatises of Government — John Locke8/10
  • The Social Contract — Jean-Jacques Rousseau7/10
  • The Wealth of Nations — Adam Smith8/10

System-building modern theory (conflict of ideologies)

  • The Road to Serfdom — Friedrich Hayek5/10
  • A Theory of Justice — John Rawls10/10
  • Anarchy, State, and Utopia — Robert Nozick8/10
  • Development as Freedom — Amartya Sen6/10

Analytical and theoretical consolidation (welfare, macro, behavioural limits)

  • Keynes Return of the Master — Robert Skidelsky5/10
  • Essays in Persuasion — John Maynard Keynes7/10
  • The Constitution of Liberty — Friedrich Hayek9/10
  • The Narrow Corridor — Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson5/10

Contemporary perspectives (inequality, democratic distortion, value extraction)

  • The Tyranny of Merit — Michael Sandel3/10
  • Capital in the Twenty-First Century — Thomas Piketty7/10
  • The Righteous Mind — Jonathan Haidt3/10
  • Power and Progress — Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson4/10
  • The Age of Surveillance Capitalism — Shoshana Zuboff8/10
  • The Value of Everything — Mariana Mazzucato5/10