Constructing Knowledge, part II

The hard part in participating at a conference on Knowledge is of course that the question of Knowledge gets addressed to myself – how do I generate knowledge, what is it, at which part of my work does it ‘arrive’. Yikes – not that easy – but the question of knowledge is a framework to look and reflect on my production during the thesis work until now.

3 knowledge generators
Hmm – I have three references to look at from the past six months: a workshop with 60 first year students at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture; the chairs experiment described here; and the full scale cast in Vermont introduced here and here. This post will get into the 'chairs' because, in a way the chairs experiment is a sort of physical summary of previous literature studies. Literature, objects, images and lectures on the topic of fabric forming all remain theoretical. Only by testing techniques and adding some personal thoughts on details or function do I or anyone generate knowledge – I know –  
you can describe the techniques and the feeling and even show it – not until you actually try it do you get an idea of what this could lead to - sort of like kissing.

Except, and thank you Rikke-Julie for that note - when it comes to the knowledge of kissing, that’s a pretty straight forward goal to pursue, you pretty much know what you’re searching for. When it comes to the architectural exploration of a completely new technology it really doesn’t seem all that simple. What is simple is that the continuous exploration of form and matter – more than just access to sources of descriptive knowledge and reflection and more than experience alone, creates something – let’s call it knowledge – great, so this is what all designers and artists do and have done forever.

Reactions
An extra point of entry comes when the physical object exists with all the layers of reflection and acquired knowledge hidden behind the actual presence of something… it calls for a reaction from others than the maker – reactions, associations, references, discussion, more knowledge – and only because it exists. This shared knowledge is created by an actor network I guess – this is a theoretical approach to the world that I’m still not sure of how to use or if I really want to use but in these lines it does make sense.

[IMAGE: DISCUSSION ON CONCRETE AND SUCH
ON THE BASIS OF A PHYSICAL OBJECT] 

Experimental tectonic practice
A sort of finish in this weaving post is that this might just be the beginning – experimental tectonic practice which is the method of my thesis work - is all about generating knowledge. And like getting the knowledge of kissing, practice is fun!