Why shipping containers? What is their relevance to my practice?

In that I don't have a pre-existing practice, I am using shipping containers as jumping off point to explore the question of what I am interested in; they are not really the subject of the work, but more a foundation to begin to frame my exploration of my own practice as it begins to emerge.

In essence, what I am doing is taking areas of general interest and using them to create a brief for my work. For example in the context of Histories and Futures, the shipping container as a subject creates for me, 4 areas of (continuing) research and critical analysis; Speed (nature?), Hidden (purpose?), Network (process?) and Object (method?). The application for this piece, and the accompanying documentation predominantly explored the first aspect of this - Speed; it modelled the process of shipping goods by container ship, but for digital documents, to expose the relationship between our perception of the ‘digital era’ and the physical reality of 90+% of the goods we consume being shipped slowly by container and ship.

How is this translated into work for Invisible Architecture?

In creating the map I brought together, under the banner of the shipping container, several areas of interest. For example:

• hacking, collage, juxtaposition, interplay of context

• artisan - the refined use and manipulation of (unusual?) materials

• The cyclical process of physical into digital

• the qualities of the ‘ready-made’ etched by time and space

• intervention

• the juxtaposition of the physical, emotional with modernism

The map was designed to work in several ways; firstly as a loose narrative. The A0 piece can be read left to right, top to bottom as a description of some of the ideas that I am framing as my practice foundation. Secondly, the map was designed as to be cut up - so that the individual container can be made up as objects; this is in order to allow the ideas associated with each one to be recombined by their juxtaposition with each other. Finally, it acts as a plan, a blueprint; to define the final (at this stage) piece.

So where is it going from here?

From here, I am going to use the map as the blueprint to create the submitted piece. It will pick up the concept of artisan, by creating 31 objects, in the form of scaled down shipping containers, in hardwood and brass. Each is a class instance (along the lines of object oriented programming), in that each has data inside it which can be queried. They are designed to be moved around or stacked on a board, which reads their position on that board. Their positions directly influence the web site which is connected to the system altering the navigation through the site and therefore the story that it creates through that navigation.

What about the presentation of the map

As I wasn't able to present the work at the last group session, I thought that perhaps the best way to present it would be to create an online video and slideshow that would present the work, but also serve as documentation