‘Modular Serendipity’: A Vacuum-Formed Modular Plastic Mural

Leonardo, Vol. 12. pp. 306305 Permagon Press 1979. Printed in Great Britain ‘MODULAR SERENDIPITY’: A PLASTIC MURAL VACUUM-FORMED M0DULAR Erik Forrest* The mural illustrated in Fig. I, entitled ‘Modular Serendipity’, was installed in 1977in the Main Place of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside at Kenosha. Wisconsin, U.S.A. It measures 7.5 x 3.3m, consists of 21 modular units, each 91 x 91 cm. and it is mounted 45 cm from the wall. It is lit from above by daylight from a 30 angled glass roof. The work had its genesis in the industrial use of vacuum-forming techniques for objects made of plastics. I began, in 1968,to use a vacuum-former in Birmingham, England, at the Birmingham Polytechnic. There it was used mainly by students of industrial design for making items such as picnic trays and advertising signs. 1 was interested in the technique because it makes it possible to produce copies of 3-dimensional artworks of the multiple type as quicklyand aseasily as producing, say, lithograph prints. The viewing of a group of vacuum-formed 3dimensional tile-like artworks seemed to me to be of much more artistic interest than viewing one alone. If a unit does not have a symmetrical design, then a number of the units can be grouped in different combinations of the orientation of the unit to provide a variety of relief configurations. For a discussion of this type of artwork see Ref. I. In 1969, an exhibition took place at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London called ‘Cybernetic Serendipity’ [2]. Some of the exhibition was devoted to artworks by artists who had chosen to incorporate chance effects as an integral aspect of their visual character. At that time, I was a lecturer at the Birmingham Polytechnic School of Art Education and carried out some projects with students using sets of parameters for artworks that included chance effects [3]. The original model of the unit for the mural was made in clay over a wooden armature. Its large dimensions (91 x 91 cm) posed some difficulties, since variations in the depth of the clay skin tended to cause uneven drying. From this model a 5cm-thick plaster cast was made. This was reinforced in parts with scrim and with light steel rods. Thiscast was, of course, a negative of the final mural unit. It is sometimes possible to vacuum-form directly into such a female mold if heat-resistant plaster is used, but it seemed wiser, because of the size and the 21 units required, to make a positive cast from the plaster in fiberglass-reinforced resin. The cast was between 10 and 13mm thick. Since between 1.8and 2.0 kg/sq cm (25 and 28 Ib/sq in.) pressure is applied in the forming process, a closely-fitting, strong, rigid wooden substructure was necessary. It was made as an egg-crate structure in plywood (19 mm thick with the walls forming squares (20 x 20 cm). The material used for the final vacuum-formed modular unit was thermo-forming plastic sheets of white butyrate (4.8mm thick). My own vacuum-former was not capable of forming the 91 x 9I cm units, so I arranged for them to be made by an industrial firm. The choice of one of the four possible orientations of a unit was decided by a random selection of marked slips of paper. For this procedure I am indebted to Oskar Holweck of the Werkkunstschule in Saarbriicken, with Fig. 1. Mocluliir Serivdipit.v’. modulur murul, vui~uum+rmrd white hu~~~ruti~plu.~tii~:iioclul~~s. 7.5 x 3.3 m,1977.(Installedat the Ohio University, Athens, OH 45701, U.S.A. (Received 31 May University of Wisconsin-Parkside. Kenosha. Wisconsin. 1978) U.S.A.) *Sculptor and teacher. School of Art. College of Fine Arts, 304 Modular Serendipity 305 whom I had discussed this way of introducing randomness into an arrangement of such units. The installation of the mural posed no special problems. A frame, redwood (5 x 5cm), for each unit was fastened to the wall by screws in wall plugs set into the mortar between the bricks. Then (using lipped washers...