The Chinese myth of 'the red string of fate', was that gods would tie an invisible red cord around the ankles of those that are destined to meet one another at a particular significant moment in their life. In Japanese culture, there is a similar myth the red thread thought in this case to be tied around the little finger. Those connected by the thread are usually pre-destined lovers, who will meet regardless of the obstacles set in their way, be these place, time, or circumstances. This magical cord may stretch or tangle, but never break. (See earlier post, The Wyrd)
We can visualise these types of ideas in different ways, one area seldom approached by artists is mathematics but it can be very rich in metaphor. Think about 'asymptotes' for a moment.
An asymptote is a line that the graph of a function approaches but never touches. Rational functions contain asymptotes.
In this graph below there is a vertical asymptote and a horizontal asymptote. The curves approach these asymptotes but never cross or touch them.
Finding vertical and horizontal asymptotes
As art students you may find my occasional references to maths off-putting but like all areas of human preoccupation the problems that maths thinkers think are interesting can be used to help the wider community develop further analogies as to how something could be visualised. In this case the blue vertical and horizontal lines will never be touched by the orange curved lines, however the blue lines are the directors or shapers of the orange lines. So we have a situation where that although the entire existence of the curved orange lines is dependent on the straight blue lines, the orange lines will never touch the blue lines. I find this very poignant, on the one hand it is rather like the invisible Gods directing the red strings of fate and on the other there is something almost Sisyphean about the fact that the lines get closer and closer but never touch, the sense of forever trying to get somewhere but never accomplishing it is key to our human sense of life itself.
These mathematical lines of course only have existence within a mathematical reality. But as in Abbott's Flatland, that reality can be used to think about our own very physical experience.
Going back to Theseus's experience in the labyrinth, string is great way to map out the physical world and define its relationships. You can not just use it to find your way through life, you can use it to determine the way you want to shape things. My first experience of using string in this way was as an apprentice at Round Oak Steel works. I was taught to use chalked string to mark out the cutting lines on huge metal sheets. We used geometry to determine right angles and 'pinged' the tightly pulled chalk string, so that clear chalk lines were left on the metal ready for cutting. This video explains how to use a chalk line.
Ryan Carrington uses the chalk line to create images of tartans taken from catalogues of luxury fabrics. His point is to associate the workman's chalk with the work behind making expensive fabrics.
Ryan Carrington: Chalk snap-line on plywood
The plumb line is another line that crosses between art and work. They have been used for thousands of years by masons to get a vertical line. They are a metaphor for what is straight and true.
Viking mason's plumb line bob
You also of course use a plumb line when making measured drawings. Students often using anything that comes to hand in the drawing studio to make them. In the case of the image below it looks as if someone has taken the thread tightener from one of the easels to make theirs.
The Key in the Hand, was an installation by Chiharu Shiota at the last Venice Biennale. As an artwork it begins to help me weave together the various threads of this post.
Chiharu Shiota
When you entered the Japanese pavilion in Venice you were immediately bathed in red light. Thousands of red lines of thread criss crossed the space, so many that at first impression you couldn't see anything except a blur of form that slowly came into focus as you began to walk into the space. Gradually you worked it out. Each thread was pulled taut by keys hanging as weights, but initially you couldn't see what each thread was linked to, only gradually as you moved around and walked in the spaces that would open out between the threads did you realise that right at the centre of it all was a wooden boat. However so many threads had been linked to it that in from certain viewpoints it effectively disappeared from view in a haze of red lines. The 'red string of fate' coupled with keys that had in the past being used to unlock and give access to things, was obviously the metaphor but the experience was wonderful and to do with the sheer amount of stringing involved and way that the space itself had been opened out and reshaped by the stringing.
Anne Lindberg's thread drawings are a much quieter experience, one that relies on the intersection between weaving and abstraction, but weaving without the weft, which I suppose is therefore technically not weaving at all. They are very delicate and due to the thinness of the threads the colour operates very subtly.
Anne Lindberg: Thread drawing
Lindberg's thread drawings move optically backwards and forwards in a similar way to Bridget Riley's early drawings and appear at first sight to be rather like Joan Salo's biro drawings. They of course have the benefit of physicality, each and every line being a real thread and by being taut these threads link two points, hundreds of points are linked and in the linking a new form is made. This perhaps takes us back into the mythic idea of the thread of life, its hard to see this when actually involved in day to day living, but when you step back far enough a pattern or shape emerges.
See also:
Knots
The ballpoint pen and biro drawings
The weaving of grids
No comments:
Post a Comment