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--- obstinate_lump [2013-07-12 10:43] – [Obstinate Lump] maja
+++ obstinate_lump [2013-07-15 09:02] – [2013.07.13 day 4] 83.101.5.51
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 ==== Obstinate Lump ====
+"There is something about how it's kind of ugly and sticky and misshapen and almost banal and obtuse. Or obstinate - it doesn't care about what I want, it is just a lump. Obstinate Lump." - email exchange between artists
+PHOTOS: http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/sets/72157634633722986/
 Dough resists neatness and control, an aesthetic of the unmade, lumpen and formless. It is an unwieldy mass that provides a physical confrontation with intractable matter. This stuff is not fluid, it is a sticking point for the mind to flow around, and as such acts as a provocative anchor to the mess of the world. Dough is an obstinate medium – it can be anti-architectural and anti-design in its production of form.
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 [[microresidencies|Microresidency]] by Bridget Currie and Chloe Langford
+bridgetcurrie.com
+mmrgghh-hi.tumblr.com/
 <html><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/9262475009/" title="coconut fibre and dough experiment by _foam, on Flickr"><img src="https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3737/9262475009_d9b9929ced_n.jpg" width="320" height="213" alt="coconut fibre and dough experiment"></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/9262469745/" title="drawings in progress by _foam, on Flickr"><img src="https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5323/9262469745_2314199c56_n.jpg" width="320" height="213" alt="drawings in progress"></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/9265247538/" title="first bake experiments by _foam, on Flickr"><img src="https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7288/9265247538_647802b243_n.jpg" width="320" height="213" alt="first bake experiments"></a></html>
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 ==== daily log ====
-====20130710 arrived====
+====2013.07.10 arrived====
 Today was the first day of Chloe Langford and my microresidency at FoAM.  A definite highlight was being given about 22 kg finest semolina duro flour by the fantabulous La Belle équipe pizza restaurant. We are still trying to source a large oven in the canal/st Catherine area of Brussels.
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   * drying bread dough - how will it effect structural stability?
-====20130711 day 2====
+====2013.07.11 day 2====
   * Made some dough from my starter and kneaded it with fibrous plant inclusions, baked some shapes. The bread is stable though not pneumatic, will have to see how it holds up when cold tomorrow.
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 </blockquote>
+====2013.07.12 day 3====
+friday night dough
+[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnOxfT6E_Bk&feature=youtu.be|http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnOxfT6E_Bk&feature=youtu.be]]
+====2013.07.13 day 4====
+Chloe arrives today on the bus, 6AM from Berlin.
+Used the oldBread starter, My starter and Maja's starter that had proved overnight. Made a commercial yeast and hybrid mycellium+yeast culture dough.
+The Day of Experiments - Things of interest:
+- Skin that forms on dough, both as a sponge and as a kneaded lump
+- Wet dough breaking through the skin
+- Contrast between smooth areas and rough, expanded or broken surfaces.
+- Smooth areas can be made through contact with a smooth surface (silicone, metal) or made through wetting the surface and smoothing out.
+- Cutting the dough. Cutting the baked bread or cutting the dough though with gravity, string. The geometric cut surface as juxtaposed with the blobby amorphousness of dough shape. Pulled apart through gravity, using the weight of dough to press it against a sharp or thin object (metal, fold, string etc).
+- Allowing dough to slide and decompose through gravity.
+- Enjoying fragility, breaking apart, balance, seepage. Breathing alive blobs.
+We also talked about matter. The feeling of craving matter, because so many important, heavy things exist digitally and have very little matter. How tactile activities are such a relief. Also the alien-ness of matter - the way the physicality of things somehow doesn't stop surprising you.
+The doughs we've been making are funny - both rising and falling at the same time. We've been watching them slide and creep down surfaces and try to fight gravity with elasticity. As they slip down, you can hear tiny fibres breaking and snapping. When they are sitting in little round forms on the bench, they look like they are sleeping. Humming lumps.
+"Fermented food is alive, it poetically brings to mind an animistic world where the air that we breath and the food that we eat is in constant movement."
+Microcultures Zine, http://bbva.irational.org/microcultures/
+====2013.07.14 day 5====
+Looking over our experiments of the day before, we decided on several aspects of the samples to push further.
+* Twin forms, either mirrored, companion or cut in half
+* draped dough and gravity. Either a relaxed, gentle draping or lying down or a more reluctant sliding slippage. We made several experiments with cloth supports, metal supports and dough sliding down inclined surfaces. We included grass and coconut matting fibres in dough to aid it resist breaking apart under gravity.
+* differences in surface (skin) and interior of dough forms, enhancing through glazes, colour, charring with blowtorch.
+It has been very hot and we have experienced a few problems with the dough drying out quickly. There is a fine balance between dryness and flow in the dough textures.
+We talked about a current feeling within art of returning to 'expression', rough paint, plaster and gestural surfaces. Is such a return possible in a non-ironic, non macho way? What we are doing does not feel like an attempt to externalise 'emotions' but an attempt at empathy with material.
+we think of dough gradually flowing around one's ankles like a warm tide.
+====2013.07.15 day 6====
+Research Gathering 6pm tonight! All welcome We will show our samples of sourdough baking experiments.
+Spending today further experimenting, cleaning up and sorting the samples into some kind of order.