FutureEverything - winner of the Lever Prize 2010

Thinking Through Method (Cooper) - Edward Payne

2010
Wood, paper, paint

'Thinking Through Method (Cooper)' centres around research that I have undertaken about traditional ways of making. This research focuses on hobbyists blogs and websites, looking at techniques which were technologically superseded in the industrial revolution. These crafts face a crisis when it is no longer financially viable to train an apprentice. The Internet has enabled the enthusiastic amateur to learn and pass on knowledge on a peer-to-peer basis.

In being communicated this knowledge undergoes metamorphosis as it is transmitted through language (in html), rather than through accumulated experience (hours of repetitive tasks under watch of the master). In this way of learning advice is just as readily ignored as followed and although the product may look the part in a jpg, the intricacies needed to function may have been overlooked. The objects may initially look the same but the emphasis is different. The Sculptural nature of the piece acknowledges the importance of the site where two points in technology meet- that of an individuals ongoing practice, and specifically in this case that of a visual artist. The gathering of trajectories brings into view new conceptual models, their crossings revealing a thought of where we are now.