Tiles

The tile project for the fence is slowly moving on and the letters have been cut, these will be the support for the tiles and each one will be hung on the fence, probably towards the school office.

Broken Fingers

A couple of photos from last weeks plaster casting. We did some more hands but also experimented with leaves and other objects, which we will have a look at later in the week as they had not fully cured last week. The next session will be the last of the year, so we will have a mess around with some simple ideas to finish off the school year.

Fence Artwork

This is a test for the artwork going on the fence, this piece is based on the spectrogram of a tui and the colour scheme is taken from the colours of a tui. The final pieces when they are made will each have a qr code attached, so people can scan the code and listen to the sounds each artwork represents. Click here to listen to a tui.

Update

The deadline for the tile designs is the last day of term and I will be looking forward to picking up all the designs and going through them with the art group to pick out the designs to be turned into the tiles.

I have got a whole lot of marbles for the run and hopefully we will have it up and running next term for all to use, I am just waiting to find a suitable storage box or bag for the marble run pieces.

Wellington City Council is developing a living walls/vertical gardens idea and I have been in contact with them to find out what will be going on and if we can get any support for the ideas that Huia, Luna and Natasha have come up with for a vertical garden to go on the fence.

Below are some more ideas we are working on and thinking about.

Marble Run Fence

Above is photo of the marble run fence panel showing the fantail design, on the left is the road side and on the right is the playground side. The cut out pieces of the fantail have magnets embedded in them and form the pieces of the marble run, you can see it in action in the short video below.

Marble Run

First test of the marble run with the art group went well in the winter sunshine yesterday. We will now sort out how everybody else can get to have a go of the run, which will mean setting up a system for it to be used during play time. Also we have some ideas for using the metal panels by having some more magnetic pieces added and even to use them to make stop frame animation film, keep watching this space!

Marble Run

The main parts of the marble run have been put up along the fence, much to the surprise of the students and parents who were wondering what was going on. How it all works will still be a bit of mystery until the marble run parts are finished and the Art Group test out the marble run to make sure it all works and how we mange its use by students and stop the staff spending all their time playing on it.
I am going to get the Art Group to think of some ideas for developing the marble run and we might think about having a marble run construction day later in the year, we will keep you posted on ideas they come up with.
So thanks to the Art Group both this years and last years students for all the ideas and Wellington Makerspace for the fabrication and installation of the marble run.

Update

I will be starting back with the students this week and planning the next stages of the project. The marble run sections of the fence are being made at the moment and once a few things have been sorted out we hope to get them up in the next month.

Image via Mapping Weird Stuff

The first workshop with the fence group will be making a map of the school site, this will allow us to explore and discover other areas of the grounds that work might be made for and that link to the ideas we have already developed for the fence. The map will have some traditional bits in it such as layout of buildings and paths but also, using ideas from psychogeography, which we will incorporate into the map. This might include sounds, textures, rubbings and other things we discover.

One idea that we will be working on is the design and making of a series of tiles to go on the top of each of the fence posts. The plan is to involve the whole school in coming up with ideas for the tile designs and this will involve a design competition and the fence group deciding which tiles to use, but all the designs will be used as part of a large collaborative artwork to be hung in the school.

Otari School Fence

I have been working with students at Otari School in Wellington on developing ideas for their fence. The fence stops children wandering on to the entrance road to the School, but it means that it also provides a visual barrier to their neighbours Otari Bush Reserve. So we will be look at ideas to reconnect with the bush as well as using the fence for play, learning, growing, music and a number of other ideas.

The ideas will be developed and refined over the next term and we hope to start raising funds as the project grows, to implement the student's plans.