Wooden Chairs Exquisite Corpses, 2020
Medium: Pencil, digital
This project is an experimentation of process art and how different interpretations of the same instruction can result in different assembly of the same chair. By borrowing the power of 3D modeling and rendering, I was able to construct the "exquisite corpses" that are inachievable in the real world and make them look "authentic" as chairs.
I first recorded the procedure of drawing a chair and wrote an instruction for it. Sol LeWitt’s work Assignment 02 inspired me to write it in a paragraph style so that there are some space improvisation.
Instruction:
Start with point A. Draw one vertical rectangle which has the length of your pen and its width is 1/16 of its length. Draw 3 perpendicular lines and 1 arch from a longer side of your rectangle. Draw another rectangle which has the same size as the previous one, and its longer side is also perpendicular to the lines and the arch. Draw a horizontal rectangle that intersects both rectangles in previous steps on their center point. It is thinner than the previous rectangles, and its length is about 1/4 times the vertical ones. Draw 2 vertical rectangles on both ends of the horizontal rectangle. They are perpendicular to the horizontal one. Their length is half of the longest rectangles. Draw 3 lines in between the two rectangles that you have just drawn. Two of the lines are closer together. Connect the shorter vertical rectangles to the longer ones using 6 lines, 3 lines on each side. Draw a parallel line near the horizontal rectangle. Connect two vertices of the horizontal rectangle to the two ends of the parallel line.
I sent the instruction to my friends and family members, and they followed it to draw the chair.
Then I imported the drawings into Rhino and created 3D forms out of them. Here are some screenshots of my process.
All the final prototypes look different from the original chair: some of them stand on only two legs defying the gravity and some consist of fractured pieces. They showcase the variety of people's understanding of the same assembly instruction and how the transformation from 2D to 3D leads to abstraction of an utilitarian artifact.
