UCF’s digital designers bring history to life

University College Falmouth's Research Cluster in 3D Digital Production, Autonomatic, has played a major role in a unique project that combines history, technology, community, conservation and public art.

1479 Plates by Chris Tipping is an extraordinary piece of public art that has been created to celebrate the completion of the Combe Down Stone Mines Stablisation Project. This project has involved 25 hectares of a very shallow limestone mine being filled with approximately 600,000 cubic metres of foamed concrete in order to stabilise over 700 properties that have been built over the abandoned mine from which the stone to construct Georgian Bath was originally extracted.

Funded by the Homes and Communities Agency to commemorate the project, Chris Tipping's 1479 Plates consists of a 9m x 5m map of 788 bone china dinner plates, which explores the relationship between present day engineering and mining technology, stone mines heritage, natural history, and two 18^th century entrepreneurs, Ralph Allen and Josiah Wedgwood. It will be exhibited at the Octagon in Bath's Milson Place between 23 October and 17 November 2009.

The households affected by the stabilisation works will be gifted a ceramic plate - one small part of the map - representing not only the individual household but the complex mining underworld beneath it, referencing geology, archaeology and indigenous species. Residents will also receive a completion statement to confirm that the mine beneath their home has been stabilised. Following their display at the Octagon, the original 788 dinner plates will form a large scale permanent installation in Combe Down village.

Autonomatic's role in this project was to translate layers of digital data from geological surveys and ordnance survey, with hand-drawn elements derived from archaeological finds and the cultural influence of mining in the village, into 788 individual plates that had a distinct aesthetic quality of their own.

"The design process involved a combination of digital designing, hand drawing and the one-off ceramic production capabilities of digital ceramic print technology, all of which maps onto Autonomatic's research interests and expertise," explained Dr Katie Bunnell, who leads the research cluster. "The consistent challenge with all the design elements was to get them working across the whole image but with the right level of detail and aesthetic quality for each individual dinner plate. Colour relationships, translucency and line weights all became increasingly important as the map progressed. The resulting image brings the deepest underground elements to the surface: the mine roadway creates a connecting arterial pathway through the remaining columns of rock, creating the island boundary and through which the houses of Combe Down, patterned with domestic blue and white ceramic motifs, remain visible. Thickets of leeks span the island representing the Welsh mining teams whose presence was significant both below and above the surface, and the island boundary is defined by a sea of beasts significant to the Combe Down environment."

A number of other artists were also commissioned to participate in a multi-media celebration of the project - Andy Croft (poetry), Paul Englishby (music), Neville Gabie (photography), Oogoo Maia (sound), Alec Peever (stone carving) and Simon Whittaker (film) - all of whom worked closely with Combe Down residents to ensure that the works created reflected the rich and fascinating history of this unique village, a selection of which will also be on display.

The Autonomatic research team explores ways of integrating computer-aided design and manufacture with traditional making skills, challenging perceptions of the boundaries between craft and industrial production, with the aim of developing contemporary craft processes for 21^st century practice.

Cornwall provides the perfect backdrop for their research; as a region of beauty, relative isolation and artistic endeavour, it presents great challenges and opportunities for developing new ways of designing and making that exploit the creative potential and connectivity of digital technologies as well as new business approaches to flexible small-scale production that connect with a global economy through the web.

For further information about Autonomatic at University College Falmouth, visit http://www.autonomatic.org.uk/

For further information, visit http://www.bathnes.gov.uk/ and follow the link to the Combe Down Stone Mines Project.

University College Falmouth is the only independent Higher Education institution in Cornwall with the powers to award degrees in its own name. It has two campuses in Cornwall - at Woodlane in Falmouth and Tremough in Penryn (which it owns, and jointly manages with the University of Exeter) - and a third campus at Totnes in Devon, following its merger with Dartington College of Arts in 2008.

This merger created a new institution focusing on the expansion of Falmouth's expertise in Art, Design and Media and Dartington's expertise in Choreography, Music, Theatre, Art and Writing. The Devon-based courses will relocate to a new, high-specification Performance Centre at Tremough in 2010, paving the way for a new specialist Arts University in Cornwall by 2012/2013 that will be unique to the South West.

The College is a founding partner in the Combined Universities in Cornwall (CUC), a unique initiative to promote regional economic regeneration through Higher Education, funded mainly by the European Union (Objective One), the South West Regional Development Agency, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England, with support from Cornwall Council.

Ends

For further information about University College Falmouth, please contact Jilly Easterby MCIPR, Head of Public Affairs, Telephone: 01326 213792, or email: jilly.easterby@falmouth.ac.uk

Tweet