colin rennie

Colore Magnitudo 2017

Magnitudo

Magnitudo, trans (volume) is a sculptural investigation emerging from the Ordered Universe Project, a multidisciplinary exploration of the work of Robert Grosseteste.  Writing in the 12th century Grosseteste produced various treatises on natural phenomena his thinking was unique, and ahead of its time.  In De colore (on colour)  his innovation was to argue that colour needed more than the single Aristotelian axis and proposed 3 new axis instead of a one dimensional spectrum from black to white.  This piece of work suggests an apparatus to measure or express the idea of colour as volume,  the space inside a vessel,  interrupted and supported by a brass armature perhaps to calculate the relationship between the inside and outside.  The work asks the viewer to question its purpose; to ask what it is searching to measure or capture,

The work is made by first blowing blended coloured hot glass bubble which is stretched by pulling in 6 different directions or axis. After being ground and polished the glass form is then high precision 3d scanned to create a virtual scale model.  This model is used to create the armature and frame in 3d modelling software and the parts cant then be laid out and cut by waterjet.  The brass parts are hand filed and polished to finish, the steel elements are heat blued.

The work has been exhibited at the National Glass Centre, Pembroke College Oxford University and was selected for the Toyama International Glass Exhibition.

Unknown apparatus

The work is a development of a series of works involving three dimensional scanning, modelling and cad cam manufacture,  it is a blend of the ancient skills of glass making with new technologies.  The process of making is integral to the concept of this work,  it is intended to bobe puzzling, almost asking the viewer to work out how the parts were made to precisely fit and hold the glass accurately.  The work has a as too is its intended function, of some kind of apparatus, something to measure fields or connections or multiple polarity perhaps.   Within software the frame forms were calculated using a simulated multi pole fields.  The work was produced for an exhibition Fabricated Queens hall Hexham in 2018 curated by Dominic smith,  and then Exhibited at Pembroke College Oxford Universe