Phase 2 – Building the Ring Sheet
This page records one stage of the Complex Systems pilot at Park Community School. The pilot tests a four-phase process that informs the planned main programme.
For the pilot, individual willow rings were woven into a pilot ring sheet of 35 rings. This shared structure tested how simple repeated elements could join to make a connected sculptural material.
The pilot ring sheet was too small for full exploration and manipulation into other sculptural forms. The full programme will require a ring sheet of at least 150 rings to support that exploration.
Phase 2 – Building Complexity
The individual rings were interconnected to create a flexible woven surface — the pilot ring sheet. With science, art and horticulture students from Park Community School, we explored this growing field of interconnected units as a sculptural material and investigated how larger forms can emerge from repeated simple structures.
Connecting and sewing the pilot ring sheet
The 35-ring pilot ring sheet was the pilot’s sculptural outcome. The planned full programme may develop it into a larger or different form. Read the planned programme on Complex Systems.
Learning from the Pilot
No one took up the invitation to connect the rings into the shared sheet. This may have reflected how the process was explained or the time people had available; the pilot did not establish a single cause.
For Phase 2 of the full programme, makers could be invited to add their completed ring to the sheet before finishing, with a dedicated contributor supporting the connecting and sewing work. This would make the transition from individual making to the interconnected structure more visible.
Continue to read about installing the pilot project in Pilot Phase 3 – Public Sculpture.
