SPIN PROJECTS / SP.01 WIRE

SP.01 CONCEPT

Wire is one of those strangely underrated items that the modern world couldn’t exist without - no copper wire no electricity. It is also, unfortunately, used against humanity - it can contain and restrain, providing an almost insurmountable barrier - razor and barbed wire are symbols of oppression and war.

When we first started exploring the subject we weren’t familiar with the work of Ruth Asawa and Alexander Calder in wire, but their beautiful delicate wire sculptures are well worth a look. It wasn’t a complete surprise to find that someone else had spotted the potential of it as a material.

It was, however a bit of an eye opener to find that people had been inspired by wire since Egyptian times and possibly before.

Our own journey into the world of wire started with coat-hangers from our local dry-cleaners. We found that, after a bit of a wrestling match, you can create fluid and dynamic forms out of it. They have just the right amount of resistance to hold their structure, and enough give to roughly shape the wire into broad suggestion of a letterform. You can’t completely control them, but this results in a raw, natural, unreconstructed feeling about the form.

SP.01 PRODUCTS

Our ideas for products have ranged from a wire structure that you could train plants to grow up and form haphazard letters, to a neon chandelier, mimicking fluid wire forms that would be suspended the ceiling. In the end we plumped for a set of neon side lights and a wall mounted version of the chandelier.

When rotated, wire transforms from a jumble of lines and squiggles into an elegant, quirky letter forms.

Idea for a lamp. Wire and neon collide.

Maybe they would be sold as a set, rather than individual letters.

You could scatter them around your room.

SP.01 TYPEFACE

Our Wire typefaces, rather than changing by weights, rotates by degrees.

Formed in 1976 ‘Wire’ were an early Punk band that seemed to exist in a permanent state of revolution. They are influential and still making progressive music.

One of their early and most well known songs is ‘I am the Fly’. Worth a listen if you aren’t familiar with it, and worth playing again if you are.

This is the original line-up.

The track listing for ‘Pink Flag’, Wire’s first album. You’ll never guess what the cover looks like.

The lyrics of ‘I am the fly’.

Types of Wire.

SP.01 MAKING

The trickiest part of using coat hangers is the unravelling of hook, but once that has been loosened it’s a lot easier from this point on. The rigidity of the structure is still there, and there is some wrestling still to do, however it is a satisfying material to manipulate.

SP.01 WIRE
CONCEPT

Wire is one of those strangely underrated items that the modern world couldn’t exist without - no copper wire no electricity. It is also, unfortunately, used against humanity - It can contain and restrain, providing an almost insurmountable barrier - razor and barbed wire are symbols of oppression and war.

When we first started exploring the subject we weren’t all that familiar with the work of Ruth Asawa and Alexander Calder in wire, but their beautiful delicate wire sculptures are well worth a look. It wasn’t a complete surprise to find that someone else had spotted the potential of it as a material.