The bouncing shoe: a design prototype

  

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The bouncing shoe: a design prototype

 

 

the bouncing shoe

 

 

Experience the magic of bounce !

Who has not experienced a sense of frustration when walking with how much energy is expended and yet needlessly lost because shoe design fails to completely take advantage of the possibilities of bounce.

 

Finally a solution: the bouncing shoe.

The bouncing shoe allows the walker to fully capitalize on the reflexive results of his own footsteps.

This is the sketch for the prototype of the bouncing shoe. As yet, many details are still under consideration. But the basic concept is this: the user inserts their foot into the shoe which is made of a material spony and highly elastic and then proceeds to walk, only now, instead of the deadening footsteps they are accustomed to, now they experience a full and invigorating bounce, propelling them forward to further and further distances with less effort

A detail still in the research and development stage is how the foot will be received by the bouncing shoe

One solution is that the bouncing shoe is constructed similarly to an inflatable  balloon, with a nozzle for inflation, and an opening for the insertion of a foot. When inflated the ball  would close around the foot, securing it. The disadvantage of this is the issue of puncture.

 

A second idea proposes that the bouncing shoe is made of a more solid material, similar to that used for children`s bouncy balls. If so, the opening for the foot would be stiffer, and it would be necessary for the user to wear a spongy sock, cushioned within the hole ang protect them when walking .

 

Markets

It is believed that the market for the bouncing shoe is predominantly younger people living in urban areas, who are style-conscious and  aware of the need to preserve energy. There may also be a target market among senior walkers, who might appreciate its energy saving capacities.

A further market lies among sports people- most obviously court sports (volleyball, basketball, badminton) and gymnastics, and it is very possible that soccer players will also find this footwear advantageous.

There may also be interest in the contemporary dance and circus performance art communities.

The bouncing shoe should only be used with caution by disabled people.

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A man with his head in an elephant's anus

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A man with his head in an elephant's anus

This drawing is self explanatory.

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Doodle, some themes

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1. detail from sheet a- face of a perplexed girl

2. detail from sheet a- tower

Above,  sheet a and below, sheet b- recent sets of doodles, done during lessons

These revisit familiar motifs- doodling is often t a leisurely perambulation round one's mind, and has an aspect of comfortable thematic repetition.

Some of these repeated motifs are:

1. the perplexed, but beautiful, girl's face; 

2. triangle, sometimes arranged to form towers or patterns

3. the severed leg and the tiny foot sock, usually sporting a short sock

As usual, I draw in black ball pen. I like a larger diameter ball as I prefer a thicker line and the occasional smudging that you sometimes get. The paper is standard photocopier paper. Doodles should be done as un-self-consciously as possible, and using nicer paper would militate against this. 

sheet a

3. detail from sheet b 

 severed leg, tiny foor with short sock

sheet b

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Drawings for notional murals and sculptures.

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Drawings for notional murals and sculptures. 

Should anyone have a place to do these let me know and I will come and make them.

 Gaint cats on garden walls- one leaping the other seated

 A giant horse on a gable

 Cat`s head and cat leaping

A boy and a girl on a garden wall

These pursue themes of gigantism. I very much enjoy the simple advertising, seen in developing countries. There is a sweetness in those advertisements that I`d like to bring to some walls and I would like to do some in Belfast to replace the hateful murals that proliferate there,

The softness of effect given by a pen cannot be reproduced on a wall, so I would have to find a way of creating a gentle quality through colour.

Suspended faces.

Thes two, above and below, are either balloons, or flat representations of faces, again enormous, to be suspended by ropes from tree branches or, below,  supported by long poles.

Poles with faces.

A giant sculpture of a worthy man, with cyclist for scale.

I think tidying the drawings with correction fluid might make them more comprehensible, but they become a little uglier.

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Two weirdos having a conversation

Two weirdos having a conversation

A pen and ink drawing, about 7 cm on its longest side.

Four more drawings from the weekend

 The errant pixie, Christ the Redeemer.

 Me on my deathbed

 Two pixies mug an American tourist.

 

The captured prince

Four more drawings from the weekend: the wickedness of the pixie continues to inspire me. The drawings are about 5 cm across their longest sides. I don`t use pencil, just ink so they can`t be corrected, and there is an element of risk.

Four drawings

 A fop with a tail

 A man like a beetle

 An elephant in a forest

A trumpeter on a hillside

Four more small drawings- an edited selection of drawings will be given to Jim Mendola`s 12x12x12 monthly creative event.

Three little drawings

 A dwarf urinating on a flower

 A faun smoking a cigarette

Modern men

All ink on paper, about 10cm on the longest side.

Friendly people

This is a sketch illustrating a pair of sculptures I one day wish to construct. 

The two larger figures are about 15 feet high, and to be constructed from a flat material such as steel, if it can be made rigid enough (perhaps it will be necessary to coonstruct them as a sort of steel sandwich, so that each sculpture would consist of two steel flats, joined by a struts).

The two smaller figures are there for scale, and represent real people. They will be painted in bright colours. The figures are designed to be friendly and welcoming.

Pendulous

A sketch of a sculpture soon to be completed with wires and an old picture frame.

The sculpture is Calderish, and its format  is one which I shall be translating for paintings increasingly. That is, a composition which consists of two or possible three planes, very closely placed in relation to each other, and a highly rhythmic relationship between elements, clearly distinguished in bright colours.

The Forest of Dreams: drawings

Two drawings for a paper cutout sculpture piece which I shall work on over the next few days.

I am sik.

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I am sik, ballpen on paper, 10 x 10 cm

I am sick: my death is surely imminent: my friend, astonished and deeply concerned visits me. It is a Tragic Moment in History.

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Here I am, an old man...

Here I am, an old man. Mostly bald, cantankerous and slightly weird. Potbellied, I wander mumbling incomprehensible complaints. I dress drably, except for a battered fedora which, erroneously, I imagine to be dashing. Everything I own is worn and has a greasy patina of sadness.

I walk about a neighbourhod which I ended up in through a series of well considered, joyless compromises made many years ago. I prefer architecture to people because it is silent. I live on toast, poached eggs and whisky. I have no friends, my social life long having been reduced to semi-formal exchanges with the postman. Sometimes I try to flrt with waitresses: a pitiful sight. Thus, for company, I aquired a dog which resembles a rat.

I have a long mental list of people and institutions I despise, ranging from the manager of the supermarket to the  US Secretary of State. I try to add to my list of grievances every day. I am considering disliking the postman, though as yet I have no specific reason to. I have no interest in other opinons than my own, unless they concur, or they provide me with fuel for my contempt.

Frigate: doodle

Frigate: doodle

A drawing of a frigate, done during lessons. Not only has it got a giant cannon but, should that fail to destroy the enemy, it also features a  hefty battering ram, capable of smashing the hull of the most thickly armoured ironclad.

Paraguay / Paraguayan, Venezuela / Venezuelan, Argentina / Argentinian: doodles

Nemesis

Three Wise Men

Doodles made in a beginner's English class, details above

While I am doing them I sometimes have the idea of working them up into huge, insane paintings. But to do that would be to miss the point entirely, because the very essence of the doodle is its incidental nature, they way its scratchy amateurishness leads one into the crevasses of a bored mind.

Alfred Kubin and Odilon Redon managed to bridge this gap between doodles (semi-conscious meandering) and finished large scale art piece, but I cannot, either because of some inner rigidity, or because I am not insane enough.

For me, therefore, the doodle must remain an end in itself.

And I cannot sit down and decide to make doodles, as I would a painting- they seem necessarily to be a semi-conscious, nervous response to tedium. It's the tedium (usually of giving English lessons, in the case above teaching the ajectives referring to Latin American states) that lend them the qualities that, at best, animate them.

Three characters in search of a tableau

These are threee drawings of characters who will one day become made into cutouts, and set up as a tableau.

What I really need is a jigsaw and some light hardboard. Then I can cut out profiles to paint with the characters: doing such cutting work in this apartment just isn't feasable. But perhaps it will be some day: what I can do now is store up ideas for that day.

Another option is to use these characters in a painting: though what I like about the idea of having them as cutout two dimensinal "dolls" is the toy-like aspect that they'd have (I am extremely fond of children's toys, and there used to be produced pressed tin soldiers called "flats"; I'm also a big fan of the toy theatre).

I have had these ideas for many years, but often felt deterred not just by lack of a workspace but by my lack of a narrative within which to place my figures. I have decided not to care too much: the narrative can look after itself.

Design for a mural on the gable end of a house

I see the face as similar in its innocence to the childrens' faces one sees in Indian popular art.

Perhaps such a mural as a replacement for the murals which are painted on the gables of tenaments in Belfast (usually featuring martyred warriors, arms and slogans of varying degrees of bellicosity).

The Secret

The Secret - detail, pen and ink

Here is a detail of a drawing for you to enjoy.

The art I that I really like is all about revealing secrets, opening drawers, peering inside wardrobes: art as psychological prying; the sick delight in going through another persons wallet, their purse, their diaries; touching things you know only they touch; not knowing if they will suspect that someone has read their letter or slipped their hand into their pocket.

Drawing is, for me, a way of accessing this condition of revelation. It's more intimate, closer than my painting which always has a faintly official feel about it- a public art form: robust, designed for places where respectability, a public face is of import.

Tyre Shop- stage two; Forest and Swamp- stage four

The photo quality here leaves something to be desired. The problem of photographing oils is the reflectivity of the paint- this is especially a problem with wet and dark paint.

It has been delightful to return to these two paintings, which I feel I have managed to continue without losing some of their original energies. The essential difficulty is, I believe, that of finding the right balance between responding to the subject and responding to the painting of the subject.

In the initial, sketch, stage one responds rapidly and directly to the subject, scarcely paying much attention to the results on the canvas. In subsequent stages one tends to study the subject less, and the painting more. This is perhaps why the paintings risk becoming duller as they are worked upon- painting becomes an editorial act involving removal and ordering, not a response to the stimulus of a motif.

Ergo , my recurring fascination with rapid methods, that deny ready editing- monotype and pen and ink, as below.

As a means of depicting the sort of rubbishy architecture they construct along the roads here without the least shame paints are much better. This is because the buildings are so disorderly that using an uneditable medium to record them would lead to an impossible visual chaos on the page: contrawise paints allow one to do the editing needed to make sense of the Brazilian architectural landscape.

With ink I generally have been focusing on trees and nature things where precision isn't essential for the image to be comprehensible.

Trees

The paper was rather small, barely much larger than A4, so next time I'll get a bigger piece, probably A1. I felt cramped when working so small and I feat the image seems cramped too.

I really need a little table too: it's uncomfortable supporting the board on ones knees.

The thing is to be to know which elements to exclude: to aim for simplicity and concision: you have to take your time, to have a plan, so as not to be overwhelmed by nature's abundance. It takes enormous concentration and I'm not surprised the Chinese masters would pray before working.

Evidence of the gesture lends energy, but shouldn't obscure description- there has to be a tension between illustration and abstraction.

It's important not to panic when things don't quite go right, but almost impossible not to.