Generic Originals is a series of models combining primitive forms - spheres, cones, and cylinders - into compound forms. Aggregating these primitive parts reveals alternative possibilities concerning familiarity and legibility and resulting in compound forms with pluralistic, associative qualities. In other words, we can name only the parts, but never the whole. Cleavages and clefts both differentiate and merge the union of the parts, appearing as a whole as something between a flexed muscle and bloated stomach.
“With head and foot, back and front: We can comprehend the dumb imprisoned existence of a bulky, memberless, amorphous, conglomeration, heavy and immovable, as easily as the fine and clear disposition of something delicate and lightly articulated.” - Heinrich Wolfflin
Sometimes these Generic Original compound forms are then manipulated, yielding distended bellies, torquing torsos, and bloated bodies that tease the threshold at which the primitive parts are still legible within the compound whole
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Three primary principles characterize the Generic Original formal qualities:
1. Visual oscillations between the legibility of their parts, and the ambivalence of the whole
2. Specific orientations without frontality
3. Cleavages and clefts as exterior articulations