INVISIBLE STRUCTURA Book just been published

Please have a look at the project book CLICK HERE

Day of lifting the Three Fathom’s pole

Here are some images from today’s exciting events, including the visit of the patron, the Dean who came to check out that everything is built to his measures






photo’s taken by Sybil Edwards and Ollie Cross

First week of public participation of Invisible Structura II

Just finished the first week, out of two, raising a sculpture which takes the language of medieval scaffold, a ramp structure to reach 5 fathoms!!

On Saturday 4th June two open workshops were delivered on site: Willow Basket making with Sheila Winter and Hazel Hurdle making with Sophie Coritour

more images here: 1,2,3, Fathoms

Next week we change our working hours to 10am -6pm

On Saturday 11th June we will have a little party on site, at 16:00, to celebrate the conclusion of the process of making and constructing, …and a modest farewell to David who will soon leave Gloucester due to the end of his one year long residency

Measuring The Most Revered Dean – Performance @ Gloucester centre

Measuring The Dean of Gloucester Cathedral Neil Heavisides.

Measuring The Dean performance

The body proportions of the Dean will be used to inform the building of a structure outside the Cathedral. The Dean’s Phatom, The Cubit, The Foot, The span, The Palm and the Thumb, will be used as a measuring reference for the process for raising up a sculpture, which takes its material language from medieval scaffolding, and suggests the form of a ramp.
see video of performance here: RULER

more photo’s here: THE RULER

invitation to the opening of INVISIBLE STRUCTURA II

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY
A series of workshops, open studios and community engagement
opportunities associated with the exhibition opening on 27th May at 7pm at
Gloucester Cathedral

What: Open studio – includes a workshop
Date: Sat 21 May 2011 – Sun 22 May 2011
Time: 11am – 2pm
Where: 8 Three Cocks Lane, Nr. St. Marys Road, Gloucester

What: exhibition opening- Invisible Structura II – work from David Behar-Perahia’s year as artist-in-residence
Date: Fri 27 May 2011
Time: 7pm
Where: Gloucester Cathedral

What: Performance by David Behar-Perahia – “Measuring the Acting Dean of Gloucester Cathedral” – Neil Heaviside.
A ceremonial event to measure the body proportions of the Dean, reflecting how the Cathedral was designed in medieval times.
Date: Sat 28 May 2011
Time: 12:00 noon
Where: Gloucester Cathedral

What: Action-Performance – work with David Behar-Perahia to build a medieval style scaffold structure on the exterior of the Cathedral also public workshops – come and see how to do timber joints using lashing Techniques with Tim Orson and David
Date: Sat 28 May 2011
Time: 10:30 – 16:00
Where: Outside Gloucester Cathedral

What: Action-Performance – work with David Behar-Perahia to build a medieval style scaffold structure on the exterior of the Cathedral.
Dates: Mon 30 May – 3 June 2011
Time: 12 noon – 8pm
Where: Outside Gloucester Cathedral

What: Action-Performance – work with David Behar-Perahia to build a medieval style scaffold structure on the exterior of the Cathedral & see other traditional timber processes. Also demonstrations & workshops: lashing techniques
Basket weaving with Sheila Winter, hazel hurdle making with Sophie Coritour & lifting the timber structure with David Behar- Perahia
Date: Sat 4 Jun 2011
Time: 11am – 4pm
Where: Outside Gloucester Cathedral

What: Action-Performance – work with David Behar-Perahia to build a medieval style scaffold structure on the exterior of the Cathedral
Date: 6 –10th June 2011
Time 11am – 6pm
Where: Outside Gloucester Cathedral

What: Action-Performance – completion party @ Cathedral
Date: 11th June 2011
Time: 4PM
Where: Outside Gloucester Cathedral

the work progresses, last day working outside, all going well

Taken from Carolyn Black’s blog

David Behar’s project at Gloucester Cathedral is beginning to take shape nicely. Great team of people working together – Rebecca Hooper (artist volunteer), Tim Orson & Ellie Woolley (Dean Oak), Gary Coates (stonemason), Tim Gibbons (carpenter) & Helen Moody (film maker) are all working together to make the project happen.

Blessed with great weather (if not a little windy!) today saw them testing the lashings and strength of a greenwood timber tripod, in preparation for building a sculptural structure wrapped around a pillar inside the nave. Some images below and a video to see here.

4th May – 2nd day of construction

2nd Day of Construction: Doing joints, adjusting the forms, making sculptural desicions, doing some lashing with manila rope and experimenting lifting. With the help of Tim Orson, Ell Woolly, Tim gibbons, Andrew Darke and Gary Coates.
for more images please visit here

3rd May – First day of construction

Just started, with grading the wood, with Carpenters Tim Orson, Elly Woolley, Tim Gibbons, and helpers Rebecca Hooper, Gary Coates and Adrian Ann.
Please find images here

Final Exhibition and public participation in the making of Invisible Structura II

A unique opportunity to work with the Artist-in-Residence at Gloucester Cathedral
28th May – 11th June
12noon – 4pm and 4 – 8pm every day except Sundays
Free

What’s going on?
As the culmination of his year at Gloucester Cathedral, artist David Behar will be installing three large scale sculptures inspired by medieval scaffolding and made from long green-wood timber poles. One of these will be made outside the Cathedral with the participation of the public, echoing the joint community effort it took to raise a cathedral in medieval times.
David is looking for people to help him make it happen.

Who can take part?
Anyone who is physically fit and is more than 18 years of age.

What could I do? I know nothing about carpentry and I’m scared of heights.

No experience is needed; David and his team of experts will be around to teach you. You could help with making the timber joints, help with lashing and frapping them together, or help with pulling and lifting the poles into position. You will not be required to climb, indeed you will not be allowed to.
 
What will I get out of it?
You’ll learn about the process of building a cathedral and the mindset of the medieval builder and designer. You’ll learn how to join bits of wood together and how to make structures stand up. You’ll also have a lot of fun as part of a team which has taken on the challenge of raising a unique structure in the cathedral grounds.
At the end of the project there’ll be a well-earned celebratory party for everyone who’s been involved and of course documentation of what you did.

How much of a time commitment would I have to make? 

It’s up to you; anything from one four-hour shift to a two-week outdoor working holiday. Clearly more than one session is desirable, as you’ll get more skilled.

I’m interested; what do I do next?

If you have questions or want to sign up please email David at
behar_david@yahoo.com

Call for public participation in the making of Invisible Structura II

- from Carolyn Black blog
A unique opportunity to get involved with the Artist-in-Residence programme at Gloucester Cathedral 28th May – 11th June 12noon – 4pm and 4 – 8pm every day except Sundays Free

What’s going on? As the culmination of his year at Gloucester Cathedral, artist David Behar will be constructing and installing three large scale sculptures inspired by medieval scaffolding and made from long green-wood timber poles. One of these will be made outside the Cathedral with the participation of the public, echoing the joint community effort it took to raise a cathedral in medieval times. David is looking for people to help him make it happen.

Who can take part? Anyone who is physically fit and is more than 18 years of age.

What could I do? I know nothing about carpentry and I’m scared of heights. No experience is needed; David and his team of experts will be around to teach you. You could help with making the timber joints, help with lashing and frapping them together, or help with pulling and lifting the poles into position. You will not be required to climb, indeed you will not be allowed to!

What will I get out of it? You’ll learn about the process of building a cathedral and the mindset of the medieval builder and designer. You’ll learn how to join bits of wood together and how to make structures stand up. You’ll also have a lot of fun as part of a team which has taken on the challenge of raising a unique structure in the cathedral grounds. At the end of the project there’ll be a well-earned celebratory party for everyone who’s been involved and of course documentation of what you did.

How much of a time commitment would I have to make? It’s up to you; anything from one four-hour shift to a two-week outdoor working holiday. Clearly more than one session is desirable, as you’ll get more skilled.

I’m interested; what do I do next? If you have questions or want to sign up please email behar_david@yahoo.com – he’ll be running free introductory workshops on 7th and 21st May at 11am.

update on the Cathedral project by Carolyn Black

Just back from a wonderful day with David Behar at Gloucester Cathedral. A privilege to spend the morning in the ancient library recording fascinating conversations between David, Colin Glen and myself about David’s residency and work there. You’ll get to hear that at a later date, but for now I want to share some pictures with you. Some show the library (note the book entitled “The King’s Master Masons” – David’s whole project reflects upon how the medieval masons built the cathedral) and others show David (and even me) doing some ‘debarking’ – stripping the bark off timber with a special tool, a ‘drawing knife’ – like cutting butter! Just shows, I really do get involved in projects at all levels! (Admittedly I didn’t do much, but only because I have a bad back at the moment!)

A great way to end a working week……

(view other images here)

The wood has arrived to the Cathedral

come and join us in the preparations:
De Barking on Monday, Thursday 28th and 31st March and 1st April 15:30 – 19:00

INVISIBLE STRUCTURA I performance

A unique procession performance was created in collaboration with Master Mason Pascal, young composer Edwin and dancers/choreographers Ruth and Kathy

the video:

INVISIBLE STRUCTURA I exhibition

The exhibition used the Slype space, off the cloisters, and included drawings, sketches, mason’s drawings, models, a video piece, and traces from the performance: sound piece and a composition, “StoneMason’s chaconne” by Edwin Hilier, conducted by him, performed by the Cathedral Choir and Ben Morris on the Organ.

Text from the catalogue:
David Behar Perahia
Artist in Residence Gloucester Cathedral 2010 – 2011

Invisible Structura 1: Body, Sound, Space & Harmony
12th until 28th of February

” Here at the Cathedral, we are particularly conscious of the building in which worship takes place. There is a language in the stone which speaks sometimes more clearly and more powerfully than mere words. Age, dimensions, proportions, sheer space, rhythms of horizontal and vertical, contrasts of light and shade, texture and tone of glass and wood ands stone, and through faithful and loving craftsmanship which went into their making – this building says great things to the spirits of many people, inclining them to be more sensitive to the spirit, even to live after the spirit … buildings like this often speak of the spirit more clearly than do most of the words that are uttered in them. They can literally be sacraments of stone. 1″

Gloucester Cathedral was built in 1066 by the Normans, newcomers to England, who started an exciting age of enquiry into the relationship between human and nature, man and god. An unprecedented concern with scale challenged the power of nature and man – to build and to aspire for the skies.

To reflect this challenging vision, the human body was looked upon as a system of reference that projected forward the use of human scale measurements. This system of measurements was brought from the continent, and reflected the smallest measure of the Pouce (thumb) to the Paume (palm), the Empan (hand span), the Coudee, (cubit), Le Pied (foot) and the largest measure of the Toise (fathom – the span of the outstretched arms), all served as elements in the perception of a human scale. These units were then used as propagators of lines, surfaces and space.

The human body was perceived at that time as a Module, a subjective, self-contained standard that was used to portray on earth, man’s will and belief. This was done in a manner that reflected the knowledge and achievements of man since ancient times, with an intuitive play of scale and proportions. In a time where numbers and numerical operations were still not in use, the natural play with full numbers, specifically under the Dodeca system of 12 (which allows the play of 2,3,4 and 6), found its phenomenal juxtaposition together with the doctrine of proportion by Pythagoras.

This harmonious merging is beautifully depicted by the 12 knots rope, a simple measuring tool made out of twelve spans taken from the human body. With a little loop at its end, this intelligible rope presents one of the most used measuring and tracing tools of building workers in the ancient world. Within the perspective of the craft of construction, the 12 knots rope can form all basic geometries in need, from structure to ornament. One can easily deduct the sacred proportions as the diagonal of a square, rectangle (square root of two, five) and up to the most divine proportion of all, the golden section. The perpendicularity can be achieved by the 3,4,5 triangle (see illustration), as all other basic forms, equilateral triangle, golden triangle, hexagon, circles and more.

“St. Augustine gives a theory of beauty based upon geometrical regularity. Equilateral triangle, he says, are more beautiful than scalene triangles because of their greater “evenness”. Squares are more beautiful still. Most beautiful is the circle, which has no angles to disrupt the continuous equality of its circumference. Above all of these, However, is the point – indivisible, centre and beginning and end of itself, the generating point of the circle, the most beautiful of all the figures. 2″

For more sophisticated designs, the compass was playfully used to further develop and propagate proportions in design. The person charged with developing the plan and the designs of the cathedral was the master mason, who shared with few of his loyal apprentices the secret and the meaning of the sacred proportions. The Vesica Piscis was a simple form generator that the master masons were using, an outline that allowed to deduct the triangle, square, and up to the dodecagon form, as well as all the sacred proportions, all based on one module. This is why the Vesica Piscis can be found as a central to representation of Christian mysticism in the Middle Ages.

Sacred spaces were respected with a unique philosophy, where number, weight and measure stem the divine proportion of dimension. form and order. This unique philosophical perspective, which consisted of triads as given by the book of wisdom, was used by medieval thinkers to reflect upon their experience of the phenomenal world, and to project the delicate dialogue between man and universe. The convergence with the language of geometry, and the subjective use of a module based on human scale, created a unique harmonious approach of defining man’s place in the world and the creation of Axis Mundi.

In 570BC Pythagoras first observed the interconnected phenomena of sound and proportion. While he was passing by the Blacksmith’s workshop, he heard the harmonious sounds of four metal hammers hitting in sequence the anvil. Intrigued, he immediately went in and asked to weigh the hammers, and found that their related weights proportioned to 6, 8, 9, and 12. So, sound phenomena was found to be governed by proportion, and similarly sacred proportions can be played within its composition. It was the medieval mind that was the first to further explore this intertwined phenomena into space, in search after the musica mundana, the music of the spheres. This reflected mostly the medieval aesthetics, and it was Boethius who expressed it in most clarity:
” The soul and the body are subject to the same laws that govern music, and these same proportions are to be found in the cosmos itself. Microcosmos and macrocosmos are tied by the same knot, simultaneously mathematical and aesthetic. Man conforms to the measure of the world, and takes pleasure in every manifestation of this conformity. 2″

1 Neil Heavyside, “Think Piece” on worship, 2010
2 Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, 1959,

The first part of my residency project “Invisible Structura” at Gloucester Cathedral is composed out of two parts, an Exhibition in the slype space near the cloisters and a performance, happening through a circular procession in the interior spaces of the Cathedral.

The exhibition is bringing forward some of the ideas that were explored, in order to develop a sculptural language out of medieval scaffold structures, in a way to create a dialogue with the Cathedral spaces. This research is manifested with sketches and models.
The Performance procession is an out come of collaboration with master mason Pascal Mychalysin, composer Edwin Hillier and choreograph – dancers Ruth Cross and Catherine Gilks.

Edwin Hillier:
Having chosen four stones which ‘ring’ well from the Stonemason’s yard, I approximated the principal pitch of each. Although all of the stones presented a variety of different composite sounds and harmonics, one of these (the third stone) seemed to present two principal pitches. Thus, from the four stones, I deciphered five main pitches, which form the basis of my composition. The consequent expansion of these five ‘stone pitches’ through the addition of another three related notes, gave me the complete eight-note mode, which forms the sound world of the piece.

The idea then was to use these pitches (whose existence started as short, quick strikes with the stonemason’s chisel) in a completely different way. Thus, they form the basis of more lyrical and sustained music, afforded by the capabilities of the human voice. The five stone notes are treated in a variety of different ways throughout the vocal music (in their unchanged order at the start), then through their inclusion in a more tonal idiom (in the middle) and finally through their inversion (effectively flipping the sequence of five the other way up to generate a different set of notes) at the end. Once these new pitches have been introduced, the final part of the piece allows all twelve notes of the chromatic scale to now be employed; and following a sequence of whispering (imitating that heard earlier in the galleries above) the last bars of the music indeed use all these notes to form a final chordal realization of the stone’s five pitches.

However, the attack of the stones, and the music’s origins, is still reflected in the staccato interjections (which run throughout the music) by the voices, to the words of the triads below.

The words derive from the Book of Wisdom. (They are presented in English below, but are sung in their Latin form)

That which Determines
That which Proportions
That which Distinguish

The Triad’s elements:
number, weight, measure
dimension, form, order
substance, nature, power

The sketches and plans are presented in juxtaposition with boards of stone mason’s drawings, used to decipher the geometrical proportions of the masonry. Thus the present intertwine with contemporary reflections on the past with its unique perspectives of creating a formal world out of natural phenomena.

The drawings were created within my first months in Gloucester, with awe and wonder about the simple idea that this cathedral was built out of human measures.

David Behar Perahia

Gloucester Feb. 2011

Invisible Structura I – coming Exhibition and Performance

Where: Gloucester Cathedral
What: Invisible Structura 1: Body, Sound, Space & Harmony. A performance and exhibition
When: Performance 6.30pm Saturday 12th Exhibition continues to 28th February

I am happy to invite you to my first exhibition “Invisible Structura I” , in the Cathedral which will start with a procession performance in collaboration with composer Edwin Hillier, dancers Katherine Glicks and Ruth Cross, Gloucester Cathedral Stone Masons, members of the Cathedral choir and myself.

Saturday 12 February 18:30

Looking forward to be there with you

Call for Participation

we are just starting a new round of them! The workshop is free of charge and I ask you to read the attached leaflet.
Also, you are invited to further participate and join in building a medieval public sculpture outside the Cathedral. This will happen from 27th May till 10th June, and I am looking for volunteers for this exciting project (2-3 half days).


In the Woods and de-barking!

I have spent the day today in the forest, checking the bark qualities of the aspen wood, and its performance!! It feels like butter, beautiful feeling to it. Get ready for the after Xmass deBark Action!
The images: the debarking process, the beautiful sheds in the forest, a willow sculpture and the landscape around the forest.

Woods

I was recently searching for materials (before the white coat arrived)

I have just put the images of the 3rd workshop here:

I am sure you will find a lot of joy there!!

I enjoyed very much to give this set of experimental workshops, that helped me also in a very constructive way to define my future project
Thank you for your participation, support and enthusiasm!!

3rd and last workshop

Dear participants
I wanted to widen the choice of possible materials for next meeting: any twig will do, ranging from 0.5-2 cm width. If you cant find any, or didn’t happen to have the time – don’t worry, I am going to bring a nice quantity, and I am sure we will manage it by sharing the materials.
Please bring secateur (otherwise japanese knife)and twine – preferably made out of natural materials.
Don’t forget we will go to celebrate at the end of the evening!
Ciao
David

2nd Workshop 17th Nov.

Dear workshop participants
Information for the second workshop on this coming Wednesday : 17th Nov. 7:30-9PM
Where?
We meet at the main entrance to the Cathedral.
What to bring? your geometric sketches, rulers and measuring ropes, and if you have, please bring a compass!
Pascal, the Master Mason will not be able to come this week, but will be with us next week!
see you very soon!