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Life Will Kill You It is not uncommon for craft and folk art works to start with something ordinary and familiar and, through resourceful thinking and fabrication techniques, transform it into something that transcends its typical significance. The focus for Life Will Kill You is to identify how the components of everydayness can become elements of the extraordinary. Our starting point is the investigation of the potential of a common object, the zip tie. Considering its capacity to fasten, aggregate, and remain rigid, the material is exploited - its inherent qualities coupled with the precision and rhythm of the digital form to create a new object greater than its parts.

Realizing the project consisted of fastening over 100,000 zip ties by hand onto strands of electrical lamp cord. The project employs wider, longer white zip ties on the exterior of the volume and brightly colored, finer zip ties on the interior if the volume. The result is a bulging contoured volume nestled under a soffit in the center of the showroom that, while shaping how customers move through the space, offers ever-changing glimpses of blurred yet vivid color. Together, the geometry enabled by the digital workspace and the ingenuity of the hand-making process allows the project to impose a compelling effect from an unimposing, common object.

Image 14_Life Will Kill You construction detail