These projects aim, to explore a theme of pattern thinking, in relation to autism and also a theme of order and disorder. Autism has historically been studied and portrayed as a disorder. The word was originally used by Eugene Bleuler (1911) to describe one group of related schizophrenic symptoms. Repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behaviour, interests, and activities have been considered central to autistic disorder since Leo Kanner’s ‘Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact’ (1943) paper. Hans Asperger’s ‘Autistic Psychopathy’ (1944) can be translated to mean autistic personality disorder.
Many autistics themselves, are expressing their own unique perspectives on autism. This activity has led to a wider neurodiversity movement which challenges the autism as disorder narrative, with an autism as difference narrative. According to Temple Grandin, pattern thinking is one of three cognitive styles of specialised thinking often found in autistics, alongside visual and verbal logic. These projects ask the question when does order in itself become a disorder?
Pattern (dis)order #1
This project was created using a system of interconnected dots, taking inspiration from the methodology behind Islamic art. The dots are on the outside, and connected using a straight line. Wherever these lines overlap another point is drawn. The use of the Leap motion allows the user to experience hands on order becoming disorder. When the user interaction stops the dots slowly return to there home state, which restores the patterns order.
Pattern (dis)order #2
This digital print was made using a ruleset which created vertexs, using ten equally spaced dots around a circle connected by six randomly drawn lines. This process was run to create thousand of randomly generated vertexs, which were saved as a .csv file. As the process was random this created duplicates, the next stage was check for duplicates and remove from the .csv file. Finally creating a grid of vertexs, I decided on 50 x 50 2500 vertexs as this gave me the visual balance between all of the vertexs including white space defined by the print size.
Pattern (dis)order #3
This project consist of a pattern and also instructions for the pattern mounted on the wall using vinyl cut text. It consists of 576 laser cut acrylic pieces, some of which have detail rastered on to them. It is a pattern that is created using a binary sequence of numbers. Which decide the position and also colour of each individual piece. This work stems from a routine I created which involved and older version of the pattern. The work wasn't intended to be interactive, but during the exhibition people began touching and moving pieces. This was accidental but did create an element of disorder. I tried fixing the pieces bsck to there original state. but I gave up after a point and just let the work exist through these interactions. I created a instructions so that anyone viewing the work can read it and see the underlying ruleset here they are:
Draw a grid of squares 4 x 16.
Subdivide each square into 9 equal smaller squares.
Draw overlapping circles:
the centre is the grid intersection points
the radius is the width of the smaller squares
Repeat an arbitrary number of times.
Select 6 squares within each 3 x 3 section and leave 3 blank diagonals.
Rotate this rule per section.
Generate 64 number variations using 123456.
Each number will be either on or off.
Start with 000000 100000 020000 003000 000400 000050 000006.
Assign 6 different colours to each number.
Use the number sequence to determine plain and populated square allocation.
Draw 10 equally-spaced dots around the inner circle line on each populated square.