For the past three years Anton Alvarez has been the Spiderman of the design world. Using his mad, bad and brilliant invention, the Thread Wrapping Machine, the Swedish-Chilean RCA graduate theatrically created otherworldly objects and furniture, binding pieces of wood, plastic, steel (or any other material) by spinning thousands of metres of brightly coloured thread around them. This week he unveils a new project and a new machine, and it promises to be equally engaging.  Alphabet Aerobics, on show at The National Centre for Craft & Design from March 19, takes Alvarez’s Thread Wrapping Machine idea to a new level. Though the decidedly lo-fi wooden contraption (it looks like a spinning wheel – if spinning wheels featured in Blade Runner – crossed with an ad-hoc artist’s easel) is nowhere in sight, however and nor are the endless lengths of colourful PVA-slicked yarn.  Like its predecessor the specially developed new machine turns the exhibition space into a working factory, producing one piece each day. Extruding clay through the shapes of letters – like a refined pugmill – Alvarez’s Alphabet Aerobics machine will this time be making ceramic sculptures – an alphabet of works – while the artist himself stands well back.  Alvarez trained as a cabinetmaker in Sweden before moving to London to study. He has since returned to Sweden and set up his studio in Stockholm. Having originally developed the Thread Wrapping process as an alternative to more traditional joinery techniques, a way of holding parts together, he nurtured it until it became a new craft in its own right.  Concurrent to the NCCD exhibition he has another exploring the possibilities of Thread Wrapping Architecture in Taipei, Taiwan. Titled How Long is a Piece of Thread, the show sees the thread wrapping process scaled up to gigantic proportions and demonstrates once again that the creative process is often an endless one.  From the start, explains Alvarez, it’s always been a matter of designing the method. “I forced myself not to think about the outcome. Instead I sought to create a framework that could become more than the production of a single object. It was important to me to maintain a level of abstraction, to not get too distracted by elements of functionality, beauty or tradition.”  The medium, it could be said, is the machine. “I think that in creating your own tool, you can also create a theory about your own work. There’s a natural conversation about the tool itself and the things it produces, which makes it easier to understand and easier to communicate. It’s symbiotic: the tool is talking about the piece, and the piece in turn talks about the tool that made it.”  Given that Alvarez has form when it comes to progressing his ideas above and beyond, it will be particularly interesting to see Alphabet Aerobics not only in this first incarnation, but where it goes next. At the exhibition – which will evolve daily as pieces are (literally) churned out – viewers will see the daily creation of a unique new sculpture. Through it, Alvarez hopes to once again challenge the preconceptions of making, craft and design – re-defining the method of making and questioning the role of the artist in the creative process.
Inventive designer Anton Alvarez's latest contraption will churn out a new ceramic sculpture daily, turning gallery space into factory