Ladipo Famodu, a jeweler, sculptor, and capoeirista, brought a kinetic, playful inquiry to BADS_Lab 2024. His practice, rooted in improvisation and physical interaction, centers on “wire characters”—dynamic sculptures that resist fixed meanings. By engaging participants in game-like interactions, he opened space for rethinking constraints and exploring the liberatory potential of collaboration and improvisation.
Ladipo’s wire characters grew from a critique of rigid representation, particularly in scientific models and language. Reflecting on his scientific training, he questioned the authority of molecular diagrams—tools that claim to reveal invisible structures but instead flatten complexity into fixed hierarchies.
“Once you can represent something, you can control it,” he noted, pointing to how such models oversimplify the living, ephemeral, and unpredictable. His wire characters emerged as a counterpoint: malleable, shifting forms that resist capture and instead embody continuous transformation.
Ladipo turned to play as a means of reclaiming agency and imagination. His wire characters—vividly colored, flexible, and abstract—invite interaction as game pieces, storytellers, or shifting forms. They do not signify singular meanings but remain open, embodying the potential for endless reinterpretation.
Gameplay begins with a tactile ritual. The crystal quartz die is dropped into a concealed opening, its soft clink against the oak tray lingering before it vanishes from sight. To retrieve it, the player must reach below, fingers brushing the tray’s hand-chiseled grooves before meeting the cool, smooth surface of the die. Sight yields to touch as the player searches for the subtle dots carved into the crystal. The number is only revealed when the die is drawn closer, the finger hovering over the marking—an intimate moment where perception, not certainty, defines the outcome.
The number rolled determines 1 to 4 moves—each a chance to reshape the evolving wire sculpture. The forms resist stillness. With each bend and twist, limbs entangle, figures collapse and ascend. Gestures become architectural, molecular, the characters shifting scale with each move. A precarious structure might tumble or find unexpected balance, as players physically navigate the tension between fragility and form.
The game unfolds as an improvisation, where control dissolves into curiosity. Each move transforms both the sculpture and the shared narrative, inviting participants into a state of creative tension and open-ended transformation.
In the (en)counter phase, Ladipo foregrounded the active, relational nature of his work. Participants manipulated the wire characters, discovering new shapes and connections in real time. The twisting forms echoed molecular entanglements—dynamic, emergent, never fully resolved. Meaning arose not from fixed outcomes but from the act of encounter itself.
Ladipo’s round, hand-crafted die extended this exploration. Unlike a standard die, where randomness resolves as soon as the object settles, his design stretches the experience of chance. The roll is not complete when the die stops but when it is reclaimed. Players must interpret the markings based on proximity, the result shaped by perception and interaction rather than objective finality.
By requiring players to engage with the die and interpret its outcome, Ladipo shifted the game from passive observation to embodied decision-making. Uncertainty becomes a site of agency, with players navigating both the physical sensations of touch and the narrative consequences of their choices.
The transformative power of Ladipo’s work lies in the new possibilities it reveals. His wire characters, vibrant and unpredictable, evoke alchemical elements—symbols of renewal and emergence. Their constant mutability invites participants to break from rigid expectations, emphasizing transformation over completion.
Participants were encouraged to reflect on the origins and limits of the forms. What myths shaped these figures? How do they influence the stories unfolding in play? The wire characters became tools for collective storytelling, where meaning emerged relationally through improvisation.
Even the simplest acts—reshaping a wire, rolling an unconventional die—became metaphors for reimagining the systems that shape our lives. Within constraint, Ladipo revealed, new forms can always arise.
Ladipo’s work also explored the tension between openness and constraint. While his game encouraged improvisation, it exposed the limits of its materials and design. The wire could only bend so far. The die required a certain proximity for interpretation.
This raised questions: How much structure is necessary to guide engagement without imposing control? When do boundaries nurture creativity, and when do they inhibit it? Ladipo wrestled with how to preserve freedom while providing enough form for collective play to unfold.
These tensions were never resolved but held in dynamic balance. His practice resisted definitive answers, instead inviting participants to inhabit the space where structure meets improvisation—where constraint, far from a barrier, becomes a site for creative navigation.
each move a hypothesis
molecular and philosophical
gesture becomes ritual
senses recalibrated
bend, link, stack, twist, tilt, balance, flip, form
collapse
& start again.
© Center for Concrete and Abstract Machines