Group Member: Mak & Angel
Idea/ Concept of this project:
Originally,
we attempted to create a reversed space of a living room. We were thinking to create a space that only exists in our dream
but somehow related to the reality. We want to create an
environment that everyone who gets into the space would feel that they are just having a
day dream in a familiar place. Here are some
of the basic models that we
used SIMS 3 to design the setting of the
room. Originally, we
intended to turn all the things upside down to create a reversed space effect.
Nevertheless,
we had limited resources and felt stressful from the exams and projects, a new
idea popped in our minds. Therefore, the scene was set to be a study room which was relatively smaller than the original living
room. It is still a space full of imagination and impossibility like what we had
decided before. Everything there is motionless in which things seem to be
floating in the universe. We did not apply too many elements in the study as it would disorder
and make the spaced confusing. To some extent, it is like all the
things being stopped in an instant. All the things floating in the mid air are as common as we can see in normal study room such
as chairs, books and clocks. The chairs and books have the symbolic meaning of
study and the clocks represent time. Also,
butterflies are everywhere on the books, chairs and clocks. In Chinese
philosophy, butterfly actually presents the idea of illusion, which means we
immerse in a dream, a fantasy world. It is like we have just fallen asleep
while we are working very hard in doing our jobs.
Inspirations:
l The Art of Sculpture
l The D.C Docent
http://dcdocent.tumblr.com/post/33649978523/eye-candy-monday-thrown-to-the-wind-by
Design drafts of the furniture and the room
Let's see our process of making the artwork!
Design drafts of the furniture and the room
Materials:
We
intended to create a room by foam boards or wooden boards by ourselves at
first. A small room can construct a narrow
environment that has greater sense of pressure to the audience. But we finally
turned to use a sidecar from the garage of Angel’s Daddy. Thanks
to the luck, we had a chance to make our artwork in a real room and enjoy the
process of turning a mess into a well decorated room step by step. This is our
very first time to decorate a sidecar. Hence, we regard this as a kind of performance or experiment, but not just making an artwork. Sidecar
has greater space for our creation and imagination. Also for the convenience of
creating, sidecar has sufficient space for us to move and stay.
Materials used
Let's see our process of making the artwork!
This is
how the sidecar originally looked like.
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This is the
environment that we had been working in.
We had to clean up the sidecar first such as
tearing down some useless and disturbing attachment of the sidecar. Of course
we have received helping hands from Angel’s dad and a nice uncle in the garage.
We attempted to use foam boards to cover the windows.
We decided to use metal boards for sealing the
windows instead of using the foam boards because we got the helps from uncles again. Thus, we could
save the foam boards and the budget of buying new foam boards for making furniture.
By the way, we needed
to hand make the chairs therefore newspaper and foam boards were our main materials.
We used wooden boards for the sealing of windows on
another side.
We also used newspapers to cover the wall as we needed
to spray paint on it.
We began to make the furniture.
I am designing the details of the objects we need.
Our first product~ haha, a little bit ugly!
This is our third chair!
Cutting
butterflies from color papers:
For the
consistency of the whole space, the ceiling was covered by a dark blue cloth.
We also
borrow some materials for example, paints, iron boards, canvas and some other useful
tools
Darker
blue canvas and paint in the wall are to represent the night-time’s
environment.
We
started to spray paint on the wall. As we had no experience in spraying the
paint, we were persuaded not to spraying on our own. Thanks uncle Ho!
Then,
the floor was covered by lighter blue canvas which represent daytime’s sky.
Done!!
The basic decoration of the interior was completed. With ‘blue sky’ on the
floor, we had created an effect of reversed space. We also brought two skies coming
from different time coexist in one space.
Here are
the artifacts that we had made.
We were
doing the preparation for hanging the stuff. We strung fishing lines on the
ceiling from one side to another side.
Setting
for chairs:
Then books
and clocks:
Finally
we stuck the paper butterflies everywhere.
Pictures
below are the final version of our work taken in different angles, lightings
and distances.
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Reflection
To be
frank, due to limited resources and time, we had to keep on thinking whether our
original design was work in the sidecar and whether we can create the effect we
want audience to feel. We used a temporarily abandoned sidecar for our art
installation. We think that what we have done is an experiment
indeed as creating such a huge installation is still very new to us. We were
willing to try our best to finish our design and see if it is work. We are not
just focusing on the result, but also the process we have gone through.
We need
to start from scratch and do something with its value. Our performance and art
work caught a lot of attentions of people passing by. With the support and advice
of the technicians there, the progression was going very smoothly. However, during the process, we still met lots of difficulties. For
example, the area of the sidecar is much bigger than we thought so we had to
change our plan. Also, we failed to place the wallpaper on the wall which
forced us to rethink and restart the decoration of the walls. We needed to think of a solution
immediately as time waits for no one. Something thankful was that we both did
not ever think to give up our work.
The
construction of this art installation brought us very great sense of success.
We enjoyed the process very much because it was the very first time we were in
charge of such a large installation. Both of us contributed lots of creative
ideas in the work. We were not afraid of the heavy workload as we knew that, once we insisted
on what we wanted to do, we were not far from our beautiful finishing point. Moreover,
although the final result is not as good as we wanted and maybe it seems
a little bit messy, the
outcome still enhanced our confidence towards future creation. At least we have
called up of our courage to achieve our idea. It was really an unforgettable experience and we
will keep this process in mind forever.
