Bridge 3: Installation PPJ – Reflection
- How did your group choose the installation location? Why?
Since our installation extended from the wall to the floor, we felt like it would be necessary to locate it in a long hallway that invited and encourages you to enter the piece. The location was also near a rather “secretive” elevator which resonates with our story regarding the elevator that travels to the “clock factory”.
- How did your group choose the mediums used? Why?
We were inspired by an installation we all went to see as a group at one of the New School buildings. We saw this maze-like space constructed by cardboard pipes and curtains and we all seemed to be fascinated by the way the cardboard pipes acted as columns, therefore we used cardboard pipes in our piece. Also the surface that extends from the wall to the floor was a found material in the scrap pile that we recycled.
- How did you choose your artifact?
Our artifacts were brought from our narrative story. Since our installation was essentially our three-dimensional narrative story, we used objects, found and made, that resembled us in the narrative.
- Describe the artifact and how you “constructed” it? (“constructed” is in quotes since there were so many variations of this across the works.)
- Machines: found toys that Chloe had brought along with many others
- Letter: written letter that with pen and paper
- Language translations: Engraved wood, pen and paper
- Film: filmed with a selfie stick from the clock at Grand Central
- What did your artifact say about your character? (This may include symbols, metaphor, attributes or other connections.)
- Machines: resembling the machines that the frog invents in the story, all machines combined act as one major machine. Individually they are purposeless.
- Letter: in our story this was the reason the characters had all met each other and ended up in the “clock factory”-our installation.
- Language translations: resembling a character in our story who has language superpowers, this artifact translates one character’s language to english. In the story, the character’s superpowers can only be used when in the “clock factory”-our installation
- Film: this acted as a window looking out at Grand Central. This artifact gave a sense of location hen in the installation as well as resembled the filmmaker in our story.
- How did you feel (felt sense & emotional narrative) about constructing this project – and all of the pieces?
In the beginning of our process I felt confident and I enjoyed it, we seemed to get along as a group and work well together. Once we started constructing, at a certain point I felt stressful because our whole idea had fallen apart and we were short on time. By the end of it I felt very relieved that it went better than I expected.
- Location: perfect for our narrative and displaying our piece.
- Reference material: not cheap but we tried our best to use recycled materials.
- Narrative: stressful process and odd. Writing a story in a group is fairly challenging but I feel like we overcame it and created an interesting, playful story.
- Character perspectives: multiple perspectives presented with artifacts in the installation and presented with third-person and first-person in the narrative.
- Use of site specific space: Created the piece first and then found the location. We what space we wanted to display our piece but only found it towards the end.
- The temporality of the piece: comforting to keep in mind because our installation would have fallen down overtime.
- Choosing the pathway, or directing traffic and user experience: manipulated by the surface that extended from the wall to the floor, inviting the audience to step inside.
- Documenting the work: Chloe’s role which she did pretty well by photographing along out process.
- Making creative decisions within a team: ran into conflicts at times because we each had our own vision. Eventually came to a compromise and created something we were all satisfied with.
- How did you choose your questions for the audience/ viewers?
We chose questions that we had for ourselves as we were constructing the piece itself.
- What changes would you make to the work if you have to do another iteration (and money, length of installation, and time was no object)?
I would make three additional surfaces, identical to the single one displayed, and I would make a sphere-like structure to better express the idea of the “clock factory”. I would invest more time on painting the gears. Also I would go up in scale.
- If there was something that you could have shared with your viewers to bring additional context or understanding, what would it be? And how would you implement it?
I would describe our process and how we completely failed with our original idea and had to go a new route. I would include a small booklet with pictures and text from our process documentation.
