Project 3
Written Design Proposal Statement
Originally before we had talked with our groups, I wanted to make the light inspiration that would imitate rain. I loved the idea of each light being a water droplet and making multiple of them to become rain or constellations. I found pictures and this is the mood board that I had originally created.
For our research, we decided to take inspiration from one of the TED talk videos that was sent out for our assignments. I went over the importance of darkness for lights as light is important in darkness. Without darkness, light would have no purpose or relevance so its important to focus on both aspects. With this being said, we focused on jellyfish and their purpose. Jellyfish light up in the ocean because the point at which they reside is too dark. The sunlight is not able to reach that deep into the ocean causing it to be dark and letting the jellyfish light up. We wanted to incorporate this into our project to add emphasis on the importance of darkness.
We also wanted to focus on the importance of pollution that is found in water every single day and how much waste is dumped in everyday. Plastic is one of the biggest factors of water pollution and is the number one cause marine life dying.
Biomimicry is the design and production of materials, structures, and systems that are modeled on biological entities and purposes. We wanted to take this into consideration and make most of our project made out of trash and manipulate the materials that we find amongst us instead of using money. We wanted to be able to reuse plastic items to show the pollution and to be able to portray that garbage — something that everyone considers to be so ugly — can in fact be beautiful one it is manipulated in the right way.
Xi, Ray, and I each had our own inspiration and moldboards that we wanted to work with and after talking and doing lots of research, we decided to go in the complete opposite direction of what we each had originally planned and decided to take our inspiration from the ocean, movement of jellyfish, biomimicry, and mood. We wanted to show movement in our pieces and use as many recyclable products as possible to portray the amount of trash and plastic that goes into the ocean each day, killing wildlife, and polluting the earth. This is when we decided to stick with plastic bags and water bottles.
We then did the post it activity where we wrote down all of our ideas and things that we had in mind and all talked as a group to figure out what we should make for the final product.
Although at first we didn’t stick with some of the ideas that we came up with, we did stick to showing movement in our light pieces and took the inspiration from jellyfish like stated earlier.
Originally I was going to use water bottles and manipulate the figure of it by melting it with a heat gun. I wanted to be able to show movement and texture through my medium and I thought that melting it would help disfigure the shape, making it what I wanted it to be. However I realized that that wouldn’t be ideal because I for one would have to use at least 20 water bottles to get the shape of what I had wanted and time wise it was not logical. So then after thinking and brain storming with the group, I realized that plastic bags could be used to make a ruffle and wavy texture (like the one that I wanted) and I took some inspiration from the project #2 when wire was put through metal and then tightened to get the ruffle effect. I tested this out with plastic bags and it was a success!
If you look below at the pictures you can see the ruffles and the structure that I wanted for the project. I used different sized rings to make a lantern like lamp.
Materials
-chipboard
-plastic bags (ones found around my dorm and stolen from CVS)
-wire
-wood (found in making center)
-light (battery light)
I ended up using chipboard to make the rings of the light, plastic bags that I found around my dorm and stole from cvs, and reused scrap wood that I found in order to make the stand. I really tried to limit the amount of items that I bought in order to follow through with using as many recyclable products as possible. It probably could’ve looked really beautiful with other materials, but manipulating these recyclable products, we were able to make trash, look beautiful.
Process photos
Packaging
With my project being 100% collapsible (I don’t have any pictures because its in my dorm in New York and I’m home currently) you can take apart each layer of the lantern, the wooden legs, and light itself. You can fit it into a 12″ x 12″ square box with a 5″ height perfectly.
Final Product
This was the final outcome of the project. Project #3 really helped open my eyes up to using different materials and working within a group. With it being finals week, our schedules were all so different, so we had to find the time in-between to be able to work with each other and help each other along with the process. It also helped me learn to work with different aesthetics as we all had our own within the group, but being able to find that medium and make designs so each of ours are able to stand out was a really nice learning experience. Ray had to change is designs many times and each time it helped me learn to be a better critic because I learned that if you’re not blunt and honest, the outcome will honestly not be good. As Ray and I were not that close, I didn’t know if I would come across as rude by telling him my opinions and towards the end, the last night before the project was due, he had to completely change his design. With me being blunt and the both of us sharing our ideas together, it got the job done faster and we were able to work together so much more cohesively. This project was a really good learning experience and I’m glad that I was able to do it with the help of my 3 partners.
