We see people viewing the installation through a slot (which keeps the space as dark as possible, but also heightens that feeling of 'another world'). Nicole wanted to use a free standing perspex panel with a square slot in it that we found in the studio so we've put that under the 'front wall' and will cut a slot later.
Katie showed us her flour and water and shredded paper coral, which is below both unlit and lit by a fibre optic toy in the enclosure:
What I noted from this is that drying time is huge - Katie wasn't keen on my idea of drying in a low temperature oven and they are quite weighty forms even when this small - and this small they aren't the right scale for the enclosure. Clearly they will support glow sticks and fibre optic toys for lighting.
We were surprised to find that our experiments with highly watered down PVA glue and shredded paper in more loose seaweedy forms worked very well forming attractive rigid shapes. Katie will keep working on coral forms over the break.
Nicole had found some glow paint which we tried on the umbrella. Glow paint is transparent so it doesn't change the colour of the object, but - once expsed to 3-4 hours of strong light - with fluorese green in the dark. Nicole did a test paint on part of the unbrella but it didn't absorb sufficent energy to glow by the end of the studio. I think this idea will work briliantly, but it's clear she needs more paint, several coats and strong light. Nicole also put a first coat of white paint on the cane supports we found in the studio that we want as the cental long tentacles for the big jellyfish (clearly they need a few more). Katie thinks these cane tentacles will look fantastic if they are coated in glow paint too.
I brought in what is called peeled foam. It's a very thin sheet of foam used to protect the surfaces of large goods when they are packed. Katie was keen that I use this for tentacles on the jelly fish rather than newspaper. It has to be said that it has a lovely shine and tears into much longer softer strips which move in an undulating fashion.
Over the break I've used glass paint - red, blue and purple - to paint the parts for another 9 jellyfish. I'll finish construction in studio time.
I've also created a 1 minute 40 second sea scape soundtrack using an 8 second recording of a truck starting up (from autospeak.com) that I've sampled and manipulated in Audacity. I had been thinking about using souns that we made to represent our impression of the deep sea, but I decide dit was more in keeping with the threme to use an unnatural sound and convert it into something that gave the impression fo the sea
I've created a little film below (which also features our new enclosure) to showcase the soundtrack:
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