Abstract Screen

37”x30”x5”

Plywood

At the onset of this project, I had envisioned an abstract creation, which combined a technological medium to accent or define the physical wood sculpture. As it turns out, there are multiple ways to achieve this desire. This wall hanging piece was originally intended to utilize LED lighting and remote control technology to interface with a mobile device in order to be adaptive and reactive to it’s environment. The light would define the piece as it interacted with the individual shapes in the work and as it pulsated, flashed, moved, or changed. While this was the original intent, I am extremely satisfied that I altered my plans. The piece is now painted white and has different layering than originally planned. However, I think it turned out better this way than it would have had I tried the LEDs. This piece stands on its own without the lights and was altered to not extend to the necessary depth that the LEDs would have required which would have been overbearing. I still wanted to have some element of technology interact with the piece and decided that Projection Mapping was a strong solution for this desire. It also lent well to the depth alterations I made. In addition, the process of adding in the technology was rather simple. The piece still achieves the interactivity and desired outcome of the LED plan, but, through a different medium. The intent of this piece was to display my knowledge and skill of working with the physical medium in addition to my understanding of how technology and new media could interact with the abstract three-dimensional design that I created. I used this project as an opportunity to take my creativity to the next level in an exploration of this interaction. I knew that I could probably come up with a cool sculpture, but I wanted to challenge myself and the traditional understanding of this project. That decision was based on the explanation of the project along with my classmate’s presentation of their plans/interpretation along with what I had seen this project turn out to be in displays from past classes. There is a level of freedom that I recognized present within the studio and class and I wanted to run with that freedom to use my resources to the best of my ability while breathing in my own inspiration to create this new interaction of mediums.

This piece is constructed of individual plywood pieces which have been glued together in various thicknesses ranging from .5”-1.5”. These pieces are arranged in a three-dimensional layered composition where each piece interacts with other pieces, negative space, and shadows within and around the sculpture. There are 8 dowel rods used in the piece to connect different parts of the sculpture and to further the interaction of negative space. The pieces are connected using wood glue and dowel rod pegs depending on the depth and space.

To begin this project, I began researching wall hanging sculptures. This piece was inspired by a glass wall hanging piece I found. I decided that I could add depth to the piece by implementing multiple surface layers that interacted with each other. I began the sketching and derived the form seen in the final piece. I then vectored the sketch and assigned realistic measurements to each piece relating to the scale of the sketch. At this point, I had a hard time deciding where to go with the next step. I could see the piece in my mind in a three dimensional way but couldn’t figure out how to plan to connect the different pieces on different depths. So, I assigned each piece a letter identification and gave each lettered piece a thickness. I cut each piece and its corresponding layer pieces. I then glued the pieces together and sanded them. During this process of constructing the individual pieces, I began to construct the sculpture in Autodesk Maya, a three-dimensional modeling software. This process helped me to understand how I would utilize the measurements that I had created to attach the pieces in a layered way to achieve the three-dimensionality with negative space and depth. In Maya, I constructed the sculpture based on the sketch I had drawn and how I imagined the piece to be in my mind. This gave me an opportunity to test different surfaces and to really interact with the idea before actually physically constructing the piece. I really didn’t change much in terms of composition in Maya, but, I did end up deleting a piece of the sculpture that I thought was insignificant to the overall composition and would just add unnecessary weight to the physical piece. After working in Maya, I exported wireframe views of the sculpture from different perspectives and then created to-scale blueprints in order to help me assemble the piece. Throughout this process, I utilized my computer to interact with Maya to help me visualize the three-dimensional piece while assembling the individual layers. I used my iPad to reference the notes that I had made on my sketch relating the lettering of the individual elements. And, I used the blueprints to assist with measurements and layout. This really simplified the process of construction, which really came down to measuring accurately for the placement of the dowel rods and trying to be neat with using wood glue to adhere the pieces.

I’m very happy with the overall outcome of the piece. I know that I accomplished ultimately what I set out to do even if I utilized a different process and medium to do so. In looking at my piece I recognize a complexity that is what I sought to achieve in terms of physical construction and connection of different elements. There’s one part of the sculpture that seems a slight bit off to me. That would be the circle with the dowel rods connecting it on the bottom. This circle is also connected to another piece with a rectangle. In gluing and clamping the piece with the rectangle, the circle was skewed in reference to its proximity to the other piece and now seems a little crooked. In addition, there are a couple places where I could have done a better job at creating parallel or perpendicular lines with relation to the different individual pieces that make the whole. However, the whole really turned out to be greater than the sum of it’s parts in this piece. This is especially true when viewing the piece complete with a video projection. Knowing what I do now about using Maya to help mediate between concept and completion, I would use that sooner that I did for this project rather than the awkward time period I had with this project where I just wasn’t sure what to do. Some things I plan to try with this project are projecting multiple videos on the piece, which would be separated by individual surfaces. This would be a true test of the sculpture’s ability to stand on its own without the unification of the same video being displayed on the entire surface. I want to see what video content interacts with the sculpture the best as well, whether it be abstract videos, geometrical or more organic forms. I’d also like to experiment a bit more with Maya and creating a motion graphic to help display and explain what the piece is. I can create a camera in Maya and alter the perspective of the piece. I can also do a bit of projection mapping in Maya depending upon how I style and configure the surfaces in the rendering. One other thing I would change if I were going to do it again would be to create a nicer stand for the piece instead of the scraps that I threw together to hold the piece for display in class since I couldn’t connect it to a wall.