lumin ortis footage

This is an edited piece of some of our work that took place on the night of the festival,

Evaluation

Professional Project Evaluation

To give us real world experience the professional project was assigned. It gave us as a group and as an individual the whole production process that would be needed for the real life situations that will occur after the completion of further education. The process would conclude being assigned the work, interacting with clients, pitching ideas, preparing budgets, group meetings, the actual full body of work and then exhibiting our pieces. Our clients were the ‘Lumin Ortis’. A group of third year events managements students that had the task to create a light festival situated in the Bournemouth Gardens. The specific brief for this was to create instillations that would take place in the open public space of Bournemouth’s Central Gardens, transforming the gardens into a spectacle of light. With illuminations and projections showcasing the talents of both loacal artists and upcoming artists from the Arts University College at Bournemouth. Engaging in the themes of light, the unique history and setting of the gardens with a green conscience.

As a group we first went down to the gardens to see what part of the landscape we preferred and where we thought people would be most engaged in, see what we could work with and could use to our advantage. As a group we chose a ‘wonderland’ theme that would fit perfectly with the gardens, all producing our own parts we could combine them to showcase our talents as one piece.

My idea was to create a troop of mushrooms, the fungus that is in every woodland but non-appreciated would become a large spectacle of light. I sketched out designs and figured out how I would actually produce the sculptures so that practically it worked and got an idea of what it would like and the easiest way to integrate lights into the sculptures. I needed something sustainable that wouldn’t buckle, I used chicken wire to make the shell of the sculptures and wrapped them in plaster of paris to complete the pieces. Difficulty first came when I had to apply the lights to the smaller models. I used small parasol lights that were powered by a small battery pack containing aaa batterys. There were 20 lights on the length of wire and then by making the cap of the mushrooms hollow I had to push everything inside and singly skewering the holes around the base of the caps I pushed each light separately through. The hole was very small in the bottom making it difficult for my hand to maneuver around. The inside was also filled with sharp wire that was cut to create the hole. Then pushing the lights through the sheets of plastic that were plastered over made it even more difficult. This become very frustrating and the lights were sometimes damaged through the process and needed soldering back afterwards to get them working again.

I also made a large scaled mushroom that was around two and a half feet in height. I had to make a base that would sustain the top without toppling, using the same technique with wire and plaster I made it very sturdy. Difficulty came with making the cap as it would keep dropping with the weight of the wire. I had to slowly apply the plaster day by day and let it dry so that the weight of the wet plaster wouldn’t completely flatten it out. It didn’t come out the way I previously planned but the quirky look that the plaster gave it definitely gave it an interesting look. Once the main part of the modelling was completed I used acrylic paints finish off the look of modelling. The next stage was installing the lights, my first idea was to cut hole in the top and use reflective card and make them into cone shapes that would slot into the holes so the light could be slotted down into them and producing a better effect from small amounts of light that would be produced by the LED’s. I then came up with the idea as I accidentally dropped the click on lights into a cup and found it hard to get it out as the cup was such a perfectly tight fit and then realised that this would be perfect to slot my lights into. I then purchased coloured tumbler cups and measured the diameter and cut the wholes into the cap of the mushroom. The result was perfect and they came out just as planned.

On the day of the exhibition we set everything up around midday and become an enjoyable experience, the events management were very welcoming and helpful. It was only last minute though that we had been told that our space had changed and that we had been moved to a completely different part of the part which meant that we were placed on a hilly part, this did cause complications for installing the mushrooms as the previous plan was they were going on flat ground and something sturdy but this meant I had to dig into the earth to give enough stability for it to actually stand up. This did eventually work but this meant it made the height of the mushroom a lot smaller because about a third of it was actually in the ground. As for the rest of the piece, we were now provided to fill a lot more space than previously intended so we had to spread the light instillation further than expected which lead to it looking a lot less effective than it would have in the smaller patch.

Overall the professional project was a successful outcome and my experience with working in a professional environment has gave me a great confidence boost that will be carried throughout my future work.

production

I used garden wire to make the base of the mushrooms. Chicken wire was to rigid and didn’t give the free motion that i wanted so I opted for this. I wrapped the wire around cylinder options like bottles so that it came of like a spring. keeping the centre at that width i made one end small and the other larger so that i had a base and tip for the mushroom cap to sit on. I wanted it to slant and this was naturally achieved by i couldn’t make the wire the same length equally so it just naturally made it bend one way.

After the process of making the base out of wire i then added the plaster of paris to it. I had to do it one half at a time and allow it to dry. once one coat was done it was easy to keep applying over the top to give it a certain sturdy thickness.

Once the plaster was dry i applied acrylic paint. The acrylic seemed to be better than using spray paint, I have learnt this from previous projects.

i also painted white spots on to give it the cartoon magic mushroom look. I done this because of the vibrant colours that the acrylic gave off. You can also see here the the cap of the mushroom is placed over the base. I’m glad it managed to stay up.

I cut holes in the bottom of the mushrooms so that they could just slip onto the base and also because the cap was hollow it was able to hold the batteries and lights within and would be very easy to change over if the batteries ran out. You can see me here trying to push seperate led lights through holes in the sides. I used a wooden skewer to push holes through the plaster and with a lot of time and frustration i pushed each individual light through the holes and superglued them into place. Some of the lights weren’t working by the end but Damien managed to find the problem and solder them back togther for me.

As you can see in the birds-eye picture above there are a few lights that didn’t decide to work, but from the gist of things it was looking good and i was pleased with the results. Would have been good if they lasted for more than 20 minutes at a time.

This is the first layer of plaster going over the top part of the large mushroom. There was a lot of excess hanging off the edges but once dried they were just easily bent underneath and when the plaster was then applied to the bottom it was just stuck down. i had to apply a lot of thick layers to this so that when it rested on the base it didnt just push trhough and buckle the top.

From hanging out of my bathroom window i took this picture to show a higher angle of the finished plastering. it was drying here and i just wanted to paint it. I applied around 5 layers of plaster to both base and cap, this meant alot drying was needed before any paint could be applied.

Here is most of the top painted red. I wish i had a larger brush but beacuse of the texture of the plaster i needed a fine brush to push the bristles through the holes otherewise there would have still been a lot of white showing.

Finished and ready for some lights to be added.

i measuered out the diameter of the tumblers and cut holes in the top of the cap to insert them. I didn’t want to do to many otherwise the frame would have buckled upwards when the base went inside. I used the wire cutters becuase there was a lot of wire, it become a bit tricky.

I painted the inside of the cups white so that you couldn’t see inside, this picturesa bit dark to really tell but it didn’t look to good when you could see all the wire and excess plaster hanging about through the cups. i also painted white rings around the edges so they looked like the white spots on the magic mushrooms.

This is the final outcome. I was pleased with what i had achieved. With more money i would have liked to produced more but am very happy with the outcome of the instillation.