After it all....

What a weekend it has been! Lite-Brite was a great success at Nuit Blanche, and besides not having working scanners, I'd say things were pretty perfect! To view a video from the night, check it HERE. Here are some pictures from the night, and time lapse video will be posted soon!

We like to raid American Apparel every now and then...

I know this is kind of out of order, but I'm pretty sure everyone loved our shopping spree at American Apparel. What better place to get our costumes to become Lite-Brite pegs? So many colours! I didn't know what to choose, but red and green seemed to be a pretty good choice. We will be the rainbow on Saturday.


But before we could go on our shopping spree, we finished and cleaned up our Lite-Brite piece (which is now actually called BRITE LITE TECHNOLOGIES). It looks pretty sweet. I personally can't stand to look at it anymore, but that's besides the point. We made it double sided and it works out great. I broke a drill bit today... sorry dad! But other than that it's looking mighty fine.

Now I think we just have some minor details to hammer out before Thursday and BAM! The magical light is gonna get ya.

Prototype Proposal

Thursday was our first "critique" I guess you could say. We showed our prototype "Lite-Brite" to SD, KPA, DG and the class. It was great to get feedback, so now we know what to work on. I still don't know if we decided to go random on linear for our Lite-Brite design... I am almost leaning towards random, but our group is pretty split down the middle. Another thing that came up was the size... because our project is ACTUALLY giant... and we want to make it even bigger still. But we got a suggested to make it double sided, which could totally work. Again, this has to be discussed with the group. If we make it double sided, it would save a lot of work for building, and we can concentrate on refining the piece. The final piece is due Thursday so we have a fair bit of work to do before its nearly perfect. Hopefully we don't have to do too many touch-ups/fixing Thursday after class or Friday...

the TSN turning point...

I have no clue what happened today, but whatever it was, it was AMAZING. We managed to finish our 8ft Lite-Brite prototype. I got off to a slow start with the A-frames, but once Nathan came to help, we were finished in minutes. Our structure is actually pretty stable. Now that we have this prototype built, it is much easier to see what we need to improve on or add. I will probably be adding support beams at the bottom of the A-Frames so that we can put sandbags on top for extra support. We have a few dead spots in the board due to back supports, but that should be fixed by drilling holes down the support beams. Dave Green came to look at what we had today and seemed to like it. He had a few suggestions, so hopefully with the time we have, we can apply some of them!

stressed? nahh...

ALRIGHT. So today, we came up with even more designs, fiddled with some new ideas, and basically ended up doing what we were going to do in the first place. Basically, we are building a giant easel for this lattice, and resting it on the easel structure. We tried to go cheap and light, but with the time we have, we don't know what to come up with! So we are going with our original plan of using 2 x 4. My dad (who is AMAZING) came from Stoney Creek to help us out. We were able to figure out a way to construct this easel so that we can take it apart no problem. The final easel will be 4ft wide x 5ft tall (roughly) so that transporting will be easy. We will have A-frames as the side supports, a cross bar at the top, 2 inside ledges for a shelf (hello fluorescent!) and cross pieces on the sides of the A-frames for added support. This all means nothing without a diagram:


Jenna finished backing the lattice with tracing paper so it will diffuse the light. That definitely took longer than expected.

So tomorrow we build. I know I said that... 2 days ago? But this is for real. SERIOUSLY. We have everything we need... no excuses.

Lite-Brite, Lite-Brite, Turn on the magical shining light!

Today was all over the place--I suppose a rough list will be the easiest way to document what happened.

We all met at around 11am in the alley behind IMA to get our graffiti skills on, and by graffiti, I mean spray painting lattice. Goodbye white, hello black.

When the spray painting was completed, Jenna, Carly, Ashley, Priscilla and Danny worked on cutting the acetate paper. The acetate paper will be the lite-brite "pegs" and placed in the holes of the lattice.



While that was happening in Image Arts, Nathan and I headed over to Home Depot to assess the wood situation. Our plan was to buy it all, but that never happened, probably a good thing though. While we were in the wood aisle, we were pondering ways of building this frame. Our initial idea is perfect, except for the fact that we have to transport it and take it apart. Not going to happen. Luckily, Johnny, a random contractor saw that we looked confused and asked us if we needed help. I'm glad we accepted his offer, he gave us some good advice on what materials to use and we even came up with a new design that will probably save us money! And it is transportable! Woo!


Tomorrow, we build!

Initial Proposal

Today we had our initial proposal for "Lite-Brite".

Our ORIGINAL concept:

* Button holders and non-botton holders will be given a cellophane circle and they can place the circle over a hole in the "Lite Brite" board where ever they please.

* Depending on where people have been, will determine the colour of cellophane

* If they do not have a button that will also be a determining factor of the colour of cellophane that they are given.

* There will be 1200 holes in the board that will be 6' high by 10' long.

* The cellophane will have a black bristle board border around it and there will be pieces of velcro on the border.

* On the board around each hole there will be velcro.

* Flood lights will be behind the board to create the "Lite Brite" effect.

* The art is a collective piece that button holders and non-button holders will be a part of.

* The idea is to have a community art piece at the end where people were a part of, as well as having a data visualization of where people have been, who had buttons and how many people ended up coming to our spot.

----------------------------------------------------------

After today's discussion we came up with a more REFINED idea:

* Lite-Brite board will be made of vinyl lattice, approximately 8ft tall by 12ft wide

* Back-lit by fluorescent lights, reflected off tin-foil for maximum brightness

* Coloured cellophane will be placed on the Lite-Brite board, colours corresponding to the colours on the participant's button

* Coloured cellophane will be placed in a linear fashion, left to right, top to bottom, creating a "map" or data visualization of how people arrived
(e.g.) the first few rows may have the same colour if people arriving to the piece do not have a button, as time goes on, more colours will appear because hopefully people with buttons will arrive at the piece

----------------------------------------------------------

Materials:

-Vinyl Lattice (4 x 8)
-Cellophane
-Tin foil
-Fluorescent lights (6 approximately)
-2x4 planks of wood as a support frame
-4 pieces 8ft tall
-4 pieces 12ft tall
-4 pieces 1ft tall
-Tape (for sticking the cellophane)

----------------------------------------------------------

Possible Problems:

What happens when the board gets filled?
-participants can take cellophane off
-we can clear the board

I drew a diagram for an idea of how we can construct this piece (click for larger image):

We have less than a week to construct this for our second presentation. We have seemed to troubleshoot a lot of our problems already, so hopefully the rest goes smoothly!