Project 05: The Archway

Concept:

For this project, I chose imagery relating to the shape of the archway in addition to natural archways found in the real world. I also incorporated my poetry and instrumental music by Sleeping at Last. Below is the title/subject of each piece, its description, and finished piece.

1. Their Sunset; Our Sunrise

This is a poem I wrote in high school. It’s based on the structure of the poem “Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost. The arched shape of a sun set/sun rise inspired the use of this poem for my concept. The music playing in the background is “Saturn” by Sleeping at Last.

Transcript:

“They say today our sun will set; we say it will rise,

From our past full of regret, we hold onto, we shall not fret, if we just let go our cries.

We think we know enough of love to know that we’ll surprise,

And today above their setting sun, our sun will surely rise.”

2. Glacial Arch Collapse

For this piece, the archway shape reminded me of the glacial arches found near the earth’s poles. The collapse of the ice archway is a reminder of the effect of global warming (whether natural or enhanced by humans). The music playing in the background is “Arctic” by Sleeping at Last.

3. Ocean Arch Aquarium

For this piece, I planned to turn the ocean archway into a sort of aquarium and slowly fill it up from top to bottom with trash to bring awareness to the impact consumerism has on the environment. However, due to falling short on time, I was only able to get the aquarium into the background. The music playing in the background is “Pacific” by Sleeping at Last.

4. Space Arch Portal

For this piece, I wanted to turn the archway into a gateway portal to the celestial heavens above. The archway shape reminded me of the arch of a “shooting star” that enters our atmosphere during a meteor shower. The music playing in the background is “Moon” by Sleeping at Last.

Process:

The archway sculpture was modeled in Autodesk Maya, laid out in the Pepakura software, and prepared for laser cutting in Rhino. After the archway was laser cut, assembled, and placed in the studio classroom, I helped tape the edges of the geometry on the archway while my classmates calibrated the model in MadMapper. Lines were created and two masks (one for each projector). Next, I gathered free stock video footage relevant to my concepts, imported the media into Modul8 on both sides of the archway (flipped the image, set my presets in MadMapper, hooked up the Arturo Beatstep midi controller, and mapped midi controls to Modul8 and MadMapper.