Set dressing

Once everything was done we dressed the installation and decided where the various media was going to go. We then moved the lights around until we were happy, adjusted the code accordingly, set up the LDRs....and were ready to go.

Pasting the research

I started to sort through all the research that we had ripped out and strategically pasted it around the room.

On the side of the boot machine, themes of magic, voodoo and identity.

On the side of the transmission machine, themes of space exploration, transmission and UFO

On the side of the praxinoscope themes of sea exploration and eccentricity.

Whilst I was doing this James took care of the wiring and tweaking the original code to fit our needs and Faysal dressed the dark room

Table mission

We found an old printers which was full of tables and other interesting odds and sods. The guy in there was clearing the place out and said we can have whatever we wanted. We were pretty worried we were going to be without tables but now we have more than enough.

Valiantly we guided this noble steed through the streets of Hackney.

Painting the Animation

I painted the animation, using vibrant colours which will hopefully cause a pleasant juxtaposition with the dark space. It will be unexpected and jump out at you, showing the characters charming hope of escape within this abysmal space in which he confines himself.

Dark Room

With the machines completed, we decided to build the dark room.

This involved creating a frame around the sink area which already exists in our studio. We then boarded it up in order to make it a separate room from the rest of the space. it will later be filled with various photographic equipment and the 35mm photographs of the cult dead will be hung from rope. It will also have a red light in it which will hopefully look fairly sinister, complementing the dark overtones of the photographs and, of course, follows dark room conventions.

Periscope works

The periscope idea works and has been mounted, it looks great, like you are staring down a deep tunnel with a boat at the end of it.

Back door board up

Me and Faysal boarded up the back door, it gives the space a sense of dereliction, character and looks fairly sinister. It also conveys the sense of reclusion that our character felt.

Boot Machine Mount

For the boot machine we decided to use rotary cams to lift and drop the beaters similar in the way that Michael Kontopolous has done so in the video below


Machines that Almost Fall Over from Michael Kontopoulos on Vimeo.


We have built the rotary cams at uni using the fine art departments facilities, we then used dave to weld a mount onto the motor in which a rod can be screwed. We took this to hackney and attached it all to a larger mount we previously built, and to our amazement....it works! Another success, a little too successful if you ask me....watch this space.

Binoculars x Persicope

Our initial intention to just use a set of binoculars is not going to work if we want to viewer to see the animation through the praxinoscope machine. The praxinoscope is too low, so we have decided to combine it with a periscope turned upside down.

This works in theory, but we have not actually mounted anything yet.

Animation

I took it upon myself to use the animation departments facilities that I had access to last year for the animation module. After trying to decide whether we would go for a model animation or a drawn animation we went for drawn. This was because we were unsure as to how the model animation would work when viewed through binoculars from a distance, a flat image would be easier to make out.

Me and Faysal designed a few different boats in our sketchbooks and decided on the final boat. I then took it to the animation department and drew 12 frames in the correct size for the praxinoscope. These were tested out when we got back to Hackney and worked well, they will later be mounted on stronger card and painted.