Reflective light projection

I wonder if the title depicts what I actually mean by it. Well images are always useful in these circumstances. I’ve been to the art shop recently and, as mentioned in a recent previous post, I decided to pursue the idea of using reflections. I found some reflective sheets of card (quite large A1 size) and had one placed on a box in my room lying flat but parallel to the wall. The light in my room was hitting off of the sheet and this was bounced/reflected on to the wall where it was casting some oddly shaped lines.

I then placed a cut-out pattern directly on to the reflective card – that was a good move. The card was slightly curved and as a result the light and pattern was also curved in its projective state on the wall.

Light reflected from card on to wall

I moved the sheet slightly higher and deepened the curve and the results changed too:

Twisted projection of pattern with reflected light

I was pleased to see how the small changes in the curves and placement of the card could create many variations of patterned shapes. This led to another few sample work ideas for installation pieces. These would probably be stand alone pieces as part of the wider range of work presented.

I then pulled some of the above photos in to Photoshop and experimented with colouring and was able to produce a hightened contrast by darkening the images and layering and rotating them. The light stands out better here and looks like a hologram or a laser display:

Digitally manipulated image from reflective light series

General Update on activities:
I have also been able to find some 3D geometric template sheets online to cut out and assemble. These are small and tricky to stick together but I managed to get them to hold for a few seconds while I took a couple of images. The really hard part will be figuring out how to apply a pattern to these shapes that has a similar underlying grid to the shapes they are made up from. For example for a dodecahedron there will need to be a construction with a pentagon tiling and for the icosahedron an equilateral triangle.

Flat template of for making a dodecahedron - printed from http://www.mathsisfun.com/geometry/dodecahedron-model.html

Dodecahedron

An icosahedron prior to assembly - printed from http://www.mathsisfun.com/geometry/icosahedron-model.html

Icosahedron - just before it fell apart

I may need to create a large-scale pattern on a large flat sheet first and then outline the template to cut out from this with correct placement and hope it sticks together right. In practice I will probably get it all wrong – still, no harm in trying.

Pattern-making workshop
I’ve joint a 10-week workshop where we are creating traditional Islamic patterns being taught by Richard Henry. He teaches with Birkbeck as well as with schools and also creates artwork himself. He was also taught by Keith Critchlow so I think we’re in good hands!

Richard’s worksheets are very easy to follow and start from basic circle formations to developing full pattern constructions. Some of the patterns are similar to those I’ve done already but Richard’s approach to constructing them seem easier and sometimes more practical. I wanted to take the class to see how things could be done perhaps with short-cuts or to make some of the stages quicker with ‘best-practice’. Many a handy tips have been passed on already. It has also affirmed some of the general things I’ve picked up about pattern-making and the things I need to be aware of (for example I thought it was just me when my compass would slightly alter itself). All in all I’m really enjoying it.

To have a look at some of Richard Henry’s work visit his web site: http://www.richardhenry.info/

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Patterning

I’m really disappointed because I’ve realised that I won’t be able to get my proto-type finished in time for my mid-point review. I think it would have received a really good reaction from my peers.

But I don’t even have time to dwell on it and have cracked on with things so that I have something half decent to show.

The point of the mid-point review is for my peers and tutor to see where I am so far and as this is taking the form of a group crit (much like the one the full-timers had last month – see earlier post) it means that they need to try and understand what I present to them without me having to explain anything. But even if they completely misunderstand it help me development and amend where I’m going with the work so that I can head it in the right direction from then on.

As I’ve been exploring the traditional methods for producing Islamic geometric patterns (which is a new practice to me) I am quite proud of where I’ve got to so far – but will anyone else seeing it for the first time appreciate the result of my hard work? Also, would they need to have an interest in this area in the first place to then appreciate this type of art?

What will be most annoying is that these examples I will show are just on paper/card. And I wanted something digital and interactive at this stage. Honestly, it would have been way ahead of the game for me to have something ready at this point of the course that was a working prototype of an interactive work but it would have been cool because at least the rest of the students would understand where I was going with this. Anyway, I have faith that they will ‘think/look outside the box’, so to speak, in regards to my work – whether they like it or not.

In the above gallery are images of the stages I went through to get to the last piece which is a large hexagon broken down into further hexagons, triangles and circles to produce a geometric pattern.

You will notice that I go back and forth with the first grid designs and this is because I did soo many sheets, and at some stage or another I would realise that I had made a mistake and would need to start over. The grids or patterns wouldn’t look wrong and wouldn’t necessarily be wrong in themselves but I was trying to follow a particular strategy as laid out in an example from Daud Sutton’s book ‘Islamic Design: A Genius for Geometry’. I wanted to follow this to a ‘T’ up to a certain stage. So until I got to that stage – if everything wasn’t exactly like he’d shown then it would be wrong.

After producing the ‘grid’ and formations of hexagons within circles I then photocopied the sheets so that I could develop the patterns within the grid further. This was the stage where I would finish copying the book and start my own additions in patterns. If I ruined these photocopies I would still have the original larger grid to go back to. After deciding on the main hexagons (one large and one small) to break down further I then inked the designs on to another photocopy. I then photocopied this (yeh I know – there are trees out there waiting for revenge) so that I could cut out the main shapes within these bigger shapes. The handy thing about the cut-out template is that I can then put the shapes together on a large plain sheet of paper which has no grid and the hexagons fit together as they are already proportioned correctly, the grid would therefore be invisible.

I like the effect of light coming through these cut-outs. This is why I would love to experiment with light and how it could be used in an interactive way at some stage of my project.

This is where I moved on to the large A3 black card and started drawing out the very large hexagon made up of smaller hexagons and filled these in with the designs from the templates I had cut. Then after filling in all the parts I was left with the final design (below) which I am quite happy with – it looks much better in reality as the pencil shimmers with light and is a great contrast to the black card.

Tonight I plan to turn this in to another template and have further uses for it – so watch this space 🙂