Co-Immobility

As our project takes shape in it's physical components, it continues to give shape also to our concept. A lot of the materials and components we have been using are things we have reused and recycled; the wood used to construct the frames for our cubes was discarded and then found and salvaged by Seamus; the torches are adapted rather than built from scratch; and now we are contemplating what to cover the cubes in.

Construction of the frames for the cubes once we could finally get into the 3D lab went surprisingly smoothly and rapidly. The dimensions we chose ( 1m x 1m x 1m ) were for both practical and coneptual reasons; we only had a certain amount of wood but we also wanted a reasonably confined space so the participant inside the box felt isolated and closed off.

To covering the boxes to visually obscure both the participant and the participant's vision, we were considering originally rice paper or baking paper as it was opaque but thin enough to allow light to pass through. We began later to consider again the sustainablility issue and the idea of using instead newspaper so we are reusing something that would otherwise be discarded. The connotations also of using newspaper are also link to ideas of global communication as it is a form of media which communicates of national and international issues. It is interesting to point out also that it is not a digital form of communication.

We were uncertain whether the LEDs would generate enough light to illuminate through the newspaper so I experimented with small boxes and they seemed sufficient so long as they had enough charge. We were originally going to try run our project in a dark, isolated field but as the finished cubes proved to be very cumbersome to transport and time constraints we have decided just to do it in studio. We hoping that the it will be dark enough to show through the newspapers.

So with the cubes constructed and covered, the torches soldered, all that's left to do is to wait for it to get dark tonight so we can see how it all comes together. It will take some experimentation to see what works and what doesn't in terms of sending around the pulses of light, especially if we have participants from outside our group who are outside of the project and approach it with fresh minds. It will be interesting to see what experience they take away and visually what the effect will be - if any!