Exercise #2 – A Hundred LIT

A HUNDRED LIT

A Hundred Lit is a site-specific installation featuring 130 sparklers lined up along the edges of a flight of stairs. Arranged in a crisscrossed fashion, the flame from one sparkler is transferred to the next, allowing the spark to travel from one end to the other.

By Joan & Tiffany

Initial Ideas

1. Googly eyes
Pasting googly eyes of different sizes onto different objects within a room, to give life to inanimate objects and suggest relationships between nearby objects.

2. Teabags
100 teabags hung onto a rack, where users can pull them down individually and place into their cups. Or, to diffuse 100 teabags into a large tank of hot water to observe the diffusion process.

3. Sparklers
a) A bundle of 100 sparklers wrapped up as a gift, then light it in an open space and see what happens!

b) Line up a relay of 100 sparklers along the outline of the platforms in the sunken plaza. Film the burning process at night from the window at level 2 to see the moving outline drawing the shape of the platforms.

Problem: it was too windy at the Sunken Plaza, it was very difficult to light up the sparklers and there was a high chance of them being blown out by the wind.

Process

From our first testing of sparklers, we found that as long as there was a point of contact between two sparklers, one would light the other (they have chemistry) and sparks would fly… resulting in 2-6 mini sparks burning in different directions.

Since we needed bases to support our sparklers, we decided to use styrofoam pieces of 5x5cm rectangular bases.

Location choice: Instead of seting up our sparklers at the Sunken Plaza, we chose the stairway behind the ADM carpark instead as we found the added height would make a more interesting composition.

One challenge we faced was ensuring that each sparkler had the right amount of tension and were firmly connected with one another.

 

SLOW BURN

The burning process took a very long time, and the relay of sparks got cut off several times when the spark failed to transfer.

Overall, it was very fulfilling experience as we managed to burn all 130 sparklers, although the whole process took about 2.5 hours.

 

Leave a Reply