FINAL MODEL 004_Experiential Kinaesthetic Installations

whanacle

Here’s our creature, a whanacle! It’s a mix of a whale and a barnacle. We took the whales 2 key senses of sound and touch, as well as a barnacle’s sense of touch and emulated those 2 senses in our installation!

Here’s the space of our installation! Going through our installation was basically like getting eaten by a Whanacle (you enter through the legs)!

Basically, for the touch aspect, we cut up white trash bags into floor length legs and draped them across like a curtain. And put up many rows of it.

We had a fan on the lowest setting blowing the trash bags gently, to mimic the motion of the barnacles legs and to show the small motion it makes! It also made a very nice swishing sound (sounded like rain) so… yay! plus points!

Also, we deliberately used white trash bag as opposed to clear trash bags because we did not like the crinkly material clear trash bags are made of. We wanted a more flowy material.

We made the trash bags so long and so dense so that one would feel trapped when they enter our Whanacle! You are after all getting eaten 🙂

Also, for touch, after consulting Cheryl, we considered using tactile materials on the pipes itself. After narrowing it down, we decided to use slime!!! To wrap it around the pipes. It came out really well as it was very rubbery, wet and cold!

After draping it around the mouths of the tubes, we saw the dripping effect it had and were fascinated by it! Hence, we started draping slime all over the pipes just for that added visual effect! Also, since you enter the Whanacle through the legs, then it would mean that this is its stomach and that explains all the icky saliva goo HAHA

For the sound aspect, we used washing machine tubes and intertwined them around! When one speaks into it, the other person is supposed to find where exactly (the pipe that) the sound is coming out from. And that shows echolocation! Which is what whales used to communicate.

Also, we chose corrugated pipes so that it could be stretched and compressed, and that also gives out a different sound!

We placed the pipes very deliberately and it was not ‘anyhow-ed’. We made sure that no two pipes were pointing in the same plane, and also that all the spaces are balanced out (that not one place would be too cluttered, the other too empty).

The tubes also mirrored the very graceful motion of whales! There’s this very sine curve look to the motion of whales, and we sought to emulate it in our structure. So our final product is made out of many whale motions!

In addition, initially we wanted our whole installation to be carried out in the dark. When we got our friends to walk through our installation, they mentioned that they were afraid they would get lost in the hanging legs!! So we improvised and added balloon lights wrapped with slime (to make it less bright, and for touch!!) around the floor to light up the way a little.

Also, while we wanted to add balloon lights into the mouth of the pipes to light up the mouthpieces (to show users where to speak into), we felt that the light was too bright, and would light up the entire space which was not what we wanted.

Hence, we improvised yet again by placing the balloon lights on the floor and had the slime drip unto it!