Based on our Whanacle, Tisya and I came up with some concepts that we thought would fit well in representing the key senses and range of motion.
These are just some of the ideas we had:

Some considerations:

– Maybe just user’s head in the installation
– Must be in a dark space
– Installation is “upside-down”
– Could vary height of panels and legs
– Installation shows growth of a Whanacle from a baby to an adult (e.g from vision to no vision) in a tunnel like space

ECHO IN A VISUAL FORM?

– Ripples
– Sense of depth
– Literal wavelengths

ECHOLOCATION COULD BE CREATED USING:

– Material: dampening of surfaces in a maze-like space
– Depth: tunnel

BLOWHOLE + LEGS

– Fan with plastic bag strips?
– Fan blade dampening/ enhancing?
– Multiple installations “echoing” one after another
– Modular microfibre sponge (sound dampener) & metal (sound conductor) on walls with microfibre mats (corridor along 4D room)


We then narrowed it down to 4 ideas that we wanted to prototype:
01 – Fan + cup/cone + aluminium foil/ metal sheet (to increase the volume of sound as metallic surfaces conducts sound) + strips of paper/plastic/ thread
02 – Wire automata moving ripple + legs (attached to the ripples)
03 – Panel of microfibre sponges + aluminium foil/ metal sheet
04 – Using tubes as “echolocation” devices (users speak into the tube, the tube will tell them how near or far the space is?)


On a side note, we felt that this microfibre sponge really looked like what we imagine barnacle legs to look like! The texture is really soft and pretty addictive to touch. Initially, we thought that this could be a potential material for us to cover the floor with, so that our audience can feel like they are walking/crawling on Whanacle legs!
Something to consider, but for now, back to our ideas.


01 – BLOWHOLE + LEGS = FAN + PLASTIC STRIPS

How we imagined this to work, in an ideal situation, was that the plastic legs will shoot out from the cone when the fan is switched on so that it will mimic the action of the blowhole shooting the legs out of the Whanacle.
Sadly, this was how it really worked.

The legs just spun along with the fan blades and could barely be felt because they were whizzing past too quickly. Should we choose to work on this idea, we could possibly better direct the wind by choosing a narrower cone that completely covers the blades and perhaps some parts of the legs, so that when the wind blows, the legs will shoot outward. We will also consider how sky dancers function since the effect that we wish to create is rather similar.


04 – USING TUBES AS ECHOLOCATION DEVICES + LEGS

Echolocation = washing machine tubes
Barnacle legs = fluffy yarn
Whale tail motion = overall dynamism of structure
Barnacle leg motion = human contact with the tube when pulled

This mini sculpture we did is what we envision our model to look like. The more prominent wires represent the tubes, which start and end at different points so that the voice travels to different parts of the space, and not just vertically. The overall structure is supposed to represent the motion of the whale’s tail, while the barnacle leg motion is represented by the recurring motion of the hanging “legs” on the suspended tubes.

Here’s us trying out the tubes and forming them into shapes. Initially 2 tubes looked like quite a lot (from another angle), but… from the front view it actually does not look like that much. So for our final model, we realised we do need a lot of tubes!

 

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