Interactive spaces: Light and Darkness Ver.1 – Analog

after the previous process, process 3

Thanks to Tiffany and Joan for the awesome snippets that were used as the featured image as well as in the videos, and helping with lighting up all the candles + documentations.

Also Thanks to Bao, Fabian and Suhwee for helping me to place all the candles onto the candle platform.

I’ve seen the actual project with real candles in the dark room the first time as the class saw it.

Light & Darkness was created to give a sense of alternative space within an ordinary space, in this project, I wanted to create a space so that the audience will forget that they were in the IM room, the room was build with pure darkness and stability in mind as nothing should collapse as I wanted to hang the candles platform instead of building a table-like structure to give a sense that all the candles were floating in space(which is also the reason why everything, including the candles platform was black), this worked really well as the candle platform would swing gently which increased the magical feeling to my space, Also, all of this will be enhanced in the digital version as I would add a series of stars(LED, not projection) to the room’s wall to increase the feeling of enchantment. The smell of the candles, as well the burnt smell created when extinguishing the candles worked much better than I expected, as I wanted to have smell that is not too overpowering, I’ve used 239 unscented candles with 60 scented candles, this combination worked like a wonder because there is only a faint smell outside of the dark room. another point that worked better than I expected was the random placement of the scented candles created a colourful candle array when they were all lighted up and this increased the overall aesthetic of this project’s analog version greatly.

After this analog version, I’ve noticed a few points to take note of, it is actually quite hard to light up all the candles so more lighters will be needed and the current lighter that I was using appears to be rather difficult to be used, so I’ll probably buy some more lighter which is much easier to be operated and uses lesser strength. Also, I would have to paint the metal wires that was used to hang the candles platform into matt black as the metallic would reduce the magical floating aspect of this project.

 

Interactive spaces: Light and Darkness Process 2

carry on from the last post, Process 1

I started building my dark room in the corner of IM room.

After the structure is stable, I continued to attempt to secure the walls of the room onto the structure.

Ive spray mount and tape it at the back on the floor before mounting the side wall as it is SOOOO much easier and nicer to do so!

 

Afterward, I tied the structural loop which my candle stairs will be attached to it later, it was tied to make sure nothing collapse again.

after I confirmed that the structure and overall look of the dark room, I proceed to build the roof of it, which is the most difficult piece to be build as it is really prone to collapsing and I did not want the structure to be seen inside, What i want to achieve was to have all structures outside of the dark room so it will feel legit like a room when you are in it.

I really like the overall appearance of it for now!

Interactive spaces: Light and Darkness Process 1

To build the stairs for the candle, I’ve estimated the size of it to be 180cm long and each step should be 5cm wide as the candle is 38mm, so having some tolerance for me to drill holes to place the candle into each hole would be really good to prevent the candle from falling off the stairs. I’ve not decided the total number of steps but since they sell 9mm thick plywood in the size of 2400 by 1200, I could possibly get 22 planks of 1800 by 50mm strip of plywood when I give some cutting tolerance to it.

After calculation and calling around to find the cheapest plywood supplier that does cutting service at the cheapest rate, I found Ban Heng Long at  Syed Alwi Road which the plywood is $20 and each cut is 50 cents.

After buying the wood, I measured and marked out the wood for drilling later.

100X speed and a total of 297 holes were drilled.

Sand sand sand at 100X speed
Sanding is so important for the finishing quality

after sanding the 9 planks of 297 holes in total.

Gluing in 100X speed

after gluing done and excess glue cleaned up.

securing the frame at 300X speed

After that, I’ve purchase a 30m cardboard roll to build the dark room for my candles as I would really like to give a feeling of a customized space which one wont feel like in the same space when we are in the one I created, which actually is another space within what we are always used to, the IM room.

Painting the 8 piece of cardboard roll with waterbased wall paint at 300X speed. the paint is rather expensive so only 2 piece were fully painted in black while the 6 rest were only somewhat black.

After dying, I brought the cardboard pieces up and decided a place to build my dark room… And I’ve decided to use the space that lesser people used in IM room which is the corner with lockers, however I have do do quite a bit of packing up and shifting of the tables to make space.

And finally, end of 1st process post.

 

Interactive spaces: Light and Darkness Process 3

carry on from the previous post, Process 2

this is the completion of the dark room and to add ventilation to it as i assume it will be really hot and there might be fire hazard if the hot air or smoke is not being ventilated out of IM room.

 

lastly, i realised that the air flow wasn’t that good so i detached a ventilation fan from my house and attached it onto the dark room.

And the dark room was done!!!

next post will be the final post for the Analog submission for this project.

Exercise 2, 100 boots: mOFOs – The story of Many Ofos. (Lay Valerie + Tan Siew Hua + Bao Song Yu + Ong Zi Feng)

 

Bike sharing had been in Singapore for almost a year and it is rather successful (transportation for us wise, not in business or government policy) and we could virtually find these bikes anywhere and everywhere (like in the drain, read: man throw ofo bike into canal)

There are 3 major bike sharing company running in Singapore, namely OBike, MoBike and OFO, and out of the 3, OFO is in striking yellow and would be nice in contrasting to most background and so we decided to use OFO for this work! (not because OFO was free from Monday 22nd January to Sunday 4th February, we would definitely pay if we have to. Really.)

During our first session of mOFOs we shifted bikes to create a roadblock in a void deck, by doing so, we had many curious passerby coming to us and asked why are we blocking the path? and we told them that we will remove the Ofos and they are like “ohhhhhh ok”. One even took the pictures of the bike too! she must’ve like our installation and think its really organized and definitely did not think about complaining us… 

And on our second session of mOFOs, we went to Chinese gardens and shifted the bicycles around, Senior Nat saw us during his MRT ride and he alighted the train and helped us to carry the bicycles. Thank you again Nat! =D

at the end of the day, we got photos taken by random passerby and it was uploaded onto Reddit Singapore… well… that’s free publication!

 

Team mOfos Signing out.