Falling Planets

Falling Planet is an interactive installation with a central column in different colors and nine smaller tubes holding two different colors of balls. While users interact with the installation by matching the balls to top and bottom of it, they learn and witness the effects between the colors that demonstrates the Color Theory.

DURATION

2.5 weeks, Nov. 2020

Team

Joanne Chen

my Role

Art Direction, Drafts(Sketch & Vector drawing), Physical Prototyping

This is an assignment from Design 210: Color & Composition Fall2019. We were asked to work in pairs to showcase the principles of Simultaneous Contrast making two colors look like the same color, or make a color look like two.

JOSEF ALBERS’S COLOR THEORY

Josef Albers examined the interaction of colors and how they changes based on context. He stated that we rarely see a color that is not affected by or relative to another color.

CHALLENGE 1 (LEFT):

Make a color look like two

CHALLENGE 2 (RIGHT):

Make two colors look like the same color

We decided to take both challenges. Starting with the two shades of blue, we tried various of color background and different combination that satisfied both challenges at the same time making them look visually harmonious as a whole.

Concept Development

Since both my teammate and I are interested in making a physical product, we decided to make a mini installation art that audience can learn the concept while interact with the art work.

FINAL CONCEPT

We eventually come up with the idea of Falling Planets originated from our love of astronomy. The planet-like blue balls in different color backgrounds will pass through the tube as you rotate the plate. The interaction between the colors of the balls and the background colors will demonstrate Josef Albers’s color theory.

VECTOR DRAFTS

We started with 1:1 ratio vector drafts on Adobe Illustrator to calculate the real life measurements and understand the arrangements of the parts(tubes, plates, color backgrounds).

Net of the middle column focusing on the arrangement and size of the color backgrounds(circles).

Net of the middle column focusing on the arrangement and size of plates and the length of the tubes.

Making Process

With the printed 1:1 ratio draft, we can make sure of the size of the compartments by measuring them with the drafts. First we drew the placement where the tubes will aligned to on the column.

Before cutting the circles, we poked a hole on the center of each circle to make it easier to mark the location of it on the drawn lines of the tubes. And we stuck the cut circles onto respective the columns.

Then, we drew the outlines of the circles and colored them with respective colors of acrylic paints.

0.3 inch and 0.5 inch thick acrylic sheet were cut to make the base, plates and the axes and the supports of the plates.

We assembled acrylic sheets with plastic solvent cement, and stuck glasses with superglues.

Challenges

Since it was our first time working with glass and acrylic, the making process was very hard for us with limited resources.At first, we encountered difficulties in cutting the glass tubes and 0.5 inch thick acrylic sheet. The laser cutter on campus could not cut glass or cut through acrylic sheet in that thickness. However, we managed to resolve it with accessible resources like triangular file, lighter, ice, and sand papers.We found information on-line on how to cut glass at home and did several tries on it. Later, to make the tubes into the right length, we ground them with sand papers. It wasn’t easy to grind glass, and it took a lot of effort just to shorten that 1mm. Eventually, we managed to work it out. On the other side, we cut the 0.5 inch thick acrylic from both sides by placing it accurately on the machine after running numerous testings with infrared. Other new material we learned to use were plastic solvent cement used for sticking plastics and different kinds of super glues.

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