I originally wanted to create something that conveyed a sense of networked connectedness while at the same time drawing inspiration from the natural world. This took the form of a reflective aluminum foil sculpted tree with EL wire woven through and around the roots, trunk and branches. The foil served to reflect and diffuse the…
Author: Mario
Polish and Present
It’s finally complete after countless glue gun burns, constant crinkling of tin foil, and a lot of AA batteries. For this week, I constructed a wooden base for the tree to sit on, with a hole drilled through to route the controller wires out the back. This allowed me to take really clean photos without…
Everything Working
After many hours of crinkling tin foil and burning my fingers on hot glue, I’ve completed the metal reflective foil tree which will support the EL wire “leaves”. Unfortunately I ran out of hot glue sticks after construction of the tree and was unable to find the correct size at the local price chopper. I…
Failure, Recalibration & Iteration
The hardest part of my project so far has been the scaling up of the small aluminum foil tree from last week to a larger tree that will allow for softer bends on the EL Wire, and space for multiple colors to be run alongside. After reading the comments on my previous post, I decided…
Maquette
After much internal debate and reading through my classmates comments on my concept proposals, I’ve decided to continue with the Live, Light, Tree idea. My maquette consists of a scaled down aluminum foil tree sculpture to test how it looks with EL Wire, and how the light is reflected off the shiny foil surfaces. I…
Concept Proposals
I recently visited the Chesterwood outdoor contemporary sculpture garden in Stockbridge, Massachusetts and was able to see “One Impulse from a Vernal Wood,” Sculpture by Rick and Laura Brown. These sculptures aim to convey a sense of connected-ness in nature, similar to the idea of a forest super-organism like in Jame Cameron’s Avatar. From these…
Light Artist – Diet Wiegman
Diet Weigman is a multidisciplinary visual artist from the Netherlands. He is considered to be an “art omnivore” and has created works of art using ceramics, drawings, paintings, photographs, sculptures, and light. His light art is primarily made by arranging small bits of trash or other objects in a unique way to caste a desired…
Introduction and Art Portfolio
Hi everyone! I’m Mario, I’m from Western Massachusetts and I’m a computer science major graduating in 2021. Art fits into my current life as a form of self expression which provides a well-needed escape from my more technical work as a computer science major. I’m hoping to work as a software engineer in the industry…