Well, the Maquette was certainly… interesting to put together.
My original goal for it was to have a functioning mirror box, and have my back transparent mirror to begin testing how that would work. Unfortunately, putting together the mirror box proved to be quite difficult, so purely from time constraints I was forced to simply arrange the mirror box and stop there.
After putting it together, I think it is unlikely I’ll be able to play around with weird shapes, like triangles or pentagons for the mirrors. I do still theorize putting weird mirrors inside the box may still come quite in handy though.
I do remain hopeful that the hardest part has been crossed, and while I do expect difficulty, I hope it will be smoother to work through. But I do have quite a bit of concern that my original idea may be a tad ambitious, so I will be making sure to keep things in check and even dial down going forward.
Otherwise, I am still finalizing details for how I plan to construct the interior. Currently, I plan to utilize cardboard, (or maybe 3D printing) to fabricate the geography, then I plan to outline it with el wire, move the El Wire through cracks between the mirrors, and cover up what stands out with extra mirrors, to aid in illusions of a complete area and maybe even floating objects.
For the background, I think the piece I have currently as the “window” didn’t tint exactly as I needed it, but it may work quite well as my background wall, so I plan to do some backwards testing using it as a theoretical background and see how it pans out.
Finally, (While I plan to order my things tomorrow, I will need to iron out where I will be getting most of my supplies) my current shopping list looks like this:
El Wire, Cyan/Blue
El Wire, Pink
El Wire Power Supply
El Wire Connectors
El Wire cables
Thin metal wire
Short LED strip
Flexible Mirrors
Paint, Black
Fabric
Adhesive to utilize on mirrors
(Maybe) Soldering Kit
My Current Gameplan looks like this:
9/12 Order remaining Supplies
– Once El Wire and LEDs arrive, test lighting composition inside mirror to understand how the rest of the project will need to go.
9/16 Test background theory, plan out interior layout (and background) and start construction if time allows
If background works
9/21 Replace back with transparent mirror and modify box to hold background
9/23 Have background finished, move onto creating interior geography, begin with wiring plans.
9/26 Have a few test pieces of geography completely finished
9/28 Finish interior geography, and (hopefully) begin assembly
10/1 Finish Assembling Project, allowing for time to test and make fine tuning.
If background doesn’t work
9/21 Understand lighting plans, Finish some Interior Geography, know wiring plans, hopefully have hidden wiring in place.
9/26 Wrap up interior geography production, have one or two pieces in placed inside, and have the rest planed out.
9/28 Interior geography done, just need to attach and plug in.
10/1 All interior geography plugged in and good to go. Allowing time for fine adjustments and touch ups.
I think that your maquette came out really well and I’m excited to see what it’ll look like when you add the colors into the box as well as the second one way screen on the back of the box. I hope that you can find a better support, maybe look into cheap plywood options they you can maybe laser engrave to make look fancy.
Your maquette was very cool! I’m excited to see how you incorporate lights into the mirror. For some reason when I read that you were thinking about adding floating objects my mind went to a disco ball. I wonder how the many different mirrors on a tiny disco ball would further reflect light- maybe lights pointed at it- in a cool way or if it would just be too much. Anyways, great work overall.
The makerspace has plywood/acrylic sheets and a laser cutter if you want to design your own box. I feel that this project is more “trial and error” of getting what you’re imagining with the mirrors. What you showed in class was still cool nonetheless!