Stardust

Intention

"The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself." - Carl Sagan

This quote is what inspired our installation. We wanted to show what unites humanity. That we may be very different, but in the end, we are all made of the same "star-stuff".

We were also inspired by our primary constraint of using fabric. We decided to play off fabric's everyday use as material for clothing. 

Context

Include references and discussion of artists, artworks, movements or aesthetic frameworks/techniques/approaches that inspired your outcome, process or approach. What has informed your outcome? How does your outcome relate to other artists and their work? What ideas, styles, or themes did you draw on any why? You must cite at least 3 critical texts, theories or works.

One of the major works that inspired us is the installation made of T-shirt, by Kitagawa Jun. (Shown below) We found it interesting that through the unique arrangement of T-shirts, the artist exploited the connotation of T-shirts – the genericity and their connection to the sky and space. We developed our intention form this artwork – that is, to create a liminal installation that invokes the audience to reflect on their individuality and their relationship to the space. 

The material constraint for our project is fabric. We wanted to intertwine the digital component with the physical property of the material. And we got inspiration on the interaction of fabric and digital media from the artworks below. We found it beautiful how light projection intersects with architectural fabrication. So we decided to map the image to the fabric that would reflects the texture and opaqueness of the material; and also to arrange the T-shirts in a 3 dimensional space to produce the volume and surface that would create an illusional, dynamic interaction between light projection and the fabrication.

Process

Our first ideas revolved around just using hanging strips of fabric to create something like a piano or light filters. The piano idea was rejected because it was more like a toy than a space. We weren't able to find suitable fabric to act as light filters. At the same time, we still wanted to focus on the fabric and its properties. We shifted our approach from considering what fabric is made of to what fabric makes: clothing. 

The easiest type of clothing to obtain was t-shirts, and we knew that we wanted to project something meaningful onto them. At first, we considered projecting logos or art that we could prompt users to create. This idea was rejected due to both time constraints and the doubt that we could persuade users into that level of interaction. 

In the end, we went with a much simpler idea of projecting a star-scape onto layers of hanging t-shirts, inspired by the Carl Sagan quote that humans are made of "star stuff".

Product

For our final result, we hung our t-shirts in multiple lines. These lines were offset vertically as well as horizontally, creating depth in our project. We decided to go with this method to make the light from our projection visible to all the t-shirts. We used string to keep the project up, as well as duct tape to provide additional support.  We project a star background on our tshirts. Each tshirt slight differences in size, cut, and color. We use this to highlight the differences between individual humans, while the projector shows the similarities between humanity as a whole. We made our tshirts three-dimensional to provide depth to them. Our tshirts take up volume in our piece, and provide more than just backdrop for our projections.

Critique

Critically evaluate the success of your own work. What does your inner critic say about this work? Did you match intent and outcome effectively? (note: use the framing questions to guide your response!)

1. We think we didn't fully exploit the site we chose to work on. We chose Osher classroom mainly because of the availability of the place, however we could have dug deeper into the location/functionality/architecture of the site, in order to merge our installation into the space. 
   
2. The implementation of the work could be polished more. Especially in terms of the details of the T-shirt arrangement and projection, due to the time constraints and technical limits, we were not able to refine the projection and arrangement such that every t-shirt is mapped on a pre-determined images. In this way, we could have developed richer annotation of the our work and possibly interactive space.

Reflection

We learned that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. That means that we should be able to preempt most problems before they happen and be able to adapt to problems as they happen. I would say that obtaining materials ended up taking the most time away from our actual project. So, next time, we would do better to obtain everything as soon as possible.

Videos used for Projection

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_1694551595&feature=iv&src_vid=W02gqzO5OCY&v=tdnKOnSdGbc#t=1.700435
   
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_1694551595&feature=iv&src_vid=W02gqzO5OCY&v=JyhvTaGadTY