Residual Resonance

Statement

Our liminal space exists as a chance encounter with the unexpected. By perusing one of the areas of lighter population density in Hunt, a patron of the library may run into our installation while presumably looking for or walking to something completely unrelated. As such, the encounter stands as a truly liminal one, as we are rewarding those who remain aware, observant, or spontaneous with an completely personal encounter with our alien and otherwordly volumetric display.

Context

Residual Resonance primarily draws upon the work of Matt Parker, specifically in the instance of his 3D sculpture / installation "Lumarca" [http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/29/4375614/practical-magic-lumarca-is-a-mesmerizing-3d-sculpture-made-of-string]. Lumarca is a similar projection and twine based display that splits the artist's projections into lines in a 3D plane. Our project uses a similar method to capture image, but instead leaves the strands of twine irregular and movable, should they be disturbed by a passing library goer.

Removed from the installation art sphere, the project was also inspired by two pieces of contemporary media: The transitional portals to the "Upside Down" in Netflix's incredible Stranger Things, and the process of discovering a fairy fountain in The Legend Of Zelda, a video game series developed and published by Nintendo. For the portals, we borrowed thematic inspiration from the qualities of the portals to the dimension known as the "upside down," which usually manifest as alien-like, thinly filmed and impossibly moving growths that suddenly appear over ordinary objects such as walls, similar to the effect our impossibly moving light display has from first glance, at the end of the book shelf aisle we placed it in.

As for fairy fountains, we wanted our space to borrow from their quality of spontaneous discovery. In the Zelda games proper, fairy fountains are usually discovered off the beaten path whilst you aren't looking for them. As such, they serve as surprising moments of achievement and respite, and we wanted to reward our patrons in the same way. There is a feeling of exclusivity incurred by such an event, as it is almost completely reliant on good fortune and it is unlikely to be expected before it is  actually encountered.

Process

The installation was created by cutting hundreds of measures of twine and knotting them loosely to strands hanging parallel to the floor. We suspended the front of the hanging lattice with a shower curtain, and wrapped the back strands over a line of tape to allow for more give than a second bar, as we expected viewers to touch the installation despite our saying not to. Placed in front of one of the library's windows, the structure itself is then used as a backdrop for a looping projection animation found as a free sample on Vimeo. The windowed backdrop deletes the negative space in the projection, leaving only the parts of light that catch upon the hanging twine strands, creating the illusion of droplets of light materializing and lazily dropping in the air, and residual scattering of the animation's lighter parts creates an aurora-like effect that swirls in between and around the light droplets caught by the twine. The projector is mounted as non-obtrusively as possible to prevent it from drawing attention from the sculpture itself, so that when a viewer first happens upon it, the minimum distance in which they can do so prompts them to investigate to try and understand what they are seeing.

Product

For once, our end result came out as close to our concept as is reasonably possible. Our end result is, almost literally, a spot of lazily swirling and scattering light resonance and aura that, due to the minimum distance of engagement afforded to us by the length of hunt's book shelves, invites the viewer to approach and understand the effect. In this way, it is liminal, unexpected, and therefore a personal, spontaneous engagement. It also looks really pretty, and the backdrop of the window adds a lot to the notion that the light really is just existing in 3-D space.

Assembly-wise, the piece isn't incredibly complex, but it is very tedious and time consuming to assemble. Everything is, quite literally, knotted together, spanned, and then hung. Fortunately, our implementation of the structure of the piece allows it to be moved relatively easily (provided you have two people to help prevent incurring years of detangling). As such, we can currently move this to a number of unexpected, less travelled places in an effort to reward people's creativity and awareness.

Critique

The installation itself satisfied all of our initial design goals, but there was one thing lacking that we didn't forsee: the number of people who stopped to meaningfully interact with our sculpture was even lower than the low amount we anticipated, for a number of reasons. The primary two, however, were a little disheartening to watch occur with such frequency: The first was that most students were primarily occupied with their work, came in, sat down quickly, and didn't move until they left. The second reason was significantly more depressing: most people walk around the library staring at their phones.

Given a second iteration, we'd probably add a small, subtle sound component to try and non-aggressively lift people's attention from their electronic devices in hopes of catching more eyes in a passive way.

Reflection

This project taught us a ton about how to design with a particular space or intent in mind for a 3 dimensional installation. In our project, we were forced to consider things we'd never considered at all for any contextual reason, the most interesting of which was the actual distance the viewer began their engagement with our piece. We finally ended up placing it at the end of a dead-end aisle, so that we could control the angle and distance of engagement in a non-obvious way.