Reflection

From this project, we learned that, when working with media installations, it's best to keep it simple. Overthinking the idea tends to make execution far more complicated than it needs to be, so it's best to take a step back and think of a way to capture the simple beauty of the given material. We learned this as we came up with the idea of bending light using water, since our original idea was to bend a stream of water using static electricity. This would have required a way of generating a continuous flow of water AND a source of static electricity. The best solutions for these two problems would have both added more points of complexity (and potential points of failure) and required at least some user intervention to work correctly. In the end, that idea was ditched in favor of the final idea and result. As for what to do differently, I would experiment with different layouts of the materials. For example, we could've found a way to mount the projector above or under the small bodies of water and generated disturbances on the surface of the water to create a slightly different effect. I would also try to find a different space to perform the installation, since the space we used was rather small and could not fit the audience. Furthermore, while the room was relatively low-light, the projected image could have been more vivid if the room was slightly darker--even with the lights off, light from the hall lit the room well enough to detract from the installation as I saw it.