this is (non)sense

week9

documentation

Painting MDF wasn't just a walk in the park and while I'm writing this the final outcome has yet to appear. I though did some usefull experiences which I'm going to post here.

/The struggle of painting, taking photos of smoke and lots of other things (read 'lots of other struggle's ;) by Asle

1. Don't even try to paint plain MDF. It needs a primer to 'seal' the surface

2. Use "spuitplamuur" from Gamma (Kudos to Wouter for tip!)

3. Sand paper the object between 'primer' and your paint

4. Don't use cheap paint (I did). It doesn't cover well..

5. Don't you NEVER EVER mix different types of paint. I believed it didn't matter since they both had solvents (and therefore were not water based which I already knew wasn't a good idea to mix) BUT it does matter and right know most of my box looks like crackled dry soil.

/Testing my final design for the exibition.

As seen in the paper quic'n' dirty version, my exhibition contribution is going to be something cut out with different sized holes in the center where the smoke can be blow through by the vortex gun. I won't do it more specific here for there to be a slight element of surprise still.

Among other unexpected stuff in a 'studio' you also find my suitcase, that was the only larger black piece of fabric that I could use as a background/to bloc out the light so that it didn't make reflection from the flash used

Needing a place that where you can block all light AND use smoke, I have set up an improvised 'home studio'. Mainly made possible by lots of gaffer tape...

On the picture below you see a lamp that has been covered in a cerial box with the help of gaffer tape and with a little cut out for the light to be as specified as possible. I tried using in taking long exposure pictures but in short it didn't work out and the pictures just became all blurry.

In short the concept worked why I'm going with this for a final version. Marjolijn really would like me to test it to not make a concept that wouldn't do it at the exhibition.

The (way more) aesthetic picture of the paper-version in a proper light setting. Here you see the differences in size that are going to make up the 'perspective effect' when looked at with a little spacing in between.

The results were mixed. Conceptwise it worked perfectly well whereas I will precede with my exhibition plan. Photowise it was more discouraging..

With the help of a timer I tried to capture the smoke ring coming out of the vortex gun. The ring moves incredible fast and the timing with the flash from the camera was almost impossible.

The scenario would be that I pressed the shutter. Countdown from 10 with begun. In the meantime I had to take a drag on the vape/E-cigarette that is the source of smoke, blow it into the vortex gun, get ready behind the hole in the papers, aim correcly and fire the gun at the time of the flash/photo were taken.

It doesn't take an Einstein to see that that it didn't work out exactly as I hoped fore with a clear smoke ring.

With only the not-portable flash that is on the camera, a limited amount of smoke that doesn't look like much almost the second that it leaves my mouth I guess it was kind of anticipated. Glad to know it works 'real life' though!

I therefore also tried lots of other ways of capturing the smoke that I'm going to manipulate into the picture to be printed on the polycarbonat (what is know the coloured paper)

A little sneak from the 200 photos was the outcome of my to first photo test done way too late in the evening in accompanied by lots of strong coffee

In some kind of conclusion the bright side is that smoke is incredible beautiful though hard to capture "consistently". I have got a lot of practise playing with focus, ISO, shutter time and other settings that I normally never think of when using my phone.

One of the thinks I thought was e.g. to take pictures with the burst mode to come around the challenge about timing. That's not possible with flash since it has to recharge and that takes time. A quite essential photography tip that I will take with me.

/The UV-printing of smoke

Printing without any printing a layer of white turned out very bad. The pictures are actually better than in real life because the paper bahind ad white but the details in the smoke is still completely gone

The issue about printing the white layer is the feather from the cut out of the smoke in Ps which makes a large white background that doesn't look nice. The whole idea of printing on a transparent material was after all that you could partial see through. Instead I want to print the white layer approximately 10% smaller than the coloured one and then secure that my final smoke cloud is 'surrounded' by dark/black colours fading så that it will hide the white edge from the smaller white layer

MAKING OF THE COAT

/ Making the coat in final fabric and planning the finishings

After the calico toile turned out to be fitting and no adjustments had to be made in the pattern, I decided to proceed with making the patch pockets and bias tape which could work with it.

I looked back to the colour scheme and made a decision to keep it playful, make one pocket orange and the other blue.

The coat required 2 layers of the same fabric, since you need to be able to put the balls in between those. I have used at the end 3m of fabric since the shape was pretty A-lined and pattern pieces quite big.

After stitching two layers of the coat separately, I attached the pockets on the upper layer with the bias tape.

/ Attaching the pockets

Upper layer with attached pockets to it.

Two layers of the coat stitched together with covered seams by bias tape. Since the fabric is transparent all the seams are visible so in order to cover them, you need to turn it inside out and cover them each separately.

/ Final step: stitching two layers together

Positioning the pockets and deciding on its size.

/ Planning the photoshoot

Since I wanted to capture movement for the video and have the sporty feel, I decided for the photoshoot location to be skatepark. I collected some pictures to have the right feel for the photoshoot and to be able to create the mood I intended to have.

//Collaborative Learning

Both week 9 and 10 were collaborative-wise weird in the sense that we individually had a lot of stuff to finish and therefore ran our own game to a large extend when it came to the making. An exception was our ToE and the exhibition itself which we had to coordinate to make sure there was consistency. Neza had a large saying the in colour coordination but choosing colours for the ToE was actually Melissa and Asles' job. The same thing goes with the hanging pictures where the idea came from Neza but was executed by Asle since she was too busy doing other stuff. She had instead been spending a lot of time making the layout for the ToE consistent. In that way we complimented each other well taking over the tasks that some group members didn't have enough time for. The lesson to be taken is that collaboration is about supporting each other and not to be completely 'democratic' about everyone necessarily doing the same amount of work at the moment.

//Preparing Exhibition

While Asle and Neza were busy finishing their final products, I went to see what we might need for the exhibition. The three of us went through Neza's inspiration pictures from week 7.

This gave us the idea to use pillars and to hang several products from the ceiling. (If this was possible)

What do we need for the EXPO!?
- Colored Styrofoam balls
- Wooden Sticks
- Spray Paint
- Pillars
- Rope
- Cardboard
- Black sheet or cloth
- Hooks
- Screen?
- Frame holder
- Posters
- Pictures
- Invisible treads
- Colord paper


What do we want to show?
- Frame
- Coat
- Air gun
- Vacuum formed shapes

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