Draconaei’s Blog

This project – diagrammed in an earlier post – evolved over two different projects in my Borrowing Light class.  I’ll summarize both in this post.

The first followed the diagram of the last post.  In summary, I broke open a series of glow sticks, and drained the glowing liquid into a hollow glass imitation of a compact fluorescent light bulb.  I suspended the bulb with clear fishing line, and slowly leaked glow liquid from the bulb via a syringe down to a pyrex pie plate.  An early time and late time photograph of the setup are below (as well as a link to a stop-motion video.)

[watch the video here]

The glass is easily recognizable as a light bulb, and the light dripping from within has some interesting symbolism: the depletion of energy that often goes unseen, but is highlighted by the path of light contained in a liquid.  Unfortunately there were quality issues with the documentation here, such as the doorknob and visible floor/wall corners in the photograph.  The next evolution addressed this quality issue, replaced the pyrex pie plate with a circular glass dish (cut by a glassblower so it doesn’t scream “cooking ware”) and addressed the requirement of a “screen.”

The screen is made of white museum board with a series of randomly placed holes of varying sizes.  Light em

inating from the glow liquid in the bowl above passes through the holes and creates colored spots of light on the ground.  The rest of the light is reflected off of the white surface, creating a gradient of color.

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Catching the dripping glow liquid is a clear glass bowl full of water placed on top of the museum board screen.  The glow liquid and water do not mix, so the glow liquid congeals into separate clumps that move throughout the water, eventually settling on the bottom.  The water also splashes with each drop of glow liquid, causing a slight rippling effect in the emitted light.

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Dripping glow stick liquid, while interesting, is a bit too abstract for me I think.  Documentation of the second project is below – again an early time photograph, a late time photograph, and a link to a stop-motion video.  Let me know what you think.  =)

[watch the second video here]