THE COMMUNITY

In the beginning this project was created to represent a community but in the end the concept became an Aggie community. The palm represent a community with all different building styles that represent different people. The fingers represent that extension that A&M has by spreading its community to other people and when the fingers are closed they say Gig 'Em Aggies to show the school spirit.  

The hardest part of this project was taking the time to cut out every individual building and every window and hot gluing them together. This process took up 90 percent of the time we had, and many all night-ers were spent trying to get this project done in time.

This entire project is made out of cardboard from the bottom up. Each house in this project was researched or thought up to be different so that it could really represent a community of different people. There are building from San Antonio, Italy, Spain, U.S., and much more, even my house is in this sculpture. I thought it was a good idea to not replicate each house but to draw cut and put together different houses.

 

In the end the hand was painted maroon and I believe each building has its own sense of uniqueness and style. My favorite building is the bright red building you see in this picture, something about it just stands out to me and it has its own individuality. I am satisfied with the outcome and if I could do it over the only thing I'd change was the time spent on this project. Our concept did get changed but I think it worked out for us for the Viz show.

We've began to paint the houses using yellows, oranges, reds, and browns in order to compliment the brown box color. These colors work together to give each house its own individual personality as well as making each house pop from one another. the fingers will not have houses on it because it will take away form the sculpture being a hand. The reason this sculpture is a hand is because a hand is very symbolic of working, and this sculpture is a community working together to create the Aggie spirit.

This project is going to be a giant hand doing the Gig' Em sign. This is completely made from cardboard, the structure is made to hold each level with enough strength to support the buildings. Each building created took about 45 minutes to make, this part of the sculpture took the longest to make. At the end the cardboard will be painted with water color so that each house can stand out. I feel that this sculpture is very symbolic to Aggie community. Each house is very different, some of the houses were inspired by homes from other countries. This shows that all our differences and communities come together to form the Aggie community as one.

 

This project is made of wood board, wood dowels, and wire. The concept of this project was to create a fluid wave like motion with a sturdy material. I did some research of cam wheels and found videos' like this to help me:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESRsd1TeOSg&feature=related 

So far this project is coming along nicely I just need to find a way to make the square wood elevate in a slow wave motion. That has been the toughest part.

THROUGH UPS AND DOWNS

 These are pictures of the process it took to create this sculpture. There was a lot of wood cutting and gluing that went into the making of this work. The original concept was to use a huge scale and have the objects attached to the ropes be water bottles that were going to have water and food coloring in them. That idea evolved into a smaller scale sculpture with fabric attached at the end of the ropes. Unfortunately things don't always go according to plan so the final idea was to use marbles. The marbles are supposed to represent a ball and while the strings go up and down the marbles will appear to be bouncing as if they were made of rubber. The irony is that marbles are a hard substance that cannot bounce but they do bring an elegant look that flows better with the concept of moving up and down at a steady pace. 

The materials used to create this sculpture was wood board, strings, marbles, light lattice, wooden poles, pipes, and hot glue which attached most of these objects together,

These photos are of the kinetic sculpture while and after it was installed. The wood frame had to be strung up at the corners so that the board would be stable. That part was the most difficult because each side had to be even with one another in order for the crank to rotate smoothly. Then each string had to be individually placed into a separate square that was evenly spaced in order to create a better wave form.

In the end the sculpture turned out to my liking. The only thing I'd improve is the objects on the bottom in order to give the strings more tension so that the motion of the sculpture could be more fluid. The marbles did give it a nice elegant touch and to me they looked good shining in the light. The colors of the marbles also played a part into why I liked how the sculpture turned out.

Here is a 3 x 3 board that will be used to hold up the strings and will stabilize the crank, we will use two wood boards to give a more support since this will be holding up the strings and the objects attached at the end of them.

this is the crank that will be used to rotate around lifting the strings in order to make a wave like movement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1AilT_TtPA
Pentagon wave.

This is the inspiration for our sculpture. The strings will pull and release so that the objects at the end creating a kinetic action. This will generate the lateral illusion of the moving objects.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z96s-lYabM
Metal Spring
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4iyVVq5JQM
Pinwheel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJCCP37-yxI&feature=related
Tree & Wind
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi3LW5riHfc&feature=related
Water

Virtual Protection                                                                                                                                                                                                                          First my concept ideas was creating wings because it felt like an obvious body extension, but i realized that a forearm gun such as iron man is also an extension from the body. Deciding what the dichotomy would be was a struggle because once I had the idea to make a forearm gun I ran with it. As I thought about the gun more and more I realized that the gun is is not a real and is made up only in games or movies.  Then I came up with the concept creating a violent object(gun) out of non violent material( cardboard, plaster, tape). And a sub concept is playing with virtual and reality. The virtual being the futuristic forearm gun and making it into reality.

The end result for this sculpture turned out excellent in my opinion. Of course improvement would have made this sculpture better but considering the material I used this gun was believable. The response I got most for my sculpture was "That's Awesome". I observed that most people who saw the sculpture looked at the gun as a whole. Not that much people tried it on which I encouraged and I think that made people misinterpret the concept of the gun.

If I had to do this project again I would definitely add lights to the blue strips on the side of the gun.  Also I would find a better material to smooth out the guns edges because the cardboard wasn't very effective. The most difficult problem with this sculpture was attaching the gun to the fore arm guard. The connection wouldn't stay together so I had to tape it and spray paint over it. I felt that this sculpture has been a fun project and the process I went through to make it was effective. I like how the gun has a  future realistic look. The process of cutting, plastering, taping, painting took some time and it paid off because the result in the end.

My sculpture is gonna be a dichotomy with a psychological reason. My forearm gun is used as a violent object in a virtual world, but it is made out of a non violent material in the real world, and/or making a metal-like machine from a man made paper material(cardboard).The extension purpose of this sculpture is for protection, its a virtual futuristic weapon that is an extension outside the body.

These were some early sketching designs that I thought up for my forearm gun idea. Originally I wanted to just make forearm guards but I was inspired by the concept that it could be from a virtual world. The gun I chose to model is on the bottom right side of the picture. It has some complications but I believe I can make the pieces of cardboard beneath look like a real or futuristic weapon. So far it has been successful in making the model but painting it and attaching it to the forearm armor might be a challenge along the way.

Created by Emil Alzamora. In his sculptures he utilizes the bodies limitless shape and creates work that expresses the human form at any point in our lives.  This sculpture just screams body extension to me, not in a sense of a body part being extended but the fact that the sculpture itself is an example of the body being stretched and expanded.

Created by Some girl from DeviantArt. This reminded me of Star wars and some of the characters that have different human forms, including extended body parts. This inspired to me to not only think of extending existing body parts but creating body parts that are different.