Concept

For the final version of my parasite, I had to completely change my concept. For the past week and half I was focusing on using fabric that’s suspending in a plastic chamber to magnifies the tumbling of my body, but that idea limited me to only exhibit movement and animation in a relatively small scale, which conflicted with this assignment’s requirments.

I still want to keep the “fabric inside of chamber” theme, however, so I began to think about what other narratives this form allows me to express. What strikes me about this shape is how just by imposing a nearly transparent layer of plastic, the space the chamber is occupying is divided conceptually and practically. What’s inside of the chamber can never be reached by us, beings that occupies a different space than the fabrics.

This, together with Valentine’s approaching, inspired me to do a installation that involves two broken half-hearts, each isolated in their own chamber, their own space, bouncing and dancing to try to approach each other, but can never be bring back as a whole. Blocked by the parasite of love.

Execution

The two chambers that host the hearts are each made out of six plastic sheet that forms a single cube.

Two broken hearts in their own chamber

Two make the two cubes dance and bounce off each other, two hinges are glued together that can each move 90 degrees.

Then a long string is attached to the hinge to the cube, suspending them in the air.

The Final Form
And a closeup of the cube.

Notes

  1. Initially I want the installation to be pined to the ceiling, so that no human needs to hold it when it performs. I quickly found that it would be pretty hard to actually do this robustly without damaging CMU’s property. Still I think to hang this onto the ceiling will achieve the best effect.
  2. A planning mistake occurs and my hinges can’t really activate the cubes underneath them… This is because since I am using a very long string to connect them together, the string will absorb most most of the changes in motion from the hinge to the cube. I think to solve this either requires me to change the thread to a more rigid material, or make the hinges bigger and activate faster. Neither of the two is realistic given my limited time (due to last minute rework of concept), so for now this is what I have. I definitely want to do this properly in the future.