The end of year show was around the corner. I finalized the project, but now needed to work with the space where the installation would be set up. I got the area next to the gallery, overlooking the cafeteria at Khio. The advantage of that spot was the space (huge), and having electric plugs near walls, etc. (rigging would be easier than in the gallery). The main, big, disadvantage was that it was full of light, since it faces huge windows. The exhibition was to start around 16.00, but once again, being summer, the sun doesn’t go down until 11 pm or so. I had to work around this issue.
This is the set-up that I thought of for the exhibition.
With some help, I built a room in that space, and managed to black it out in order to have constant favorable light conditions for the motion sensor to work smoothly. Maybe with the kinect 2 this wouldn’t be so much of a problem, as I read here. Either way, the art direction of Stardust indicated a dark space. I used the theater curtains on the walls and for the ceiling I needed something dark and light. I thought of painted paper, but didn’t have the time to test it out. Then I thought about fabric, but when I tested it, it was incredibly heavy and would be a challenge to have it stay on top (having to make wooden beams and a “rooftop” structure, etc. and -by the way-I had a day until showtime). So I worked with what I had at hand and got black plastic bags, thin as air, and made a big “blanket” out of them, and use that as rooftop. I used massive amounts of duct tape, and even had to nail it to the adjacent walls. But once inside, you couldn’t notice what the rooftop was made of, and the focus was on the huge mirror-wall I got, and the stardust all over your body.
This is the space from the hallway entrance. All visitors would come through here.
The space overlooking the cafeteria downstairs.
The area where I needed to build the room for the installation.
The kit: macbook pro, kinect, projector, speakers, stands, long HDMI cables, camera and tripod.
Apparently, the area where I set up couldn’t take all the power I was using (which wasn’t much) so I needed to have electric extensions from the installation all the way down to the cafeteria. Hence the message to not touch that plug.
Testing “backstage” (behind the mirror wall), literally, through the looking glass 😉
The installation space from inside.
Everything was set-up, tested, and ready (the night before the show I managed to finish the set-up and test the code running correctly. Always, always have an extra 2 days of set-up time! Pete you were right!).
Now…show time!
