2D Fabrication

Results:

Process:

This project came out way cooler than I think Jádé, Chloe, and I expected! Our ideas came about in chunks throughout the process. During class last week, Jádé whispered to me that she really wanted to explore light with this project. Being someone who studied rocks for 4 years, I thought of optical calcite because it refracts light in interesting ways. We were talking about different structures we could make that would include optical calcite, but I didn’t have any with me to test whether it would produce an intense enough rainbow effect. So, we pivoted. Opal is another mineral that interacts with light to produce multiple colors, but in a brighter, more exciting way. Then I thought, what if we tried to recreate the look of an opal using stacked layers of clear acrylic?

At this point, Chloe joined our team, which was a big help! We started pulling materials and experimenting with layering transparent colored acrylic sheets as Jádé began working on our design mock-up on Procreate!



As we were working, we realized we might need to rethink our process and layer placements, so I grabbed a few sheets of colored paper for Chloe and me to create physical mock-ups. This part of the process was very back-and-forth, and we had to consider what would actually work and look nice while still being realistic about timing. Originally, we wanted to fill the cutout parts of each layer with a different color of acrylic, but ultimately decided that, to let light through, it would be best to leave the holes open and place an iridescent piece of acrylic on top for it to still be flat. Chloe made a really awesome deconstruction of the idea with the paper scraps, and Jádé updated the Procreate file to reflect our new ideas before exporting it to Adobe Illustrator.


Once in Adobe Illustrator, Jádé Image Traced our file, so our design could be cut and engraved. One thing we hadn’t thought about was making our file the same size as the project on the computer connected to Bubbles. We ended up having to resize our image and re-edit the strokes, which was complicated with multiple layers. Since we were using scraps, Chloe and I measured the largest open areas on each of our acrylic sheets to determine the size of our finished product. Jádé then resized each layer to reflect that, and we measured the coordinates of the open areas on each acrylic sheet so Jádé could move the layers to the right spot in the file. Finally, we were ready to hit print, but we ran into issues where Bubbles kept misreading our file. However, with much help from CeCe, the studio fellow, we were able to cut out each of our layers!

The next day, I was playing with our cut pieces before we met up again to glue them together. At some point earlier, I had mentioned the idea to shine a color-changing light through the bottom of our sculpture to give it the glowy quality of an opal. I pulled up a YouTube video of LED color-changing lights on my phone and experimented with stacking the different acrylic layers on top of it. Originally, we planned to have a white layer with cutouts second from the top, with a flat, iridescent, engraved layer on top. However, as I experimented, I realized I might like how it interacts with the light more without the white layer. I headed over to the studio, explained the situation to Adella, another studio fellow, and Jádé, and we experimented with the light and layers in the metal shop, where we could turn off the lights. Ultimately, we decided to leave the white layer as a removable piece at the very top, so we can choose to block some of the light or let it through.

Adella showed us how to use the acrylic glue, and we finally melded our pieces together after a few tests. The glue made a few blobby marks underneath our top iridescent layer, which we hadn’t expected. We actually liked the look of these glue blobs, but wish we had spread them out more to look more intentional. The good thing is that the white layer covers them, and when the light shines through the bottom, you hardly notice the marks.



With all of that done, we cut a quick mask out of black paper for Jádé’s iPad so light would not pass through the edges of our sculpture, and then went back into the metal shop to take photos, videos, and time-lapses!