Newsletter #14
On Monday our team presented our two pieces to the faculty for our penultimate milestone “Soft Opening.” We demonstrated how the pieces work technically, and discussed our artistic intent for both M_rror and One to One.
The faculty absolutely loved M_rror, particularly because it had come so far in the past few weeks. It was met with an incredibly positive reception and the faculty was anxious to see it in its final place in the building’s lobby. They were pleased to see One to One on the wall but had expected it to be in a further state than it was. Due to some technical concerns, we had decided to hold off on actually assembling the jars since it would prove cumbersome to disassemble them for any change thereafter. The parts were all ready to go, but the faculty was disappointed nevertheless.
Jason worked on stabilizing the jerkiness of the mirrors so that the experience would be smoother when people entered or left the area. He also tackled a technical issue with the jar switch so that messages would not accidentally be deleted. Since Dirty Ball was quickly approaching, we focused our attention on M_rror for this week. Anisha, Yotam, and Elwin tirelessly worked in the shop to sand and varnish the remaining wooden panels for M_rror. It was a long night but the panels looked amazing when they were all up on the framing. With the pieces all mounted, we delivered it to the Dirty Ball location and set it up for the party!
Current Challenge
At this point of the semester we have mostly mechanical work in front of us. We have some tweaks we want to make with the panels for M_rror but that piece is about 95% completed. On the other hand, One to One still has one final push to get all the jars mounted. While it is not an arduous task, it will take time.
Looking Forward
After Softs, we turned our sights to our next two deadlines. On Saturday we were planning to exhibit M_rror at the Dirty Ball, a party hosted by Attack Theatre, which would be a fantastic opportunity to playtest the piece in a setting outside of the ETC. After that, our next deadline would be the Building Virtual Worlds festival, a large event hosted at the ETC to showcase the work of both BVW as a class and the Spring projects. Since our installations were not aesthetically finalized, this would prove to be a good opportunity to have everything finished.