The ‘fear’ piece is nearly complete. After trials with the projector inside the cube I decided to build-in active ventilation rather than passive ventilation as originally planned. The top of the cube now has an instrument fan and air intake holes. The bonus is that the sides and base of the cube have no holes in them..so far! Also adjusted the joint for the cantilever to support the cube, this was very tight and courtesy of a very sharp chisel and the steady hand of Barry (thanks!) this is now a good fit.
The next job was to design and make the enclosures to go over the vitrines in the piece comparing sublime with beauty. The width had been set by the amount of space needed to contain the lighting for each tank. The decision was then to either have a rectangular (lower in height) or a square profile (taller). Since, the viewing port to the tank was to be square and the ‘fear’ piece to be exhibited near it had a square element (the cube) I decided that the square seemed to be the right decision. So square it was and the wood cutting list was drawn-up and the materials purchased. The cutting of the pieces took a morning and the frame was assembled that afternoon and the boxes were assembled the next day. I still find myself quite edgy when building stuff like this as design or cutting errors can really set you back. However, I am relieved to say my brain, eyes and hands did their stuff again.
I have also been thinking about the titles for the pieces and have taken the decision that I want to be direct about them. The title for the vitrines is to be ‘How to distinguish between the sublime and beauty’ and the ‘fear’ piece is to be ‘Forcing the blended emotions of the sublime’. The void piece is to be ‘Site specific void 1’ as it is hoped that the building of void pieces into un-promising places could turn into a series. Such thinking reminded me of Dan Flavin who commented that he was able to get his early light pieces into the normally unworkable parts of galleries…we’ll see.
