Week IV // Materiality and Process

Apophenic Ecologies //

Material and Process // October 8, 2012

This week started out in applying color (light) to the material process through manipulation of density in material (plaster).

 

The first iteration involved filling balloons with plaster, then blowing them up, tying them, and covering the inside by swirling the plaster to cover the interior surface.  After the plaster had cured we removed the latex cover to reveal the plaster mold.  Through varying the amount of liquid plaster and size of the balloon we were able to have varying surface thicknesses.

This resulted in a few working prototypes, however these turned out to be rather fragile, and transportation ended their journey.

The second iteration involved cutting some simple geometry out of a more ridged material (PETG).  This resulted in a more ridged mold to cast the plaster into.  An issue in the first iteration was that the surface membrain was to maluable which resulted in a few cracked plaster molds due to too much handeling while the plaster was setting up.

With a more solid mold to cast into, the process of covering the interior with the liquid plaster was a reliable solution which resulted in a few broken molds due to haste, but the end result was a hollow plaster object.

With varying plaster density, different gradations in opacity were attainable.

 

The next step will be to combine the opacity and color together to produce a more diverse material pallet which should result in more dynamic projects in the future.

Also with hollow molds the ability to insert light could greatly influence the materiality and diversity of the final project.