Sculpture Studio Spring 2012

Project 2: Kinetics and Interactivity

The sculpture “Watch Your Step” is an interesting piece because it focuses on how people determine an object’s safety based on its color and texture. I wanted to make the sculpture life size so that people could walk through it and at the same time have difficulty getting to the other side. The pieces of sculptures were to be painted either a bright or soft color. This would make the participant think before they would step on a certain piece.

(Watch Your Step, 2012)

The blocks of wood in “Watch Your Step” were placed diagonally, straight across at angle, or at a different height. The sizes varied from five inches short to twenty eight inches in length. They were painted either a bright color or a very light color. One of the boards felt unstable while walking through it and it had a marking labeled “cut 1/2in down.” This specific board was useful to alert people that it could possibly break. Not all of the people who walked through the sculpture actually read the label; they just walked through it normally. The sculpture had two pieces that had a striped bright orange and blue pattern. They were located on different ends of the sculpture. This piece could either be seen as dangerous or safe piece. When one of the students walked on the first one and nothing happened, they would walk through the second one without taking time to think if it was safe or not. The student assumed that if there were two pieces that looked the same and one of them was safe, the other would also be safe. The sculpture also had pieces that were at an angle and it could make someone lose their balance while trying to get across it. On the pieces that were not leveled, the students would have more difficulty and take more time trying to get across that piece. Some of them would just avoid having to go through a piece of it was at an angle. The sculpture had a lot open space between the boards which could have resulted that the students would walk in between the pieces and not on them. To address this problem, I tied bright pink string across and it looked like a web. This would prevent users from walking in between the spaces. It was really exciting to observe the students try and walk across the sculpture. All of them made it across without falling but they took different paths which were interesting and some of the paths they took depended on their height.

I felt that the weakness of the sculpture was the size. It limited the amount of objects that were placed on the sculpture. The time for a person to walk through the sculpture was very quick and there was only a limited amount of objects which was difficult to emphasize the difference in colors. It would have been ideal to extend the sculpture three times its original length. This would have allowed me to create a pattern in which people would have to be more careful in deciding where they step on. Another weakness that I noticed on the final sculpture was that there were three subjects (color, texture and stability.) This was a lot of for the size of the sculpture. This prevented the student from focusing on the color pattern which was my intended purpose. I was satisfied to see that the students were enjoying walking through the sculpture. They were careful to walk through the first time but then they got used to it and walked through it faster on their way back. Some students paid attention to the colors and some of the labels on the wood pieces and others just tried to get across it as fast as possible. The sculpture was difficult to plan and construct but it was definitely worth it after seeing everyone’s reaction as they walked through it.