- Categories:
- memory, technology
As part of the Kinetica Art Fair 2010, Memory is required to fill in a risk assessment form. This entails listing out all the possibly tragic events that can occur, how many people could potentially die, and a design of the installation as seen from top-down and the side. Having only seen pictures of the space before, deciding on the design was a bit tricky (let alone figuring out how many people would die). The piece itself is not very modular and has to make use of the space (take a look at what I mean). It is basically a web that latches onto whatever it can find in the space. As such, we really needed a nice model of the space in order to model the installation.
I went through an attempt of photoshopping the few pictures with some ridiculous looking lines. It didn’t seem to capture the space. Next attempt was with Illustrator. Hmm. Nope not much further. Maybe just draw the thing? Nope. I couldn’t seem to get the scale right or even think about how to lay out the design in a space I wasn’t really sure about. I just couldn’t visualize the space enough to create a nice enough drawing.
Eventually I remembered seeing my friend using Google SketchUp and thinking, wow. I gave it a hand thinking it would be terribly difficult and impossible to even begin. I was dead wrong. It was incredibly intuitive and even fun to use. I was able to play with guesses on the size and scale everything reasonably and with the drag of the mouse. In a short time I had a scale model complete with measurements of the entire design of the piece and even little person inside of it. I was even able to directly import 3d models from an integrated browser searching 3d models online to resemble pieces of glass that are part of the installation. It was dead simple.
Here are some pics of my very first sketches done in Google SketchUp:
Now that you’ve seen the design, come and see the real thing at the Kinetica Art Fair 2010, February 4 – 7, London.