Opening Night

Opening night is here! The event was a huge success that had one of the highest traffic volumes AEIVA had ever seen. A very wide array of people ranging from students, professors, locals, UAB staff, and many others entered the space with fervent enthusiasm. When the sun set after the lecture, the space truly transformed into a multi-dimensional color shifting experience. Viewers traveled throughout the space and AEIVA's different levels to absorb all the vibrant information that was being presented to them all at once. The opening night also coincided with the Student Juried exhibition where many student's were able to exhibit their work alongside Jessica's piece. Ultimately, the night brought about many discoveries for onlookers and peaked interest about the art community here in Birmingham for many.

Finalizing the Installation

The Project is finished! The team has worked very hard this semester in finalizing every possible detail regarding the installation's cleanliness, precision, accuracy, and truthfulness to Jessica's vision for the space. Now that everything is completed, the team can sit back and truly absorb the work in its entirety while reflecting on the time spent to bring it to this point. Tomorrow the public opening will commence and the public will be able to ponder on the very same thoughts and processes the class has.

Final Thoughts on The Process

The project is finally completed! Here we have a glimpse of the week by week process and intense organization Jessica took part in to complete the installation right on time and to its best possible potential. Jessica color coded, highlighted, and crossed her way through the heavy list of things to be done every week so that everything stayed perfectly on track (with some adjustments). Ultimately, much like the connective structures that exist literally within the piece, the mere instructions that were illustrated to conduct the piece's existence mimicked the installations actual likeness.

Stereoscopic Effects

The lights were tested and placed this week. In the image above we see the effect that takes place when the blue light is filtered over the shapes in the space. The result is the stereoscopic effect that causes our brain to trick itself into believing the image is actually a three dimensional shape. Stereoscopic glasses will also be used to further enhance the effect.

Final Connections: Space, Perception, and Final Decisions

These groups of images are shown together here simply because they exist within the same series of processes that were necessary at the end of the project. Jessica's spring break plans for the "portal" went very smoothly and therein underwent yet another transformation to further bring the space and project together. As you can see Jessica put the "portal" through a series of transformations until one seemed to make the most sense. In the end it is clearly evident that the final image leads the viewer to believe that from some other singularly dimensional plane, a new existence of color, shape, and perception has emerged. This particular section of the installation is probably the most transparent representation of the use perspective theory to better understand planes and existences we cannot perceive literally. Ultimately with the finalizing of these lines and "virtual" spaces we can come to a better understanding, as a viewer, exactly what a "hyper-structure" truly is.

The Workspace

Here is an overall view of Jessica and the student's studio for the semester. In the studio we can see that the space itself has become the planner for the project. Thoughts, ideas, plans, techniques, instructions, and processes are illustrated literally all over the gallery. There is also a wide range of insightful literature that is always available to the students in the gallery. Ultimately, the gallery existed as a safe haven for the creative ventures and leaps this project has undertaken.

Student Involvement and The Fragile Nature of The Museum

This week the team also took some time to learn about inspecting, shipping, handling, and archiving art in the AEIVA galleries and archive. The students thought out and designed a plan for how the current student juried show (Curated by Jessica) would be laid out in the large gallery space and then took the time to learn to properly move it about the space and install it. They also visited the back space of the gallery where AEIVA has a permanent collection of works. There the team was exposed to the varying technologies and methods used to maintain a large body of work. Ultimately, this time was spent teaching as a opposed to practicing. The skills and experience learned and gained in this time frame will go on to help the students with future careers in the art industry.

ADDITIONAL FINDINGS

As a result of the previous weeks reflection, Jessica went with the idea to have the color leading through a portal that would connect the smaller gallery that acted as the primary workspace, with the lecture hall on the opposite wall. Pictured above is the problem solving that therein took place to come to a general idea of how these lines of color would be placed. Ultimately, the beginning of this  week showed the team that even in the final hours of a large project, something new and excited can be discovered and pursued.

Late Spring Break

The end of spring break was used primarily as a time of reflection for the space. Those who remained on campus during the break took the time to look closely on what could further the space, what could be refined, and what could be added. Jessica took the time to make numerous additional sketches that would be translated in the final weeks ahead. The team came to the decision to add more color and as a result, more time was to be spent to create the ultimate vision for the project.

Early Spring Break

The finishing touches are finally underway! The lines of color on the floor have been mostly cleaned up at this point and are awaiting a final session to make them ready for opening night. This work was completed primarily during spring break while most of the team was away, so Jessica used her precise eye to hone in on many things that may had been missed in the hustle and bustle of the previous weeks and constant traffic throughout AEIVA.

4D OBJECTS ROTATION

A video lecture on further understanding of the fourth dimension and how it can be perceived from our own dimension. The simplex, a theoretical fourth dimensional object, is constructed and expanded upon so that its infinite possible dimensions illustrate the fourth dimension in a way that is tangible and accessible. 

WEEK 7 (Feb 20 - Feb 26)

With the end of the installation period in sight, the team was finally able to work on the beginning processes of installing the finishing details. Pre-Made vinyl panels were installed on the high points of the walls and ceiling via the lift to carry the pixel effect into the void of the white walls. As a result of commencing the finalizing process, we were finally able to reflect back on the space as a whole and how the shapes ultimately affected and manipulated both the space, and our perception of it.

Floor Work With Color

This week we added lines of color that would then later connect to lines that extended onto the walls and through the "portal" that exists between the wall of the lecture hall and the studio work space. In laying down these initial guidelines, we could begin to truly understand how each area of the installation would connect through spaces imagined, and not directly perceived. The team focused in on perfecting their skills with laying down the vinyl precisely, in a manner that would be aesthetically pleasing, and in a way that would not create any distractions from the overall visual concept.