The Threefold Fourfold, in Twofold Fivefold

After a site visit and some major collaborative effort with Christine Soccio and John Spano, the three of us began devising individual projects that would feed off of the Fourfold exhibition's collaborative spirit. Our task was to imagine that each other's practices were our own, creating a conceptual mashup of the three of our practices, as funneled through our own unique set of tools or media.

I decided to do this with a couple of QR mandala drawings, as well as a new projection negation installation.

The entranceway of the gallery provided a perfect opportunity for such an installation since it was a liminal space that would force viewers to unwittingly engage with the piece as they walk past it to enter the space, blocking the projector and revealing the negated imagery in their shadow.

As with nearly all gallery spaces, wiring was a particular challenge. The only 3 prong outlet happened to be up here in the ceiling! Not something that a few extension cords and surge protectors can't fix though...

I decided the imagery would consist of a stained glass window made up of the Penrose tile pattern and Ammann grid from Christine's practice, featuring a hazmat suited "saint" of sorts out of John's practice.

 I had originally mulled around ideas of making the whole thing digitally interactive as well, incorporating live video feed. I even went as far as to code some experiments:

But ultimately I decided to forgo it for a more streamlined effect. Too much new media is not necessarily a good thing, and there would already be a lot of potentially confusing technology in this show. So instead, I horizontally doubled my original design to better fit the space and end up with bilateral symmetry, the left side using the Ammann Grid pattern and the right side using the Penrose Tile pattern (which geometrically emerge from each other when doing the nitty gritty tessellations of the patterns)

With that settled, I set up my pedestal, projector, and computer, and started going at it:

I've now gotten the process down to a science. Step one, project the image in-situ

Step two, begin masking off the image on the wall.

...very meticulously

5 hours of painter's tape later, I was ready to begin painting, step three.

Using the projection as a template, I begin laying down a few coats of the painted colors

partially done

With the painting complete, it's time for my favorite part...

...peeling off all that tape! There's something very satisfying in that "big reveal" moment of seeing the tape come off

And at long last, I'm ready to calibrate the projected colors to begin the negation process. This of course necessitates stabile ambient lighting, and my collaborators were very gracious in getting their lighting set even before all the work was hung so that I could get started on this.

half calibrated

I toyed with having each side negate differently, one side when the shutter for the main collaborative projection was open, and the other side when the shutter was closed, but it turned out not to effect the overall ambient light that fell on this wall all that much. So with no appreciable difference, I decided to keep the "leading" within the stained glass image and calibrate it all to negate together.

 And this is the result:

And thus we have it, a three way collaboration on the concept of the Fourfold, in bilateral symmetry encompassing fivefold symmetrical patterns. Or in other words... the Threefold Fourfold, in Twofold Fivefold!

For a look at the other projects in the Fourfold exhibition, check out my other posts linked below.

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A Directory of other posts about this project:

THE COLLABORATION:

Fourfold - A Collaborative Exhibition - our first site visit and the beginnings of our concept for the show

Fourfold Collaboration - building and installing the main collaborative installation

INDIVIDUAL WORKS:

Fourfold - Meditation 1.4 - Behind the scenes of my site specific drawings for the exhibition

The Threefold Fourfold, In Twofold Fivefold - Behind the scenes of my fourfold projection negation project (You are Here)

FINISHED PROJECTS:

The Finished Fourfold: Collaboration and Multi-Site Exhibition - An overview of the finished exhibition

The Final Fourfold (Four Now...) - Images from the opening reception and other events