The Animal
[part 1]
We returned from winter break and were met with our first spring studio assignment. Our objective was to represent and construct a chosen endangered animal form using found/reclaimed packaging material into an articulating movable model.
As a Southern California native, I knew immediately that I wanted to create an aquatic animal of some sort. I began exploring different endangered animals, paying attention to their forms, silhouettes and identifying characteristics.
I eventually settled on the Crystal Jellyfish, found up and down the west coast of the US. Drawn to it’s transparent quality and interior bell, I figured there was a lot of potential for an interesting form to emerge from the abundance of transparent plastic I had collected. My idea was to use the base of a standard clear plastic water bottle as the interior bell of the jellyfish and cutting the body into strips as tentacles.
While assembling the pieces, the glue gun nozzle happened to warp the plastic, a happy surprise that I later took advantage of.
I also later attached LEDs to a small coin cell on the interior of the the jellyfish hood to deal with the crystal jellyfish’s luminescence.
At this point, I was still unsatisfied with what I had come up with because it felt as if I’ve reached a ceiling in terms of iterations. There didn’t seem like there was anymore iterations that I could do to improve a moderately decent design. The jellyfish itself is rather shapeless and I fell into a rut in trying to capture it.
In my search for new materials to experiment with for the jellyfish, I found a lone abandoned printer. As I was inspecting it, I noticed the brush inside the mouth of the printer, reminding me of the baleen teeth on a humpback whale.
So naturally I disassembled the printer.
I was well aware that the was the second iteration was due in less than 72 hours, but I felt more inspired by this one brush within the printer than I had during the entire process of making the jellyfish. I figured it was a risk worth taking.
The process of taking apart the printer took, collectively, about 8 hours; I was left with a mess of a desk and vague idea of what I was going to do with these parts. The printer itself possessed a good amount of natural curves in the paper tray and housing that I was able to work with.
I ended up running the parts through a band saw and assembled the whale, attaching the fins in the process.
In the end, the entire form ended up seeming more “bionic” than I had originally intended, but I embraced it. The proportions are off, but the form communicates as a whale and is overall more successful than that of the jellyfish. Unlike with the jellyfish, I was not molding the existing silhouettes of my material, but embracing them, using the natural forms to become a whale. The exposed look works with the whale itself and pays homage to the printer from which it was born.
[part 2]
[part 3]
“make a pop-up representation of your animal”
