INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION

The public installation consists of two white wooden boards: a main 4' x 8'  piece with thirty-four pegs placed on a grid and a supplemental 1' x 8' board with nine pegs intended to hold the colored acrylic pieces in its initial setup. Both serve as a neutral backdrop and scaffolding to the playful color-mixing and shape-generating experience.

The shapes were initially created out of paper using scissors and cutting without a particular agenda in mind other than inviting serendipitous outcomes. The process rendered in part an unconscious admiration of the organic and abstract shapes found in artist Alexander Calder’s work and the cutouts by artist Henri Matisse, an outcome that contrasts the stern grid of the supporting board, a search for balance between Structure + Emotion. 

These shapes were transferred to translucent 1/8” acrylic sheets in the CMY colors using a laser cutter. Twenty-seven shapes were created, each laser cut in all three CMY colors, totaling eighty-one acrylic pieces to interact and experiment with. They were randomly given a small hole for them to hang from the pegs, adding gravity into play as an added constraint. 

The addition of a vinyl title wall completed the public installation, inviting the audience to engage with it playfully.

Risograph printing was chosen as a first extension project to take advantage of the nature of its process with its semi-transparent ink, which, when layered on top of each other, renders new colors other than the ones used, making its process a conceptual match in color mixing methodology to that of the semi-translucent acrylic pieces.

Electing three shapes that mostly reminded Carolina Izsák of artist Henri Matisse’s cutouts, all referencing natural vegetation, was an intentional choice. Using the negative form, leaving the shapes without color, and printing their surrounding spaces was an iterative opportunity. With them, the designer created three 11"x17" masters, one per shape and color. She superimposed their prints using risograph colors, such as fluorescent pink as magenta, cornflower as cyan, and yellow. The outcome is a series of graphic images that resemble vegetation enriched by creating new colors such as purple, green, and orange.

Using the idea of permutations to explore further and test the limits of the set’s possibilities, the three shapes (A, B, C) in three colors (1,2,3) were combined, printing only two shapes and two colors at a time. The outcome is a series of nine prints with a cohesive aesthetic that belong to each other.

Further experimenting with the vegetation-like graphic images previously achieved through the Risograph explorations, filling the negative spaces this time with type, using layers of capital letters C for cyan, M for magenta, and Y for yellow, rendered a surprising outcome. Laser printing layers of colored type on each other created a cross-stitch-like texture while successfully generating new colors, this time through visual perception instead of the physical mixing of the inks.

Permutations also came into play by interchanging the order in which the master layers were printed (CMY, MYC, and YCM), surprisingly offering different toned outcomes: blueish, purplish, or yellowish, depending on which letter/color layer was on top.

Daring to bring K(black) back, not as key to the printing process or to alter the hue of the colors CMY, instead as its background, is one last form of variation. In this case, the designer argues that K(black) results from mixing all three colors, as overprinting cyan, magenta, and yellow theoretically creates black. The overprinted K (black) background added an impactful effect, helping the small typographic cross-stitch-like effect to stand out. 

Weaving is a medium, a textile manufacturing methodology that perfectly suits the concept of creating new colors by interlacing existing ones, making it a direct conceptual match to the initial Interactive Installation. A textile woven on a loom is created by mixing vertical (warp) and horizontal threads (weft); therefore, the design is intricately related to its construction. Blue, red, and yellow threads were used to mix new colors on a white warp (background), referencing the CMY colors and the interactive board’s white background. If one looks closer, one notices that what is perceived as orange is woven with red and yellow threads closely placed next to each other; the same is true for purple (red and blue) and green (blue and yellow).

The designer chose to use her favorite shape and color combination created by the audience, the Blob, and used repetition to create a pattern, emulating the essence of a woven textile, which is rooted in the repetition of the weaving gesture. Further developing this textile on a K(black) background to generate a different effect while still weaving the same pattern with blue, red, and yellow threads was an iterative exploration under the premise that cyan, magenta, and yellow create the color black when overprinted.

The weaving of the throws 42" x 72" was outsourced to a Jacquard Loom specialist. 

Even though the production methodology might not be entirely coherent with the original generating concept of superimposing CMY colors to create the new, as the colors are directly overlayed on top of the fabric and no mixing occurs during the process, the set of four fabric prints designed is an ordered series that incorporates the shapes and color combinations created by the audience. Adding meaning to a series of abstract shapes, the designer interpreted shapes as pebbles and vegetation while exploring ideas of scale, repetition, and rhythm in how patterns were established.

Referencing the initial intention of designing a set of elements, a kit of parts and pieces to create further comes full circle with this exploration, as the audience is presented back with a designed element for it, to once again, further create. A cyclical state of transformation that potentially could turn these jolly and bright sets of graphic prints into garments, pillows, sheets, tablecloths, tote bags, curtains, or anything the user desires to make with it while filling its environment with a bold splash of color. A true symbiosis between designer and audience.

All four fabrics shown were printed on white Performance Linen. Sized 54" x 108" each.