Project 1: Concept Sketches

For Project 1, we have to take an everyday object and augment it with digital fabrication to make a surrealist piece. I was first interested in augmenting my Moka pot because of its evocative shape. It looked to me like a gaping maw or some kind of building with a giant opening. 




The next object I considered using was a CD. I brainstormed about making it into a tree-like sculpture or a nautilus sea creature, where the CD was the middle of the spiral shell.

 


The idea I decided on was to use the CDs to make a version of a Venus fly trap. This concept appealed to me there is an inherent tension to the Venus fly trap - it implies some kind of movement, a trap springing closed. The idea of a carnivorous plant is already paradoxical and I feel like it would be easy to bend it into the surreal. You can see a sketch for that concept at the top of the image above. 

I anticipate that the biggest challenges will be positioning the CDs so that they actually look like a Venus fly trap and making the stem look organic while providing enough support to the CDs. I also have to think about colors and whether or not I want to paint/color the CDs.

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