Example of Imagery

Draft #1 Light Box

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First draft of what I intend my light boxes to look like. I am really happy with the results. I am so glad I was able to incorporate the mirror into my design, since it was in my mind when I started working on my BFA. Cutting out the images on black card stock gave me another idea of incorporating images these images directly on the background of the mirrors. Etching and engraving both give a unique and different look to my boxes. The mirror gives them a 3-D  layer like look, like if  I where stacking images together. I also enjoy the look black and white, positive, negative images. For this first draft I look into consideration James advice of looking at semiotics and how images represent things in my life.

First Design// Draft #1

First Illustrator file that I used with the laser machine. Playing around with different materials, glass, black card stock, to see the different effects and look of etching and image and cutting out an image.

 1. Illustrator file for etching and image into glass on the laser machine.

2. Laser machine etching onto the glass.

3. Final image etched onto the glass.

4. Etched image on glass with a black background. 

Next I tried cutting out the image starting with black card stock to see the different effect of cutting and etching out an image on the laser machine. 

1. Illustrator file for cutting out the image in the laser machine. 

2. Laser cut out image on paper. 

Painting the boxes

After hours of cutting, measuring, hammering and assembling all 12 boxes I finally finished. It took me about a week to finish all of them. Once I had all of them ready, it was time to paint them. I decided to paint all of them black, painting took me about 8 hours total with drying and painting each side individually.

Constructing the box

It has been a challenge making the wooden boxes, first because it was my first time actually doing any kind of construction work like hammering and specially cutting out the pieces to fit exactly the size for my box. With the help of my father, I was able to achieve making these boxes and not cutting out a finger.
Total I made 12 boxes, I started with the idea of making 9 boxes for my gallery, but after seeing the quite large size of the gallery, I decided it would look better with four boxes of each of the three walls. Wood box with picture frame to hold the art work.
Here are some pictures of the process of making the light boxes.

Lights

After testing different kinds of lights and their effects on the space inside the box, I found the ideal lights that work and illuminate great. These are a 3 button circular LED light with bright light. They are push-on lights, I don't have to worry about light bulbs heating up and causing problems in my box. They have the ideal brightness and safety.

To camouflage the silver color of these lights I decided to paint them black in order for them to blend in and not stand out us much inside of the light box. 

 

Meeting with James/ Semiotics

Today I met with James to discuss the progress of my project.
 Gave me lot's of useful pointers to consider for my project.

Semiodics (Wikipidia Definiton)  
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or (in the Saussurean tradition) semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes (semiosis), indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication. Semiotics is closely related to the field of linguistics, which, for its part, studies the structure and meaning of language more specifically. Semiotics is often divided into three branches:

• Semantics: Relation between signs and the things to which they refer; their denotata, or meaning
• Syntactics: Relations among signs in formal structures
• Pragmatics: Relation between signs and the effects they have on the people who use them

Interesting Reading I found online to help me understand the meaning of semiodics and how I can relate it to my work,  Semiotics for Beginners By: Daniel Chandler http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem02.html


Signs take the form of words, images, sounds, odours, flavours, acts or objects, but such things have no intrinsic meaning and become signs only when we invest them with meaning. 'Nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign', declares Peirce (Peirce 1931-58, 2.172). Anything can be a sign as long as someone interprets it as 'signifying' something - referring to or standing for something other than itself. 



James also suggested to start working with the imagery for my light boxes and start playing around with different materials for the laser, he suggested http://www.tapplastics.com/index.php? Surprisingly the store is located on Castro Street in Mountain View, just about five minutes away from my house. For sure I will be going in tomorrow and starting to test out some materials on the laser.

Laser Machine Examples

Here is my first attempt by myself with the laser machine, exploring my own file and how to import and do the whole process in the laser machine all by myself. 

 

Attempt in making frames out of black construction paper using an illustrator file. 

Laser Cutting and Etching Workshop, San Mateo

The laser is a printer that prints with heat. There are two kinds of workable file formats to use with the laser machine, Raster and Vector.

Raster: Made of pixels and is the artwork that is etched to your working surface. It can be jpg, gif, png and bmp file format. It is generally any image that cannot be transformed in size because of deformation. A rater file can be a picture coming from your camera or a scanner.

Vector: Data expressed via equations, straight lines, circles, rectangles, splines, hand drawn squiggly curves. Any line that is made with the smallest non-zero thickness of a hairline. Vector images are the images on your work file that are going to be cut out.

These working files to use with the laser machine are going to be imported and sent to print thru CorelDraw.

Inspiring ideas

Looking online I found some examples of what I am hoping to accomplish with my light box and the laser machine. I mainly want to create figures and as in these example have the light glowing in the background and the laser cut images in the front glass of my light box. These are some examples of similar ideas.

First attempt to make the light box

Choosing the right light for the Lightbox