Storm of Emotions.
About.
This project is a visually striking kinetic installation featuring four emotion-inspired clouds, each representing self-love, death, love, and heartbreak. By incorporating LED lights and audio, I crafted a unique sensory experience that blends art, audio engineering, and structural design to evoke and explore these profound emotions and the intersection between them
The Process
We brainstormed a lot, we all had differing ideas so a lot of the first few weeks were spent with us drawing sketches and our ideas to make each other understand our vision for the project. After sketching all our ideas and interpretations, we discussed and took the best parts of each of our ideas and began discussing the possible materials we would need to do the project. We ran through the idea of cotton balls but felt it would be too costly since we would have to buy a lot, and too time-consuming as we wanted to make big clouds, and making it out of tiny cotton balls would not be ideal.
We eventually landed on ballon-like balls, and took our project into a vision of a more abstract visualization of a cloud, making it more artistic. Since we landed on this idea of using ballon-like balls, we set to order a variety of sizes of ballon balls and plastic balls. We then ordered a set of LED strips and began to brainstorm how we should hide the wiring and nitty-gritty of the clouds so they wouldn't be seen behind the transparent balls. We thought a wooden box with an opening either on the top of the sides would be ideal, as we could put wiring and stuff inside of it but the opening would offer easy access if we need to change something. We had yet to figure out how to attach the balls together and cover the box, but we would think about it some more.
For other aspects of our project, we thought it would be the balls and balloons around our box hung up, with speakers and lines in each cloud. There would be 3-4 main clouds, each representing a theme. The themes we landed on were self-love, death, love, and heartbreak. These would be expressed through the lights' color palettes and the audio playing for each cloud. It would be almost like a cascade of emotions, lights, and sounds. We thought it would be cool if all the audio and lights were quiet and dim, and as an observer got close, the sound would be higher, and the lights would change and either switch through a gradient or flash.
Based on everything we needed, we divided roles based on our specialities to tackle it all. I personally was put in charge of the sound and light color, as I had previous experience in mixing and compelling audio and cutting.
Once we got all of our materials, I began to see how we could construct the balloons to make our clouds. The first issue we ran into was the balloon inflation. The blow-up balloons were unable to be blown up with just a mouth. Unfortunately, we hadn't taken this into account, and was delayed a class as we had to go out and buy a balloon pump. Once we bought the pump, we quickly came to realize the balloon was very fragile to how we pumped and sealed it. The large balloon was easier to pump, but it couldn't be pumped too big, or else it would explode. The biggest it was able to be pumped looked not horrible but still had some lines along the outside making it look like it could be pumped more but it couldn't. The small balloons had a whole other issue - the sealing.
Since they were so small, it was easy to blow up, however getting the pump out AND tying it without any air getting out was a nightmare. On top of it all, with the balloons we successfully blew up, the next day they deflated quite a bit. All these issues with the balloons led us to the conclusion that these just couldn't be used, it would be way too hard and not look right. The second issue we ran into was with the plastic balls. With the inflatable balloons not working, we were banking on the plastic balls to be our saving grace. Unfortunately, it was not. The plastic balls looked nice from afar, but they seemed a bit flimsy to hang as they would open quite a lot and looked kind of cheap up close.
To try and cover the look and see if we could find a solution to seeing the box underneath, we experimented with putting lights and materials inside the balls. Some we liked, and others looked horrible, but the overall consensus was even if some looked nice, they didn't look nice enough to be the entirety of the cloud. We also had an issue with connecting the balls and balloons to the wooden box. We thought, even if we did go with these balloons and balls, how do we even connect it all?
The last issue was our tech. Our original idea was to use the audio and lights and have them get louder and change as viewers got closer. However, the tech seemed like we were being too ambitious. None of us was experts in pcom, the tutorials we would need to make this happen were very sparse, and in the small amount of time we had (4 weeks), we really felt like everything we wanted to do wasn't super realistic. This left us in a predicament of what to pivot to, or if we even pivot at all.
We were faced with a lot of issues and quite frankly we were exhausted and defeated. As the team leader, I felt like it was my job to cheer up the team and stay positive, as I felt that if we were both defeated and sucked we wouldn't go anywhere. Although I'm sure my group found my overbearing positivity obnoxious, I think it was necessary to keep us going. We agreed to take a long weekend day and really find a solution and just work. We met and it all clicked!
We really went back to the original idea, using cotton-like material to create the feeling of a cloud. Our abstract approach just wasn't working and we needed to go back to our roots. However, we were all still violently against cotton balls for all the same reasons as before. Because of this, we thought "Why not pillow stuffing?". It was bigger, larger pieces, but similar material. We also figured using pillow stuffing would help with covering our wooden box of wires, as it's not transparent. With this idea in mind, we got to school and started just trying. We figured we wouldn't get anywhere just talking about the project, and really needed to start building.
We connected chicken wire around our wooden boxes, as we assumed that would be the easiest way to connect our pillow stuffing to the box and lock our formation in place. The process of building was tedious, as it was a lot of stuffing and poking all around to find the right way to connect the stuffing so it didn't fall off and be flimsy but also had the right formation. We decided to add a thin layer of the stuffing, then loop the LED strips, and then add another layer of stuffing on top so we don't cover the lights too much, but still keep what we want hidden. I found making the clouds very rewarding. You would see our group morale increasing and getting more positive as the clouds were built and we became satisfied with the results.
We did run into a few issues of having one cloud stuffing be too flimsy, as I believe we didn’t stuff the foundation layer of stuffing well enough, causing everything else on the top to fall and droop. Because of this, we did have to go back and redo a cloud, but it did not take very long as we already got into the motion of knowing how to do it.
Another important issue we solved was the tech issue. We thought we would cut back on the complexities and be realistic. We really wanted to value the aesthetic and meaning of the piece, over the techy part. We landed on just having looping audio for each cloud, still with the same themes, and a gradient of colour for each cloud corresponding to the theme. I constructed the audio, recording and editing snippets of audio together that I believed represented the overarching emotion of each cloud. The clouds and audio would not be dealing with any more pcom, as the LED strips were controlled easily by an app, and we ditched the motion sensors. I think this was a key decision of ours. Being realistic saved us, and allowed us to focus most of the looks of the installation, which is really what the viewers will focus most on anyway.