Dress Rehearsal

The "found object" model as I've been mentioning has been sailing through its golden age the past week or so. After a preliminary hunt for scrap materials, we've collectively made a second wave for more metal and plastics, this time with a jackpot find -- a photocopier machine from one of the engineering buildings. It felt a little primal bizarro when this machine was wheeled in to studio, because like a pack of hyenas, we pounced on it and tore the thing to pieces. I've never seen a more crazed group of students in my life. Like a wounded wildebeest, we gutted the thing in a matter of minutes -- blood was spraying all over in the form of black ink powder. Just look at the carcass as we left it:

This tower is proudly brought to you by Sony, Xerox, Kenmore, and HP. At the base is soccer dad's Sony camcorder framing the tower's convention centre, with busted out lens indicating a water purification tank, trim from the Xerox machine rising up the central vertical axis providing sky gardens, and another part of the Xerox providing sun shade for a Polish Bistro at ground level.

The group has achieved a lot over the past couple of weeks and we're all at roughly the same level of completion with the exception of one of two who bypassed the flu bug and are a week ahead of the rest of us. I decided that a dress rehearsal was in order to test how well the group's models snap in to place, since we hadn't initially tested the fit of our bases. When all the models were rolled in to place, we were pleasantly mesmerized by its surreality. Each of us has had some kind of image in our minds as to how the models would look when they were in context with the other towers but we were blown away by how much larger it was in reality than in thought. Bearing in mind that each of the towers is approximately 6' tall, the level of detail and saturation of space with objects and structure was so uplifting. In this glorious state of euphoria, we then discovered that the elevator had broken down in the process and our models were stranded out of reach from our studios...####!

Aerial view of the site looking South.


Explosion Tower, looking towards the Hudson River.I was lucky to snag the site that I did because it's smack dab in the middle of the overall scheme. It sets up a pedestrian gateway to the main public space + having twin towers is great in this situation to lighten the visual density from ground level + frames views looking both ways.

With seven days left from today, it's crunch time to get the drawings done and touch up any of the model that is incomplete. Ohh, the relief to be done...