Client: University of South Australia

Location: Adelaide, Australia

Completion date: 2018

Artwork budget: $35,000

Project Team

Artist

Jimy McGilchrist

Molten Immersive Art

Artist

Ryan Stephens

Molten Immersive Art

Artist

Dorothy Di Stefano

Molten Immersive Art

Overview

An explosion of self-illuminated triangles frozen in the air form a peace crane when viewed from just the right angle.

This perspective sculpture is created from dozens of large acrylic panels suspended overhead on wires. 24 of these panels incorporate LED lighting embedded inside the acrylic that illuminates the whole panel via etched channels. Each light behaves like a pixel and incorporates subtle changes in brightness to create gentle movement.

The artwork was created for the University of South Australia's MOD gallery and is part of their latest exhibition, Waging Peace.

Goals

The brief was to create an exhibit to display a selection of iPad games that explore empathy rather than violence. We felt that a perspective sculpture perfectly mirrored what these games were trying to achieve. That is, seeing something from a different point of view.

Our main goal was to create something that would work well in the narrow gallery space and take advantage of the seven-meter high ceiling. We also wanted to incorporate light as a feature since the large windows in the gallery would mean the exhibit would be visible at night.

Process

We worked closely with the gallery on the initial concept to ensure that what we produced would fit with the larger exhibition.

In total we had eight weeks of preproduction time, which included research, design, sourcing materials, prototyping and fabrication. We also produced signage, graphics and animation for the exhibit.

As this was our first time creating a perspective sculpture, we decided to build a life-size prototype out of core flute board. This proved invaluable and informed the final 3D model which was used as a guide for the installation process while on site.