Autonomy

Right at the beginning of the semester, my class was asked to start thinking about how we go about designing. Over the course of the semester we were to do an independent project showing our process of design.

Personally, have to write a paper before I type it so I suppose it would make sense that my design process keeps this same notion in mind. Driving back from spring break, I was in the passenger seat of my friends car, tired, sitting, and staring. I know this sound awfully unproductive, but this led to noticing some of the smaller things going on at this time. Raindrops had formed a trail across my friend's windshield and with the bright highway lights casting down on them they started to sparkle amongst the rest of the setting dusk sky. This light effect is small, but beautiful. My head had already started churning the idea of a rain light, so my first step was to jot this down, along wth any of my other ideas for this proposition no madder how good or bad they were. Next step was to refine these drawings and lastly play around with materials. In the above photos I experimented with many effects. These included adding hot glue to plexi glass, real glass, making cuts into plexi glass, frosting real and plexi glass, adding water color to hot glue on plexi glass, adding acrylic paint, and using a hot air gun to bend plexi glass. By taking different papers such as tracing and marker paper and adding color created multiple effects. I also found that holding these papers at different distances created the effect of the rain simulations coming in and out of focus. None of the above photos shows a final rain light, but rather the process.