I collaborated with my girlfriend, Eleanor, who is studying Sculpture at UAL. We found a reflective table in someone’s front garden that appeared to have been thrown away. As soon as we saw it, lots of ideas came to mind, so we decided to knock on the door and ask if we could take it. The owner told us that we could, as he was planning to throw it away anyway.
The table was covered in a large reflective film made up of small square sections, similar to the surface of a disco ball. At the time, Eleanor was researching the Dreamachine by Brion Gysin. The Dreamachine is a spinning cylinder with holes cut into it and a light bulb inside. When it spins, the light flashes at a steady rate. If you sit in front of it with your eyes closed, the flashing light passes through your eyelids and can make you see colours, patterns, and shapes.
When we found the table, we wanted to create something inspired by the Dreamachine. Our idea was to shine light onto the table while it rotated at a controlled speed, creating reflections that would flicker at a specific frequency and produce visual effects for the viewer.
The main challenge was finding a way to make the table spin. We experimented with several different methods before eventually placing it on an office chair, which allowed it to rotate smoothly.
We then took the table into a darkroom and hired some stage lights. We experimented with different lighting setups, shining the lights onto the table from various angles to create different reflections and visual effects.
One issue we encountered was that the table was extremely reflective, making it difficult to create sharp reflections on the walls. Instead, the light would scatter and illuminate the entire room. Eventually, we managed to focus the light onto a specific point so that it was parallel to the surface of the table. This created a spiralling effect in which the light reflected back onto itself, producing beams that moved across the ceiling while expanding and shrinking as the table rotated.
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