Spooktacular Light Design

This week we made fantastic light designs. We challenged the kids to do this using only foil, pipe cleaners and a hand held torch or a string of fairy lights. By constraining the materials available, we forced them to explore the possibilities and limits of what you can do with foil -squish it, mould it, fold it, fan it, puncture it etc.

When we turned off the lights in the studio, the fun began. There was lots of exploration of the qualities that foil might contribute to the design- whether the light is reflected by it, passing through a space in it or distorted by an edge of it.

This cat alien has devilish red ears and waggling foil legs and is wound round with pumpkin-coloured fairy lights. 

These ghost masks have internal lights shooting out of ghoulish eyes (and blood streams for the top light).

Some of our students made sculptures-moulded with foil-to project interesting shadows -this one's a witch -onto the wall.

Others were entranced by the reflective properties of foil and built a giant space age plane with tiny magical animals flying on the top of the fuselage.

This student made a series of horseshoe shaped ornaments, with candy cane like pipe cleaner stripes, this became a visually appealing garland.

This lantern box made good use of a coloured scaffolding and cast an interesting shadow.

In this team effort, our designers made a large flower with illuminated squirly stamens in the centre and a twining decorated vine. Nice job!

Make something awesome: Fall 2015 after-school sessions

A 9 week session is starting up on Mondays at Artscape Youngplace. There will be a pick up at Givins Shaw school. Students from other schools are welcome to join us at Artscape. 

Here's our new schedule:

Week 1 (Sept. 28th): "Moving Words"
Make a kinetic sculpture that's also a sign.

Week 2 (Oct. 5th): "Rainy Daze"
Improve on umbrella design: make it cooler, drier, more eco-friendly.

Week 3 (Oct. 19th): "Picnic Party" 
Plan the perfect outdoor feast.

Week 4 (Oct. 26th): "Spooktacular Light Show" 
Scare your friends by creating a ghostly chandelier, a haunted light sculpture or an illuminated decoration for Halloween.

Week 5 (Nov 2nd): "Come up to our room" 
Build furniture for a fabulous hangout for kids.

Week 6 (Nov 9th): "A design for good and evil"
Make one outfit that morphs from a dream to a nightmare. 

Week 7 (Nov. 16th): "Blind Store"
Experience shopping without sight then reimagine the grocery store.

Week 8 (Nov. 23rd): "Help! We've got chores" 
Build a device that can tidy your room.

Week 9 (Nov. 30th): "Mission Possible" 
Create a secret zipline drop for spies.

Spooktacular Light Design

This week we made fantastic light designs. We challenged the kids to do this using only foil, pipe cleaners and a hand held torch or a string of fairy lights. By constraining the materials available, we forced them to explore the possibilities and limits of what you can do with foil -squish it, mould it, fold it, fan it, puncture it etc.






When we turned off the lights in the studio, the fun began. There was lots of exploration of the qualities that foil might contribute to the design- whether the light is reflected by it, passing through a space in it or distorted by an edge of it.

The pipe-cleaners were sometimes used to sculpt a beautiful illuminated object  (like the wire light sabre at the top) or this intricate fairy garden design below.

Sometimes the interplay between the light and the shadow it cast animated its surroundings. Some of the kids were fascinated by this idea and designed intricate shadow boxes and light projectors.   

One wire sculpture evolved into a carnival  over the course of the class, with a dinosaur, two riders and dangling shapes casting a playful scene onto the wall.  Another, a green bear shadow maker.


This flower-like projection (above) was developed, by moulding the foil onto the face of the torch and experimenting with the effects at different angles.

One design team decided to pursue a Halloween theme.  Here is their iridescent pumpkin parade (left).

It took serious collaboration to come up with this installation!