Butterfly Ball Effect

School is now over and I feel restless. My hands are idle now that I have finished up art class and I miss the exhaustion. I miss my mates. I miss making stuff. But I have enjoyed the downtime so I can take photos of my final projects.

This project was extremely interesting to do. I took modular origami (a butterfly ball) and made the squares from photos of objects, sorta like a mash-up. I had so many ideas of what objects to make that it was a bit overwhelming. Some objects that I thought would be successful came out a bit lackluster (the stairs and silver machine, and stop sign). Some others that were just spontaneous thoughts were to be my best (the word parking, car, fire hydrant).

The most interesting thing about the project itself was also unexpected. I found myself more connected to the process of making those objects rather than the end product themselves. It was all so intimate. I took the photos, decided which parts I would extract into squares, and also how to place them so as to create spatial order/dynamic through their placement against one another.

I had to make myself objective in order to see these 3D objects as 2D surface planes and yet pay attention to their 3D life as well-crafted objects. The creation of each ball was at least 3 hours long. It took awhile because I had to make sure each object was correctly balanced. A bit like flower-arranging, I had to make there was good negative space, enough distribution of color, good connective lines. So much thought into each placement, I thought I was going to blow my mind off.

After each object was made. I also found myself asking about presentation. How would I show these products to my fellow art students. I thought it would be cool to make a huge see through butterfly ball and then smash it like a pinata so all the other balls would come out. I went with that idea but it was probably not the best idea. The execution of it was clumsy as I was running out of time. I the transparent paper was very hard to manipulate and was essentially see through so that you really couldn't get to see the form of it. It just looked awkward to me.

I wish I could have done something different like posted these balls throughout the school campus and see what people thought. Or choose one of the objects and make a bigger object out of it (like the fire hydrant). I would push it even more and take of photo of the hydrant in a real world situation like with a dog sniffing it. Or I could have just simply taken the photos and presented that to the class. I felt so strange to work from 2D to 3D back to 2D again. My work felt so strange to me as photos, so flat when they were round, and yet so clear when they originally muddled. Now I can't help looking at 2D objects as 3D and 3D objects in 2D.