The design shows a body augmentation focused around the head. The piece shows a flat disk-like hat, with five clown masks hanging off each end. As the disk spins, a new face is aligned with the user’s face, showing how people put on different masks to hide their emotions. This plays in effect with the carnival’s shadowy past, it may look fun and inviting on the outside, but when the “masks” are taken off, the sad truth of the past is revealed, just as the hidden emotions of people are as well. The spinning correlates with the sensation of emotions swarming in the mind. The top of the hat is decorated as a carnival tent, to further emphasize the acts people endure to cover up their emotions. As the person wears the piece, they can “choose” which mask to put on, and the piece is also meant to be interacted with by those surrounding the user, who can also choose a mask and detach it from the composition. The handles on the masks communicate the intention of interacting with the viewers. Behind the masks, a crack is revealed in the top center – a simplistic way to emphasize the mental health issues that lie beneath the surface. We explored the classic colors of the carnival and used a lot of new materials like tissue paper, tule, matte board, chipboard, dowels, wire, and chain. We wanted to create a solid and secure structure so that we could decorate to our desires and we aimed to create contrast between the materials and colors.
Ideation
To start off this module, we did some research on carnivals to really get to know the topic we were dealing with. Through this research, we discovered that carnivals have a very dark and disturbing history to them. Here is the first part of the Miro Board we created with our class where we documented the things we found and linked websites that were interesting/helpful.Here is the second part of the Miro board where we created this chart to begin to narrow down our ideas and what we wanted to do. This includes topics we thought of, what body parts we were considering for augmentation and aspects of carnivals we wanted to incorporate.To start this project out, we did an exercise where we were given three different parameters to follow to create an interactive, carnival-related piece in two hours. We were given any body part we chose, masks/facepaint as the carnival concept, and gambling as our theme. The left image shows my sketches and ideas throughout the process. We decided to go with a slot machine to represent gambling, which would we would place on the face in response to the mask requirement. The slots of the slot machine are placed right in front of the eyes with symbols of death, money, and heartbreak to symbolize the way gambling “blinds” you, and all you really win is an addiction. To create this mechanism, we used a PVC pipe attached to a pipe corner attached to a wooden dowel. The PVC pipe has the slots taped onto it, and the pipe is fed into a track made of wire so it is held into place and sturdy on the face. The whole thing is attached to a pair of sunglasses we found in one of the classrooms with wire and glue. We then attached all of that onto a slot machine front made out of paper, that has “flashing lights” and advertising words on it to entice the viewer to gamble. The whole thing was fully functional and the experience was extremely helpful to us. It made us realize that we could come up with creative solutions much faster than we ever thought, and we could create something interactive and functional quite easily. The final product is shown in the image on the right.The next few days of class were quite tough. We were very unsure of where we wanted to go with the project. We originally were going with this dress/outfit of masks idea that is described in the image on the left. We wanted to tackle either body image or mental health as our topic and it made sense to have them be everywhere because everyone has different insecurities and emotions. We wanted the masks to be removable so that the audience would be able to take them off and smash them on the ground as a powerful symbol to basically “destroy” the insecurities or emotions. The more invested we got in this idea, the less we liked it. What was the point of using masks if it was all over the body? Why not use something else? We eventually became so frustrated and lost that we sat down and made this list that is shown on the right. The list was all of the aspects of the idea we had at the time and what the point of them was. We did this to help us narrow down why we were having so much trouble and why the idea wasn’t clicking. As you can see, many of them are blank because we couldn’t even come up with an intentional explanation for most of the things we had come up with. We then remembered an idea that we had at the very beginning of brainstorming, which is depicted on the right side of the right image. It would be a headpiece that would have masks hanging from all around it. The piece would spin on the user’s head and the masks would line up with their face to embody the fronts we put on for everyone around us. The masks would have something on the backside of them that would symbolize the truth of the mental health struggles the person is going through behind that front. We instantly liked this concept much more than our previous one so that is what we went with, although we still had a lot of questions.Here is another page from my sketchbook where I drew the idea out a little more detail, and wrote a to-do list and the structure measurements that I will describe in more detail below.Before we even really decided on a solid concept, we knew we were going to use masks so we decided to start designing them. The left image shows inspiration that we were initially really fond of, but we kind of strayed away from these specific looks and went toward more clown-like designs. The image shows some interesting mask drawings that we found on Pinterest. We liked the intense contrasts in colors and the unique shapes in the photo and wanted to implement those traits into our masks. The image on the right shows some of the abstractions I created on my own on Adobe Fresco, just to test out what designs I preferred and what I was personally capable of creating. This was really helpful to get the ideas flowing in our collaborations.
The image on the left is a plain face mask that would be purchased at a party store, and we wanted to model our basic mask shape after it. The image on the right is an illustrator abstraction that Sydney created that we used as the basis of our mask designs. We really wanted all the masks to be very similar in nature and be based on the same general mask shape to relate it back to our concept statement. Everyone puts on these “masks” to hide their personal issues, but they’re all the same in that they cover up who we truly are. We wanted to make all the masks similar to emphasize this sort of fake and industrialized phenomenon that occurs.
On this particular day, we had a breakthrough moment. This is when we realized we hated our original idea and wanted to change everything. We decided to every back to one of our original ideas. We were still really struggling to visualize a concept, even after all of that, so we decided to say yolo and just try it. Sydney cut our basic mask shape out of drawing paper on her Cricut at home, originally to make the actual masks out of. We realized they were too flimsy to use for our new concept, but we still used them for our model. We created some physical tests of our mask designs, and then created a model of our actual mechanism. We were racking our brains trying to figure out how to make it spin and accomplish everything we wanted. I thought back to the previous project, the layers project, where I learned how to create a spinner out of paper from Deb. I took that knowledge and tried to apply it to this scenario and it was actually very helpful. Instead of a stack of paper circles, we had this weird wooden thing we found. We actually got incredibly lucky and found this very crucial piece of our final project just sitting on a shelf with no owner and it was as if the heavens had sent it straight to us. We used that as the piece the circles would spin on. For this model, we cut circles out of cardboard, attached our model masks with string, and taped a random piece of ribbon to the bottom to hold it on the head. From this, we learned that we needed to make the two circles different sizes so they could be easily grasped and spun.
When it came time to actually create our real masks, we decided to split up the work. We chose to do five masks on the piece, so I did two and Sydney did two and then we just made a copy of one of them. To make the masks, we went through a lot of different ideas. We originally wanted to make them out of paper mache to add to the original idea of them being crushed, but it didn’t make sense in the time frame or overall concept we decided on. One day during class, we were talking to Deb about different materials and she introduced us to mat board and we instantly knew that’s what we needed. She showed us a little sneak peek at a part of the next project that used different pieces of mat board that were cut inverted of each other and we loved the way it looked. The way the pieces fit together so nicely and cleanly is just what we were looking for. We ordered a pack of colored mat board on Amazon and it worked wonderfully.
After materials were decided upon, it was time to design them. The image on the far left shows the source image that I was inspired by for the design. I loved the way it looked like the mask was peeling away to reveal this diamond pattern. I then went into Adobe Fresco to sketch it out, as seen in the image second from the left. From there, I moved the sketch into Adobe Illustrator to create a laser cutter file. In review, Sydney suggested I add a mouth and nose so it looked more like the other masks. The image on the far right shows the file after it was laser cut, and you can see half of the items were missing. Between time constraints and the complexity of the design, we mutually decided it would be best to not use this design and just make copies of the other designs that did work.
This is the other mask design I made which we did actually end up using. I used the same exact process as the first one, but I didn’t base it on an inspiration image, I just came up with it myself. The image on the far right shows the final product of the mask.
After laser cutting all our mask design files, it was time to put them all together. In our first attempt, Sydney used the paper masks that she cut out with her Cricut earlier to mod-podge the pieces to the paper. We realized that this left the paper very wrinkly and messy with glue so we tried something else. We cut those same shapes out of cardstock on the class Cricut and used rubber cement to secure it to the back of the mask instead. We then placed the mask in between two heavy items to keep them from wrinkling or warping in any way. This worked very well and made them look significantly better. Deb also suggested that we sand down the edges of the paper/masks to make them look clean and less separate and that helped a lot as well.
To make the underneath mechanism, we used chipboard to create the circles. Sydney created an illustrator file of the circles that I then cut with the laser cutter. In order to obtain accurate measurements, we took a yardstick to our head, took one of the model masks we made, and held it on the yardstick at the distance from the face that we chose. We then marked where that was on the yardstick, looked at how far from the center point of the head that was, and then doubled that number to find the diameter of the large circle. For the smaller circle, we just made another circle that was a reasonable amount smaller than the large circle, with no specific measurements. We then measured the diameter of the dowel on the wood piece we were using and made a small circular hole in the center of both circles that was just a few centimeters larger than our measurement so the circles could slide on the dowel with ease but also not wiggle around.Here you can see the pieces assembled.Sydney created this headband sort of piece out of cardboard and tape to go at the bottom of the piece to create a way for it to sit on the head more comfortably.After we created the mechanism, it was time to start decorating. We originally did not really have any plans for the top part of the piece, but Sydney suggested that we make it look like a carnival tent and I loved the idea. The creation of this tent was quite the process. We split up the work for this part, I created the understructure and Sydney created the tent part. For the structure, I used a sturdy wire that I looped together around the dowel and hot glued into place. We also hot-glued the other ends of the wires to the large circle at the base. Sydney used red and white tissue paper for this. We were a little skeptical about using it because we really only used it because we already had it, but it worked out very nicely in my opinion. I think it looks very tent-like because of its fabric-like qualities, but it’s also easy to fold, tape, and secure to the wire structure. She made a triangle of tape between the structural wires, and then taped triangles of red tissue paper to the taped triangles. She then took triangles of white tissue paper and glued that to the red in the spaces that were remaining.After we made the tent, we decorated the remainder of the structure. We wrapped the headband piece in a few layers of red tissue paper, which we were also skeptical to do, but it ended up looking quite smooth. This is roughly the time when everything went wrong. At this point, we had been in Hayes for many hours and were starting to become delusional, when all of the sudden, the wood piece broke. The dowel came right out of the wooden circle and the whole structure was dismantled. We laughed about it and then attempted to figure out how to fix it. We knew we just needed to glue the dowel back to the wood circle without getting glue on the chipboard pieces, but our panicked attempts were failing. We found some gorilla glue in the classroom we were in and decided to try it. We smothered the thing with glue and had to be patient for it to dry. We went away to take a break and when we came back it was dry and the piece was fixed! And to our surprise, the spinning mechanism still worked flawlessly. After that fiasco, we glued a piece of wide, red ribbon to the bottom of the wood piece, and then gorilla-glued the headband piece onto the smaller chipboard circle over the ribbon so it would be wedged in between and lay neatly on the head. We decided to paint the chipboard circles white to avoid over-using red and it turned out to be a very nice contrast.Once the main part of the piece was moving along, I then began working on the chains and hooks to secure the masks. We wanted the masks to be removable from the main structure, so we created loops that remained on the masks and hooks that attached to the ends of the chains so they could go on and off the loops. The top photo shows a very messy model that we did with a very thin and flexible wire that worked fairly well so we tried it with a more durable wire. The bottom left image shows the first hooks that we made, and the bottom right image shows the chains and hooks that we made.After we created the wire pieces, we attached the chains to the underside of the larger circle using hot glue. We hot-glued the loops to the back of the masks and then attached them to the chains with the hooks. This is when the vision started finally came to fruition and it was very rewarding to see it working.The day after we made the chains and hooks, we had a conversation with Deb and she was not a big fan of the way we glued the loops to the masks. She showed us a technique of bending the wire to create the loops shown above, which would be attached to the masks through a hole punch, and looked much more professional than what we originally had. We decided to take her advice because Deb is truly never wrong, and it made everything look so much better. It was also a lot easier to detach these loops from the hooks compared to our loops. It made it more visible to the audience that the masks were detachable to encourage interaction because the hooks and loops were now on the top of the mask rather than hidden on the back of them. In order to change the loops, however, we had to pick the hot glue off the back of the masks, which ripped the cardstock we had on them. We had to recut a new set of cardstock backings but it was very worth it.Once we were done with all the wire mechanisms, it was time for some final touches! We decided to add tulle to the base of the tent on the large chipboard circle. Sydney used hot glue to attach the tulle to the base, and really just used a trial-and-error method of applying it. She bunched up several pieces, glued them on, touched up areas that needed more or that looked awkward, and then cut away the hot glue strings. We were originally intending on doing both red and white tulle, but after we put the red on, we decided against using the white because it would cover the tent too much. Although not pictured above, we did also add a little piece of the red tulle to the tip of the tent to cover the loose ends of the tissue paper and to make it look more like a hat.Another final touch we added was the handles for the masks. We opted to include these because we wanted to encourage interaction with the piece as much as possible while still keeping everything simple. The handles were a way to show that the masks could be grabbed and held. We used a thin, flat dowel that Deb gave us, cut it into five sections, and painted them white.We then attached them to the right side of the back of the masks with gorilla glue as shown above.The final detail we added was a crack to the backside of the mask. We had a very difficult time choosing what we wanted to put on the back of the masks. We knew we wanted to have something on the backs that were revealed when the masks were removed, but we could not figure out what. We wanted something that would symbolize two different things; one being the dark truth behind the carnivals of the past that were made to look fun and entertaining on the outside and the second being the truth behind mental health and the way it really feels underneath the fake persona we put on. We debated many ideas like words, pictures, sad clown faces, scary clown faces, symbols that would represent dark things, etc. We finally came across this image on the far left of a cracked head and we immediately were inspired by it. The crack is a simple, clean, and powerful image. It doesn’t explicitly say what is wrong underneath but makes it very clear that something is wrong. I think that leaves a lot of room for interpretation for the viewer, which we were aiming to accomplish. We chose to make all the cracks the same because although we are all different, we are all broken and suffer from mental health issues in some way, shape, or form. It is meant to symbolize the unity between all of us and show the viewers that they are not alone in this suffering. To make it, I made an illustrator drawing of the crack, Sydney cut them out with her Cricut and we secured them to the back of the masks with rubber cement.
As we were working on the other foundations project, we were looking a lot into instruments and music, and Sydney was trying to get inspiration for what a saxophone looks like, so I brought my saxophone to the classroom to show her. One thing led to another and she ended up convincing me to learn the circus music song and record myself playing it to be overlayed on our video submission.
When we were first given this assignment, I was honestly scared. I wasn’t sure how I was going to fare with a carnival-related project. I usually have some initial ideas when we are introduced to assignments but my brain was empty for this one. As the project moved along, though, I think I learned more from just this project than I’ve learned through any other project this year. Working with a partner was new for everyone and I personally really enjoyed it. My partner was very helpful and dedicated to the project and we just worked super well together. I won’t go into detail, but I went through a rough little patch in my personal life during the final week of this project and my partner definitely did not need to help me and talk me through it but she did and I’m very grateful for that. I don’t really know what would’ve happened if we weren’t spending so much time together at that time. I also learned a lot about materials, colors, carnivals, classmates, and more through this project. We were in Hayes basically all day every day the week before spring break so I spent a lot of time with some people that I hadn’t previously known really at all. I got to know so many new people while working on the projects and we really bonded a lot. I also value the things I learned about materials through this process as well. We experimented with wire, tissue paper, tulle, and many other materials that I hadn’t worked with before and I think it expanded my knowledge of material use greatly. Although it was much work and time, I am very grateful for this project and the experiences it caused me to have.
