Research

For this project, I started off with a list of homonyms that I thought would work well for the project. Some of them were:

• Band – a musical group / a ring
• Bat – an implement used to hit a ball / a nocturnal flying mammal
• Lie – to recline / to tell a falsehood
• Match – to pair like items / a stick for making a flame
• Rock – a genre of music / a stone
• Pound – a unit of weight / to beat
• Book – read a book/ book an appointment
• Duck – the animal/ duck for cover
• Nail – fingernails/ hammer the nail
• Park – Grassy space/make a car stationary

I decided on “rock” because I thought the relation of music and geology would be a fun concept with which to play. I started gathering images and worked in class on the miro board about what “rock” means to me and my classmates. (I’m not sure why Aegeas’ name is on all the images on the miro board)

Through my research, I realized that when dealing with the musical definition of “rock”, most people think of the combined energy of a band and the audience. The mineral rock part was a lot trickier to consider and conceptualize. There were many different directions I could go in, go with a traditional sense of pebbles or small boulders, play into the gem motif of rocks or even talk about mountains, caves, and other rock formations.

Ideation 

I messed around with a few different sketches first to find a good combination of both senses. Once I figured out the direction I wanted to go in, I started creating on Illustrator. I made a few different versions to make sure my concept worked with the laser cutter. 

 

After talking with Deb and the rest of my class, I made the realization that my concepts did not fully fulfill the conceal and reveal by just revealing music, since that already goes with the band. I decided to enlarge my rock formation and move it to the back, so when the light hit the book it would reveal a grand rock formation.

 

Concept

The objective of this project was to take a homonym and represent the dual meanings through form and light. The foreground is a pop-out book that showcases the first homonym and when light is revealed in the back it shows another one. The homonym I chose was the word “rock.” Merriam-Webster defines the music sense of rock as “popular music usually played on electronically amplified instruments and characterized by a persistent heavily accented beat, repetition of simple phrases, and often country, folk, and blues elements” and in the geological sense as “a large mass of stone forming a cliff, promontory, or peak or concreted mass of stony material.”When I think of rock and roll music, I feel that there is excitement and a great deal of energy. Using the silhouette of the crowd and the flowing music I wanted to create a sense of exciting energy. The main focus of the piece is the band, and I emphasized that by putting it on a pedestal with stage light coming out the back to continue the theme of bursting energy. In contrast, I wanted a jagged look for the geological rock, the last layer is made of rock to create a sense of a stage to play into the rock and roll theme. The hidden image when light hits the rear of the rook will showcase the rock arches of Utah and create another natural backdrop of the rock concert. The design elements used in this piece are symmetry, contrast, and motion. The depth cues are built on framing and overlap. This piece will be made up using bristol and glue, using a combination of laser cut and cut using the Exacto knife.

Process

I started by building my image on Illustrator and then I sent it to get a laser cut. The following step was to cut out the rock formation that would be part of the reveal. After talking to Deb I knew I wanted it to be bigger but did not have enough time to send it back to the laser cutter. The next step was building the book to contain all the slides. On each side of the book, I created a spring that holds the slides so they pop out. 

 

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