It's time to call it done. After months of working on this project and learning a ton of new techniques, I'm proud to call my hex stage project (a.k.a. the Honeycomb) finished.
Previously:
Honeycomb update: Mocap with Chaery
This piece was a creation for my Designing for Digital Fabrication class with Danny Rosin. The prompt was to come up with a sculpture using various CAD methods and then attempt to actualize it. Because we're still in the middle of a pandemic, we don't have access to the full array of usual small project tools that this course would involve, so the suggestion this year was to go big. Big size, big budget, big effort.
The Machine at the Met Opera
I was inspired by the set design for the Met Opera's production of Wagner's Ring Cycle, called the Machine. It is a 90,000-pound contraption composed of 24 30-foot aluminum planks suspended in rotation between two 26-foot tall steel towers. By actuating the rotation of the planks and using projection mapping, a technique where live video feeds are projected onto the set, the production designers were able to create vivid images of a mountain of gold or a cave of fire to winged horses and a rotating light bridge. The latter is one of the most stark monochrome images I've ever had the pleasure of seeing personally.
I wanted to do something similar with the concept of breaking up an image in large form using individual riser platforms and then creating finer-grained details in the visualizations. For example, we could have an ocean of waves, a throne for a king, an Escherian staircase, or a craggy mountain.
The Met's production of the Ring Cycle is estimated to have cost about $40 million (including $2m just to reinforce the stage to support the weight).
Luckily, by keeping things small and digital, changes are much easier to make while still maintaining the concept. Also, knowing that I wouldn't have enough time to go down every path, I opted to focus on 3 areas where I thought I could prototype concepts, learn techniques, and keep costs low.
I created a scale model of the piece in Blender and decided to 3d print it. I wanted to experiment with various modeling techniques so I also cast the models into clear plastic resin and plaster using a silicon mold. (See blog post)