The original beginning for this project was that Jennifer Morris is essentially a hoarder and had been collecting toilet paper rolls for the entirety of the first semester this year. After she announced that she was just going to recycle them, I told her I would take them and use them for an art project.
After some research into Tara Donovan, I thought for a bit I wanted to have so many toilet paper rolls that they lost the look of a toilet paper rolls and became an independent sculpture. But after seeing just how many toilet paper rolls I had, I realized that there were not enough to create the effect I wanted, and our house did not go through toilet paper rolls fast enough for me to use them in this way.
I decided, after thinking more about the toilet paper rolls and what other kinds of materials I wanted to use, that I wanted to cut the toilet paper rolls to different heights of tubes hot glue the sides of them together, creating almost like a bunch of buildings all close together, or the top of a factory with lots of different building heights within it. This sculpture was exciting to me, but even after this change to the materials, I realized that they still looked like toilet paper rolls and transformation hadn’t truly taken place.
I decided to add two elements to the structure — hot glue with melted crayon within it and a paint or paper mache-like covering made out of water, flour, and varying levels of turmeric and cumin. I covered the structure in the different mixtures, having ones that were white (just made out of flour and water) on the bottom and incorporating more turmeric into the mixture as I went up. I knew I wanted this to be a relic from an alien planet covered in sand, with the sand becoming paler and paler as one dug into the ground, and so I tried to make the structure look as if it was made of sand that had been pressed into a solid.
After the structures were created, I started to focus more on the narrative behind them. As someone who lives in a co-op, I liked the idea of organisms living in the structure I created. I had thought that maybe they would live together in the structures. I created these organisms out of some felting wool that one of my housemates had and covered it in hot glue. I decided that my reasoning for the hot glue would be that it was resin which had encased the biliopii (the organisms). Thinking about the idea of illusion, I didn’t want the viewer to be able to see the alleged organisms too well, so the covering of hot glue would make it more mysterious and also more believable.
Then, I started to incorporate the interactivity and my place in the project. I made the character of Dr. Prudence who was a researcher who led a team to the planet Demeter where we found these hives and the biliopii. I made some fake sand out of salt and flour and turmeric and had the audience touch that. Then I had them put on gloves to pick up the biliopii and use flashlights to try and get a better look at them. I also invited audience questions at the end, which added an improv element which made it more exciting, both for me and the audience, I think.
After the Supernova Art Party, I was happy with the way my project turned out, but I wish I had incorporated more opportunity for interactivity than just explaining a fake scientific discovery. I was really happy with the interactivity I did get, but I felt that at the end I put too much pressure on the audience. If I could do the project again, I would likely try and plan out more opportunities for interactivity so that the audience could become more engaged and there would be less time of me explaining everything to them. I also would have taken more photos! In retrospect, I feel like a big fool for taking no photos except for one selfie! Thankfully Micha had some of my setup which was wonderful!
