GALAXY, part 10

[The GALAXY Project is a light-art installation that I’m working on for the next burn. Phase I is essentially a spiral labyrinth consisting of hundreds of glowing rings made of EL.]

While waiting for coolneon.com to respond to my emails about ordering (they’re changing over their online ordering system, so everything has to be via email or phone), I decided to go ahead and give the wire stands a shot.

You will recall the design of GALAXY Phase I calls for nearly 200 rings of electroluminescent [EL] wire that “hover” about 8” off the ground. You will also recall that in my first spurt of ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS, I sketched out the wire support:

First I did some math:

You can see my thinking thoughts about the length of the sides/uprights of the stand. As an ABORTIVE ATTEMPT, I’m going with the 8.5” length and see if it can be adapted to support all three sizes of rings. If not, we’ll have to make three different stands, and I’m thinking that would be DOUBLE-PLUS UNGOOD. GESTALT/SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION will tell.

I bought a roll of 12-gauge wire and began figuring out how best to go about making 200 of these (when the time comes). Clearly I needed some kind of template/mold. I sketched an idea:

Amazingly, it worked.

I started with a bunch of scrap lumber.

Here’s the left-hand side. (The right-hand side is a mirror image.)

Here’s the center.

The whole thing assembled.

The theory is that we cut the wire to the length of the board, then start by bending the ends of the wire around the little round pieces, which have a hole drilled in the side for insertion of the wire.

Next, we bend the wire through the bottom slots.

Finally, we flip the uprights upright and bend the center.

And we have a stand.

Is it perfectly bent? Will this make 200 identical stands, all neat and tidy and uniform? Not a chance. But you will have to trust me that there will be 2,000 hippies who won’t even care.

The more important question is “Will it work?” We won’t know the answer to that until I can get an order placed for more EL and I can make prototypes for the three sizes of rings.