OUGD505 - Studio Brief 1 - Ambient Music - Production

Production 

Making the Acrylic box 

To create the box clear acrylic was used to allow the sand to show through the sides. The design for the box was made on the makercase website which allows you to create box plans by entering the dimensions of the desired box. Choosing the finger slot join on the box would allow all of the pieces to slot together using minimal glue to form a box. The largest tab size was chosen so there was less gluing needed. 

From the plans that were generated the top piece of the design was not needed because the compost heap would be open. All of the upright section pieces were then modified to be flat on the top creating a smooth top.

The pieces were then bonded using special glue for plastics which acts as a weld between the two surfaces.

Making the Vinyl stickers

The symbol designs were placed within a white circle to represent how each of these things were recorded as found sound. Adding an extra layer to the Illustrator file with the corresponding sized circles around each of the pieces would allow the design to be cut after printing. The designs were printed on white vinyl to allow the lines within the symbols to stand out. Printing onto white vinyl allows a design to be printed with the same quality colour as any other print allowing the designs to be vibrant and bold. Once the designs were printed on the vinyl these were then put on the vinyl cutter and the stickers were cut out as circles.  

Making the other elements

 

The laser cutter was used to cut out some white acrylic shapes, which the stickers were then applied to. This also allowed the other symbols to be cut out all of which were non instruments that Brian Eno used to create sounds from. These were cut from black acrylic to match the black of the symbols on the stickers.

Combining all the elements

It was found when the sand arrived there wouldn't be enough to fill the box that had been created, also if the design had been filled to the top with sand it would have been very heavy and the joins between the plastic may not have held this all together. Instead it was considered filling the centre with styrofoam in layers so that the design could be made up in sections and elements placed inside the compost heap more easily. This would allow the design to be much lighter and mean that the layers could be created to whatever thickness wanted around the outside of it.

The coloured sand was layered in varying thicknesses to create different sized layers. Using the rough compositions created for each of the sides of the compost heap the symbols were placed in the compost heap as the layers were built up. This meant creating little islands around the symbols to hold them each in place then the whole layer was filled up.