Luminare - Development Process - part 3

In this post I am exploring the development of my final light phenomenon.  I gained an incredible amount of knowledge on how light reacts in different environments and with different materials.  I also experimented with different light bulbs.  I tried a halogen flood light which was too hot and created it's own light effect.  I tried a cfl bulb which created a total wash pattern, a clear incandescent bulb which created the proper light effect, just not enough of it.  Finally; I tried micro led lights that completely filled each hole that I had created in the light filter.  They looked great if you were looking at the filter, yet projected a perfectly even field of light when projecting on a surface.

Light Filter development piece from my last prototype development piece.  This prototype ended up being the basis of my final piece.

Interior view of my final prototype piece.  Here you can see how rough the holes are drilled and two different sizes of holes.  Creating this piece showed me that I only needed one size of hole and the holes needed to be larger rather than smaller.  The holes also needed to allow more light to the surface of the light filter.  In essence create a thinner piece of wood.The small holes ended up being pointless and did not add anything to the light effect.

Small hole light filter, did not create any type of light effect for me.

Here is another view of this prototype.  Here you can see the scale of the piece, the green mat is 24 inches long.  I used two different sizes of hole and created a meandering pattern along most of the piece.  I had slits cut at the bottom to emulate how light travels and to show the source of light.  Through the development of this piece I learned that the slits at the bottom did not contribute anything to the piece.  There were way too many holes which created a light wash rather than a distinct light effect that I wanted.

Stoel and I looked at the pill box and decided that it was not really relative to the light effect and considered changing the scale of the piece.  I created the piece out of plastic.  This piece is 4ft tall and 4 inches square.  I really got excited about the scale of this piece.  It seemed that if I made it about 5 ft tall it would be more human in scale.  I was interested in this scale as a luminare since it seemed a little out of the ordinary.  I also enjoyed the way that the piece started to create the light effect that I was after and it was all about the light.

This is a side viewof the prototype that Mira and  I deemed the pill box.

Top view of the pill box.  I created this piece out of Birch Plywood.  I glued about 12 pieces together to create a thick wood block that I could shape into the curved ends using a huge sanding belt.  I created the curved ends to relate to the Light effect and ultimately abandoned this idea because it was becoming more about the light piece rather than the light effect.

These are the two Light filters.  Small holes in one and large holes in the second one.  Here I discovered the material thickness of the wood became more important that the size of the holes or the spacing of the holes.

  This view shows where I painted one of my light filters silver to create a more intense light originating from inside the box.  this really had no effect on the light that I was trying to create.

Here is another view of my light box with the top cover down.

This is the inside view of my light box.  I created this piece out of plastic because it was an easy material to work with and I could work quickly with it as well.  Here you see two layers of light filters.  I thought this was creating the light effect that I wanted, however, I found out that the pattern was being created by light bulb rather than the filters.