Helios Light 1999

This is another one of my Final Year projects.
It combined many ideas I wanted to explore.
+Light
+Display
+Graphical
+Textural.

Starting at the back(!)... The textural aspect i came to from walking along, looking at the sidewalk. I loved the idea that the pavement had a 'record' or memory, built up in its layers of grit and dirt that was ground into it. I wanted to explore this concept further, and so I played with the medium of concrete. I wanted to use real full-sized pavers, but after finding out thier weight, and talking to someone who worked with and cut the things...i decided on using a visual representation of the material. In the end I used a concrete slurry over a MDF substrate, which was then bolted to the acrylic front of the light.
I figured that the front panels could be adapted, depending on the interior it went with. I used a obvious brush stroke in applying the material, which then gave the work some visual direction.

The graphical aspect came about in the central box, which slotted into a cavity i created in the opal acrylic section. I wanted this box to allow the light to be able to have many lives; to display 2-D or 3-D. The clear acrylic box in the centre has a front sleeve about 2mm thick, which you slip a negative or positive image into. In this sense it became a lightbox, or display box, which the user could reconfigure as they wanted.

Display- The acrylic box in the centre was open at the top. Fill the box with whatever you liked... seedpods, fluffy toys , cornflakes, torn up paper. Put the box back in, and see your stuff lit up and on display!!

Of course its a light...it's on this blog innit?
Like 4x18w T8 fluros ok.
It weighed quite a bit in the end...I gave it to a friend, but she is famous in NY now, so who knows what happened to it.
I've still got the plans if anyone wants one.
I loved it and thought i'd sell one to everyone.