This light box project was a carry over from our previous project, and also acted as a lead in to the projects to come. We were to use a 12 x 12 x 18 box and create four spaces using cut outs on the sides of the box. The second step of this was to orient the spaces in the box using Bristol paper or bamboo skewers.
Phase I: Literally cutting the interior of the box into four sections, I cut out a cross from the "ceiling". This not only divided my box into four spaces, but it gave me a nice little surprise on the back wall which looked like the rays from the sun beaming down.
Phase II: Realizing that I was going to have to orient the light with bamboo skewers, I knew that I couldn't utilize the cross I had cut out from the ceiling. Before I completely shut the idea down however, I cut out two 2.5 x 2.5 rectangles from one of the side "walls". Those two, simple cuts divided my box into four spaces and allowed me the opportunity to play around with the orientation of the light. Bye bye cross up above.
Phase III: I brought in six, equal length bamboo skewers and oriented them in a way that when the light came through the two squares there would be stripes that would work its way from the floor up onto the walls. I chose six because when I originally put eight skewers in, it seemed like there was too much. However, if I could change one thing, I would go back and add two more skewers to keep the project compositionally "whole".
Light effect.
Light effect II.
I went through many phases of this project because it turned out to be more complicated than I originally thought it would be. Once I began to fiddle around with cuts and layouts of the bamboo skewers, it became easier. One factor that also made this difficult was not knowing what the best light source would be and the point at which the light should be coming through to get the ideal effect. In the end, I decided to create a fresh box so that it was clean looking. I was ultimately satisfied with the final product.
