Lost and Found
The goal of the assignment was to transform one everyday object into another everyday object. However, the big challenge was that the original object and the newly designed object must have a strong conceptual relationship.
To make the project more complex, I couldn’t just take any object and transform it, I had to follow these 6 specific rules:
- The original everyday object cannot consist of more than three materials; some of the best projects start with objects made of only one material.
- Nothing (no glue, no tape, nothing) can be added to the found object in the transformation.
- You may multiply the object and subtract from the object, but you cannot add anything foreign to it.
- The original object must still be recognizable in the transformed object.
- The transformed object must be functional.
- The newly created object must fit inside a shoebox.
My first approached to the project was to brainstorm ideas by talking out loud with those in my lab group. This proved to be effective as we were all able to help each other out to come up with starting ideas. After running through my main ideas with my TA and class, I decided I was going to focus on turning gum wrappers into a choker necklace. The relationship behind this was inspired by witnessing wildlife try to eat gum thinking it’s food and ultimately choking on it. So I decided to turned an object that was harmful to the environment into something that is harmful and ‘choking’ a person.
I picked the gum wrapper of choice, 5 gum, because the wrappers were long and colourful; therefore, easier to work with. I picked these gum wrappers of choice because they were evident to the audience of what the object was. I constructed the necklace, although it took many attempts to get a technique down to lace the gum wrappers within each other. I went with a 90’s style choker design, in which there are 2 strings intertwined within each other. I ended up layering the gum wrappers into a long chain before linking the chains together.
The project took 3 weeks to complete, with lots of trial and error, but in the end I was satisfied with the choker I had created out of gum wrappers.
