◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ Decorate wings

Finally came the last week. I have to say how wise it was to leave a tolerable week in the original plan. While the assembly part wasn’t difficult, in did take quite a bit of time. This tells us always have a good self regulation. 

Firstly the assembly of the wings themselves. Just like the ancient folk who built the pyramids by leaving a secret door for themselves (trust the wisdom of the ancient people), I needed to wrap the circuitry and CPB completely between the two wing membranes while leaving an opening on the inside of the tail end of the wing so that the battery can be easily replaced and the CPB connector can be connected. The finished wrapped circuits are hidden inside the membranes, like blood vessels. Mechanical blood vessels. I like that a lot!

Then came another task: installing a wing head. I took new inspiration from moths, and this layered collar is like a ring of capacitance around the side of a moth’s head. Do you like this design?

One final tussle came from how exactly to carry the wings. I observed different ways of carrying school bags and realized that the best way was still split ribbons. The principle is to sew two ribbons to each wing, one long and one short, so that you can start with a knot around each shoulder. The remaining two long ribbons on each side are then tied in a knot around each other. This fixes the height of the wings and makes it easier for the dancer to put them on and take them off.

During the week I also visited Grace Sanford’s solo art exhibition at Blanchard Hall. She explored the gaze and the relationship between nature and man with elements of non-human flora and fauna (with many insects). I marveled at our conceptual commonality, although the subject matter and techniques used were not quite the same. I also left a post-it note and my project, hoping to connect sometime.