AluminiumBlog

Today I had meetings with Max and Gabe. My starting ideas are fairly obvious starting points, but I hope to use them as starting points to seed some ideas. From my discussions with Gabe I thought about working with light. She gave me some resources to check out and think about. From my talk with Max, I was introduced to Cyanotype and thought of a great deal of things to do with it.

Today I worked on cutting out individual sheets of aluminium foil to use in my experiments tomorrow at the academy.

Outcomes for the day:

Ideas for the coming experiments
Aluminium sheets for further experiments

Today I came into the academy to do some experimentation with the type blocks and the letterpress. I wrapped them, stamped them. I realized that the blocks made small tears in the foil that I think I can combine with the cyanotype in the coming days. I noticed that when crinkled, the aluminium foil gave off some great light and looked very interesting when combined with a low exposure compensation on my phone. This makes me wonder how it would be to take pictures of and digitize the material for use in textures and such.

Another thing that I played with today was putting the aluminium foil into a typewriter. The machine made small letter impressions into the material that could look good in mass. However, the foil was much too thin and fragile to be held reliably and safely by the machine. More sturdiness is required for this.

After getting back from the academy, I began to mount the foil sheets onto paper for added sturdiness. I decided to pass them through the printer with some existing designs. At first, I printed on the foil in black and white. The printer color did not seem to soak in and dry very quickly; it sat on top of the page. I took another piece of paper and pressed it on top of the printed design. The paper did not smudge it as much as I thought it would, but rather gave it a rather interesting texture. I wonder what other materials could make it look like.

Outcomes for the day:

Wrapped letter blocks in aluminium
Made letter impressions in the aluminium
Realized that micro tears could combine well with cyanotype
Crinkling the aluminium foil and using it in combination with cyanotype could offer very interesting results
Cut out letter shapes

Played with the idea of destroying the shape by crushing it in my hand, and then finding it again by unwrapping it

Thoughts on using a typewriter on the foil
Mounted foil sheets onto paper for sturdiness
Printed on the foil sheets.

Color did not smudge too much

Depends on the quality of the morning

When wiped with a piece of paper developed an interesting texture

Texturing with aluminium foil

Color
Could baking the printed design make it set on the page any differently?

Today, I worked on some documentation and idea building at the academy. I continued to play with the letter blocks, stamping them onto the foil and creating interesting combinations of wrinkles merging into letter shapes. I would like to experiment further with this using light and my camera. I rounded up my experiments for my meeting with Sanne. Her feedback was for me to cut back on the printing on the aluminium. Her reasoning was that I was working with it just like paper and was straying away from the material a little too much. I agree with that to a certain extent yet disagree. Aluminium has unique properties that I believe I am exposing by using a process meant for paper, on the aluminium. The ink sits on the surface in a way that I find interesting and creates unique shapes and textures. This process of putting it through the printer also led to some very interesting combinations of ideas.

After getting home, I decided to finish off my experimentation trail with the printer. I printed a monochrome photo of my hand onto the aluminium foil. I very much enjoy how the highlights in the picture are left blank and let the aluminium foil show. After printing, I experimented with different methods of texturing the print. These included using crumpled foil and paper. After the texturing I experimented with putting the foil into a hot oven, where the ink was cooked and dried. The ink set on the paper in a very unique way and gave the foil a great texture. I believe this could be scanned into the computer to generate textures for designs.

Another experiment I tried was printing a negative of a flower and using my exacto knife to cut small holes in a sheet of aluminium and paper. The density of holes would depend on the darkness of the part of the image.

Outcomes for the day:

Printed on the mounted foil

Textured with paper
Textured with foil

Printed out an image and stippled it with holes

How will this look when lit from the back?
Photography idea

What to do tomorrow:

I would like to find out what happens to the aluminium when put over a flame. Could I collect the soot?

Today I felt a little drained from the previous week, so I took the day off and decided I would experiment with light on aluminium in the evening.

For the play with light, I want to set up a photography corner in my house. The lights will be turned off and I will be using just my phone flashlight to light the subjects. I also realized through experimenting that the OLED screen of my phone could act as a colored LED light board. I was able to mess around with lighting the metal with several different colors.

I used the previous letterpress and texture experiments and photographed them one by one. I loved the way the crimples would alter the darks and lights in the composition. It truly felt chaotic. I took pictures of the hole stippled sheet and flower it gave some truly interesting results. I placed my phone behind them allowing the body of the sheet to block the excess light, yet let some through with the holes. The closely clustered dots allowed light to scatter around between the paper and aluminium and give a green hue to that part of the foil. Slowly revealing the shape of the flower. Playing with the focal length also allowed me to adjust the size of the bokeh for the price of clarity.

Outcomes of the day:

Photos of the aluminium foil sheets

Play with form and light

What to do tomorrow:

Experiment with photo editing

Today I want to work towards working on and editing the photos I took last night. I feel as though I scratched the surface of playing with the way light danced on the crinkles of the foil. When joined with brief flat reliefs of letters, the foil communicates a rather chaotic yet clear depiction of the letter. I want to see how much I can play with this in the digital realm.

This made me want to use the letter press to get stronger impressions of the letters onto a more crinkly layout and form.

The cyanotype still has not arrived yet, so that kind of threw off my plans a little bit, however, I feel okay about it because I feel like I found another lane I could divert attention to.

Outcomes of the day:

What to do tomorrow:

Experiment with fire and foil

For today I wanted to work on the smaller ideas I generated on the previous days. I’m sure I can figure a path to follow after trying them out.

I started trying to use a lighter to heat, burn and cook the aluminium foil. I realized that if I used the very tip of the flame, it would empart soot onto the surface of the aluminium foil. It is a deep black and would absorb most of the light that hit it.

I started off by holding the aluminium foil level to the ground and holding a flame under it. This method worked, however was not very efficient. I tried to make a rig with the foil being held up on its four corners with candles positioned under it. I decided to not do this method because it was too fiddly. On top of this, the flame that the candles emitted was far too small to color the foil.

The final design was to construct a ball attached to a chopstick, the foil to be colored is wrinkled and wrapped gently around the ball. The rig is then picked up and rotated around the flame coloring the material more efficiently.

It is very interesting unwrapping the foil and seeing the unique patterns that come up once unfolded.

I took the soot experimentation to another level by whipping it with a paper towel. The soot that the towel is unable to reach is left behind giving off a very interesting texture/look.

Combined with letter pressed sheets of foil, this effect looks very interesting. However, the stamped foil pieces tend to level out and lose their shapes when exposed to a flame.

Outcomes of the day:

Several foil sheets showing the textured effects of the aluminium foil and fire.

What to do tomorrow:

Continue experimentation with light.

I was very much hoping that I would have the cyanotype to play with today however, the package just decided to not come on time. Although this was a very annoying hurdle I feel confident with the amount of experimentation that I have done, and have no problem switching to a different track to work through. I welcome it.

For today I wanted to continue my play with light. I had an idea this morning to wrap the aluminium foil around shards of glass. I wanted to see the way they would work together to create an illusion for the camera. I also have a small sheet of letterpressed aluminium foil that I put through the microwave. It has small streaks that go diagonally across it which were cut using the energy of the microwave. I was impressed by the ability of the microwave to have a direct effect that can be mapped out on the foil. This made me think: what would happen if I were to fold the foil and mirror the effects of the microwave across the paper to create interesting patterns.

I started off wrapping the foil around shards of glass that came from a mirror I may or may not have broken by accident… After the wrap I made slight cuts and tore the surface of the foil revealing the reflective mirror within. It reflected the inside of the foil making the inside look larger and fooling the eye. I had several different versions that gave off different effects. I changed my light source from hitting the subject from the front to the back, and this had profound effects on the illusion. I made it so the foil looked dark from the outside, but had a glowing inside. A truly interesting look. This effect only worked because of the light reflective properties of the foil.

Outcomes of the day:

Photos with mirror and light play

What to do tomorrow:

what would happen if I were to fold the foil and mirror the effects of the microwave across the paper to create interesting patterns.

For today I want to sort out some final experiments and then begin to wrap up and find a way to present them without it being too chaotic.

I will begin the experiments by folding sheets of aluminium foil into different setups and measuring the effects of the microwave on them visually. I think the result will look very similar to those little people holding hands that cartoon characters cut out of folded paper.

I came up with a variety of fold variations to see which way is the best way to get results. Some of them were crumpled up into a ball, some were pressed and folded very tightly and some were extremely simple folds.

The results were very successful: the folds that pressed the aluminium very tight and had a higher chance of not being able to be unfolded. This is because the microwaves were heating up the aluminium foil and welding it causing it to weld to one another. The successful ones unfolded to have mirrored, symmetrical burn patterns created by the microwave.

I rounded off the work session binding all of my experimentation foil sheets into one very delicate book. I braided the aluminium by braiding together 3 strings of it. However I really don't think it holds up that nicely. I need to find a better method for tying it together. I also decided to make cover for it