After many brainstorms to try to resolve the issues we are having with choosing the right structure to hold our Light Nelson installation, we ordered a sheet of welding mesh, planning to create a form 2.5 square and 2 high and building up plastics to the final width to be 3 by 3 and 2.5 high as a sculptural wave!
We first constructed a Marquette using paper. To do this we measured the paper to scale to represent the welding mesh:
The images above would need two sheets of welding mesh, though this looked like it could work well it would not be within our budget to buy two sheets.
We found that using this method of construction and only one sheet would require a large amount of cutting and welding the mesh, which in turn could weaken the overall structure.
There was still much we had to figure out regarding the structure of the wave and method of construction. We thought it would be good to problem solve these when the mesh arrived.
Below is a mock up of another way we could bend the mesh to form our wave, we felt that this method would work well, and save time. As long as we had sufficient weight to counter balance the weight of the bottles going on.
The images below show what the steps we took today once the mesh arrived, in the small beginnings of our wave.
Image one shows the welding mesh as is, then the lay out of the bottles placed onto this mesh. The following images show the steel cutters and then the excess welding mesh being cut off. The image 3 shows us turning the edges of the mesh slightly up to make it more potent and more stable for being moved etc.
Also pictured are the amount of remaining bottles after only using what seemed like a few, we are already needing more after only covering one layer of the three meter base.
I also tried an experiment using glue gun to join the bottles, I tested the strength after the glue had dried, and it held very well, with the heavier object still staying attached when suspended or held in mid air.
Images are our own.
synthetic nature 