The designs of how we would form the wave was done in stages, as most of the elements could not be created without one of the others being completed first. These images are of the first layer being wired to the frame, and also the rows being prepared to be temporarily cello taped together then inserted with thin wire, punched with small holes at each end to be wired through, and then finally go onto the welding mesh.
In the background of most of these images you can see boxes and bags, these are all filled to nearly overflowing with the prepared plastic bottles, sorted in like with like, washed in the boxes, unwashed still in the bags, and then another set of stacked boxes with bottles with the base cut off and then yet another box filled with these bases.
As the process of the actual brainstorming and creation of the wave structure has been so time-consuming, this held up being able to see which lights would be most visually effective, so once we had a few of the first row on the top layer of the wave completed, (and using a little imagination of how it would look with another layer on) we decided we just had to experiment.
In the top images we thread some of the EL wire through the frame at the front, with half a row of milk bottles on to see how they would soften the opacity of the lines the EL wire created. We also thought that the blue LED string lights created strips that were too vivid and made one lose the effects of the wave as a whole, however we thought this would change after we attached the second layer of bottles onto the top of the wave.
Having the lights between the two layers of bottles softens the effect of them, emphasising the wave form and bottles, as opposed to distracting the viewer from them.
Images are our own.
synthetic nature 