B.Light Design

I recently built a crank with wooden case for the video artist Gabe Barcia-Colombo. It is for his piece For Those Who Wait.

In his words: “”For Those Who Wait” is an interactive video sculpture about the physicality of time. 10 video projected clocks hang motionless in a room. As the viewer winds up a crank the clocks come to life, their hands spinning out of control until they self destruct in a variety of animations.”

Turning the crank and controlling the projected clocks is very satisfying.

POP UP WINDOWS CLASS INSTALLATION TIMELAPSE from Gabriel Barcia-Colombo on Vimeo.

Come see the windows in person 10/26 at 8pm 283 Mercer.

The interactive window display I’ve been working on with Christie Leece, Inessah Selditz, and Matt Richardson will be on display next week. Come on by.

You are invited to experience 4 new interactive installations created by the students of ITP’s Pop Up Window Display Class.

From an aquarium filled with mechanical jellyfish to a lightning storm set off by the touch of an electrical socket, these experimental window displays seek to transform empty storefronts into interactive art galleries.

Work by:
Engin Ayaz
Allison Berman
Dollee Bhatia
Phil Groman
Patrick Muth
Christie Leece
Ben Light
Alex Olivier
Matt Richardson
Inessah Selditz
Kaitlin Till-Landry
Phan Visutyothapibal
Allison Eve Zell

Opening October 26th at 8pm 283 Mercer Street NY 10003
On display 10/26-10/29

I built the physical installation for a video projection piece called Farm, created by Gabe Barcia-Colombo. Gabe projected video on to the physical ant farm I built. This sucker was 6′ by 4′ and probably weighed over 200lbs. It was a great project to be a part of.

About the piece:

Farm seeks to augment the vision of the metropolis by visually transforming the city into a human ant farm. The piece approaches normal scenes of daily city life as an anthropological study. Ants and humans have many similarities. Both have huge populations or swarms concentrated in relatively small spaces, but unlike ants, human beings are inherently selfish.

The piece showed at the Dumbo Arts Festival

My friend Michelle Zatta and I are now proud owners of an Egg-Bot. We put it together last night — I can hardly wait to print something with it. Things are afoot people, things are afoot.

More to come.

Image taken by Naho Kubota

A couple of weeks back I worked on a table with C-Lab, Design Compendium, One Pot, Limn Architects, Highlands Dinner Club, and Architecture For Humanity. It was for the Design Like You Give a Damn Live celebration at the Armory on Park Ave in NYC. The goal was to get all of these great thinkers and incredibly capable people to sit down to a meal together, see what could be accomplished in such a short time (the meal and the table), become inspired, and basically change the world for the better. Simple, right?

Images taken by Naho Kubota

The project was on a very tight deadline, the table was built in two days. The first day (the one I had a part in) was gathering materials, cutting all of the pieces, redesigning on the fly, and starting to put the thing together. We did all of this at the studio. The second day (I wasn’t there for that) was a lot of finishing work and putting it all together at the Armory.

From the final images I can tell that it came together great (side note: the Armory is awesome). I got to work with some very talented and, more importantly, really great people. I’m very proud to have a small part in this project.

More images can be seen here.

A couple of weeks ago, I helped my parents’ neighbor John, build a floating raft. Nothing fancy, a wooden box and some foam billets for flotation. We hustled and built it in two nights, so his kids could jump off of it as soon as possible (”Is it done yet? Is it done yet?”). It felt really good to come up with a plan, execute it, and see people enjoying it in such a short time.

They’ve named it the S.S. Minnow.

John’s son Matt liked the Minnow so much, he made me a model of it out of popsicle sticks. It looks great, I can’t wait to hang it on my Christmas tree.

Well, sort of. Dave and I took home the coveted “Special Jury’s Meat Lover’s Honorable Mention” at the Jell-O Mold Competition. Dave get’s most of the credit for his beef consommé with horseradish and pork consommé infused with ginger, lemongrass, garlic, and star anise gelatins.

The event was a ton of fun, but it was hot. We put our Jell-O sculptures up on the wall and they did pretty well for the first 30 to 40 minutes. Long enough to get them photographed and for a couple of judges to get a look. But the heat turned out to be too much. After an hour or two of lying flat, they finally gave out and melted into a bovine/swine puddle. Yum.

We met some great people and saw some amazing pieces by the other competitors. I can’t wait for next year.

My friend Dave “Big Dog” Gould and I are entering the Jell-O Mold Competition at my studio. I went last year, and it was great. If you are in town, you should check it out.

Dog and I are going with two savory gelatins: Beef Consomme with horseradish and Pork Consomme infused with ginger, lemongrass, garlic, star anise (Both Dog’s idea). They will be in the shape of a bull head and a boar head. The plan is for them to hang from a diorama-like wall, similar to mounted hunting trophies. Pics of our mock-ups below.

The very talented BDan designed this great label for Finn’s Army (cough, going to be sold at the model citizens nyc show, cough, cough).

I love the look of this.