How did it come about?

Our class was given this assignment with the special instructions "Do something with the windows".  Kinda' vague, but my imaginiation began running in over time.  Our professor, Samantha Krukowski, had told us that when she was in school she had thought to herself "What is a wall?" for a good period of time.  So, I, in turn decided to pay this project justice by spending a good portion of my time thinking, "What is a window?".  My answers after hours of thought kept coming back to practical purposes for windows.   They're used to block people out, they're used for sources of light, they're used to keep out cold and/or heat, they're used to show wealth (i.e. stained glass windows) and there's lots of other things.  So then my question became, what is the purpose of these particular windows?  Well the original purpose was so that people in the control room could see what was going on in the studio.  But now the studio no longer exists.  It has been turned into the ACTLab.  So...what's the purpose now?   It didn't have one.  So I decided my project should be to create a new purpose for the windows.

To do this, I needed to figure out what the ACTLab was used for.  I decided it was a room for creativity and a place where people should be able to feel free to let the creative juices flow.  So, I went to the studio...again and stared at the windows trying to decide to influence people in such a way that would be inspiring to their creativity.  I kept noticing my own reflection in the mirror but I was trying to ignore it, it was distracting.  Then I realized that the reflection itself could be something interesting to focus on.  I began thinking of mirrors and how everyone has to look at themselves atleast once in a mirror if it's in the room.   Most people can't help it.  They walk by a big mirror in a department store and they look.  Maybe just a glance, but out of habit, they look.  Maybe it's vanity, maybe it's trained behavior, I don't know.  But it got me thinking.  I began thinking of mirrors.  For some reason I thought of a very bad movie, Conan The Destroyer.  There is a scene in the movie that is in a room made entirely of mirrors.   It seemed very dreamlike.  I decided that should be the overall theme to my project.

With that in mind, under encouragement from Samantha, I went to the architecture library to look at examples of windows.  I saw that the ones that seemed the most ethereal to me were the long, slender ones.  With this in mind and thinking of what I had considered earlier, peoples' fascination with their own reflections, I started work on the project.

What was the project?

I began throwing around the idea of how to incorporate the mirrors and slendering the windows together.  Samantha had mentioned placing the project in this environment also created issues.  We had to keep in mind what the environement actually was like.  I couldn't hang curtains because they would be inappropriate in the industrial-like room.  So,  I thought that it would be more effective if the mirrors were broken, because it made the project seem harsher, less soft, more fitting for the room.  With both of these thoughts in mind I could begin construction of the project.  It was made of two shattered full lenth mirrors and heavy cardboard strips.  When I put the mirrors on the surface of the bars, they didn't lay down flat and still sticking with the idea of people's fascination with reflections I realized that I had created a whole other aspect to my project that I didn't even originally have in mind.  Now the bars were blocking part of the reflection in the glass and the mirrors, not being flat were breaking up their full reflections as well.   Therefore, the project became a compare contrast of different types of relfections and how the mind reacts to them not being complete reflections.  How, the mind fills in the blanks.