bav-o-rama: Of Windows and Walls

The build-out of the bav-o-rama exhibit space is finished, and I’m thrilled with how it turned out. The plan was to have a window space to recreate movie scenes: think of it like NYC’s Museum of Natural History, just with dioramas of select 80s films. To realize this Antonella and I have been working with Riccardo and Alberto of Domus to figure out a plan that works. The space is about 4′ deep by 4′ wide.

The sides and back walls are made of movable pressboard that can be re-fashioned depending on the scene being created. The subfloor is made of 3/4″ OBS board, useful base for handling the various floors/terrain each scene will require.

One of the things that we also created around this window was a wood paneled wall with a nearly invisible door. This encloses the window diorama so that it’s neatly hidden when you enter the space, making sure the man behind the curtain is never exposed. The walls came out amazing, I’ll have to take care of the final step of staining them appropriately here soon:

Now that the window space is complete, I’ve been working further on the first exhibit. I’m hopeful to have it ready in the next week or two. You can get a sense of what Harry Wentworth’s head in the sand facing the TV in the window might look like:

Prototyping Harry Wentworth’s Head Watching Television

Also, I got the Creepshow episode “Something to Tide You Over” looping on the Zero Pi, which has me excited.

Finally, my friend Andrea and I started assessing the best placement of the head and TV while trying to account for the contours we will be created using a malleable wire base and various sized boxes to reproduce a sense of the undulating terrain of the beach.

Finishing the beach contours and adding sand is my project for next week, as well as digging in on the Arduino motion detector for switching to live camera (OBS seems a dead end). Beyond that, I have to get the background panels from the MBS Design studio and have them printed for the 3 wall panels and the ceiling panel  (more on that in the next few days); reproducing the old school CCTV camera using cardboard, while leaving room to house both a motion sensor and a Sony ZV-E10 camera; and , finally, trimming the hair of the mannequin head to more closely align with Harry Wentworth’s cut in the episode.

Outside of that, I want to talk to Bryan Mathers about creating  cartoon comments section using his Remixer Machine that folks can access via QR code when experiencing the installation. That same code will also allow them to read the comics on each wall in Italian, ensuring that the Trentini do not feel linguistically shunned—it is Italy after all!