Wishes to the Wind
The project was a collaboration with a class of engineering students at Purdue Polytechnic University. The challenge was "if you had one wish, what would you do with it?"
The students brainstormed and devised ways of wishing. They were a genie lamp, a birthday cake, a wishing well and a magic 8 ball. The genie lamp you could rub, the birthday cake had candles to blow, the magic 8 ball gently shook and the well had "water" to pour.
We built a deconstructed house inside the lab that could be entered. Each of the dandelion pots could be interacted with to activate the wishes. All of the dandelions were created by hand with paper.
When you approached the plant, you stepped on the approach pad in the floor waking up the plant. You could then interact with it and make your wish. Once the wish was made, the seed pods gracefully floated across the "windows" in the house.
The computer graphics cycled through the times of day - dawn, mid-day, dusk and night.
Throughout the installation were hidden Easter eggs as a tribute to my father. When he was in hospice, I tried wishing on everything from dandelions to stars to keep him for as long as I could. This exhibition is a tribute to his memory and dedicated to him.
