Poll

Whilst the cranes are ticking along, I'm thinking ahead to the other aspects of my Light Night event. The electrical aspect is on hold for the moment (until I get the money through to buy everything. Don't panic before you need to.), so there's only the boats to worry about. This is my dilemna.

If you've read my previous post about the sailboats, you'll remember that the original was a traditional origami sailboat. Easy to fold, recognisable, not a problem. Apart from some people have mentioned how they are quite two dimensional. Someone even asked why I couldn't have a boat he could sail down the river.

Which got me thinking.

Would it better to have a different type of boat? I'm still loving the boat idea, particularly as there seems to be a bit of a theme of 'journey' going on at Light Night this year (completely coincidentally). There's three types of boat up for consideration (excuse the blurry photos):



The original idea was this one:



Like I said, instantly recognisable as a boat, but a little...flat.

This is the second option:



A bit more artistic, but not as obvious as a boat. It does travel across a flat surface if you blow it though.

The third option is the classic "newspaper boat":



Most people recognise this as a boat, and it sails on water; but is it recognisable enough?

What do you think? Please leave your comments below before I start making a load of the wrong type!

And there's more

Now I'm firmly set on my installation, I was thinking about ways that it could be more...interactive isn't the word, but so that people could be more a part of it.

Walking through it is going to be amazing, and that's the main thing, because it will really put across the idea of lighting up the darkness and bringing peace and hope to the passageways of confinement and despair (good description huh? That's going on my submission). However, I know I like stuff I can interact with, or that does something, as sometimes I'll go and see something and I won't know when is a suitable length of time to stay there, or if I should say something about it or keep quiet...so it would be nice, for philistines like me who don't really know how to appreciate art, to have a bit of a focus. Plus, who doesn't love a freebie?

At first I thought of folding cranes on the night (in addition to the thousand) so people could join in and learn how to do it, but that would be crazy in the tunnels (hey! join my impromptu origami class in the dark), so then I thought of a piece of origami people could take away that could represent their hopes and wishes. Obviously the crane is a well-known symbol of that, but it would mean folding loads more cranes, and the thought of 1000 in an allotted time frame is making me gulp already.

I can make paper boats though. Not the paper boats you made as a kid (well I can make those, but I don't mean those ones). I mean the sailboats that are the symbol of the US Origami Society and the model I folded when I did a foldathon a couple of years ago (88 in an hour!):



I think that boats are pretty representative of taking a journey, which implies moving into the future etc. Plus, they're pretty. I had an idea that people could take one, and write their hope/wish onto it, then either take it home with them, or leave them somewhere (maybe at another Light Night event?) for someone else to find. Kind of like PostSecret. It means that people have something tangible to associate with my project, and it gives another dimension to my project. What do you think?