I spent four days working on my Artprize installation, the first time I migrated Materia Incarnation to the outdoors. The original intended location of the work in trees/bushes, coming over concrete barriers by the trees/bushes at the site (based on photos of the site), did not work out: the trees and bushes I could get to were not strong enough to support the bottles, which when amassed end up being heavier than I had thought. So, I had to adapt. I ended up pretty far from my own aesthetic, which in itself, is something for me to think about as I look back on the experience now and later.
I had to attach the bottles to a fixed object -- or they would fly away in the first breeze. I used a light pole and brought the bottles up and around the poll. I did not have enough to go up the whole pole, or a good way to attach the bottles with gaps between them (which would be more in keeping with their intended installation), and I had to use too much wire to make the bottles secure from the weather; the form morphed with the weather -- a storm took away some bottles. Several people who saw me installing really wanted the bottles to go on every light pole -- that would have looked so much better and integrated the site more completely. I did not have enough bottles or time.
I learned so much. At first, I thought I'd never try working outdoors again; now, with a little time passing after the installation, I'll take what I learned and put it to good use for the next outdoor installation. Some parts of the piece work really well and just as I envisioned -- the bottles catch sunlight and project colored shadows when the sun comes out; adapting the work to the site produced conceptual direction -- the bottles circle a pole as a fixed center, like a sundial -- that was not present in my original conception for this migration of the Materia elements.
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