For Week 5 (3/7)

Make a diorama… in a shoebox or cigar box, whatever. You pick the topic—something of interest to you. (the limit: you have to be able to bring it to class, and put it on display). Prepare to talk about your display—like a curator—for 3 minutes. (What is it about? What is the story? What do you want people to notice? What’s the significance of what you’ve included, what have you left out?)

Initial Idea - Japan

My first idea for this project was a two-sided diorama regarding Japan and how people see it. My mom is from there, so every summer my mother and I would go visit my grandma and the rest of her family.

Side A

I wanted this side to focus on how people often perceive Japan by featuring elements associated with the country: geisha, Mt. Fuji, ukiyo-e, torii (traditional gates that are usually painted bright red/orange). There is a hint of orientalist/exoticism nature that came with this, and I realized I was ok with it because those topics emphasizes the distance between the viewer and the Japan.

Side B: Layout

This part of the diorama would represent what Japan was to me : my grandmother's house that I visited every summer growing up. Since my grandmother she has passed, my mother and I cannot visit her house, so I wanted to memorialized this space.

Side B: Pieces

I quickly ordered some pieces from eBay: a bed, papillon figure, dog bed, and donuts. However, I soon realized how expensive miniatures for dollhouses were...

New Idea - The Lyrebird

I ended up pivoting away from this topic because I realized I wouldn't have enough miniatures to make my grandmother's house as vivid and realistic as I would've wanted - and my solution of supplementing the missing furniture with 3D printing would both clash aesthetically and take too long to find the models of print.

Thus I ended up thinking of my new backup plan: the lyrebird. In my 9th grade biology class, I fondly remember my teacher showing us a video about it. Thus, I thought it would be fun to have the main concept/overarching narrative focus on this bird's amazing mimicry skills. From the get-go, I knew I wanted to incorporate sound and feature the imitations of sounds, like chainsaws and cameras, and that are less natural to the bird's habitat. Thus I envisioned a scene, where the lyrebird would be accompanied by elements that it has mimicked.

Initial Supplies

I gathered a bunch of boxes that I thought would be good candidates for the enclosure and also purchased a fake plant and foam material whose texture was evocative of dirt.

The Lyrebird Model

The next big hurdle was obtaining a figure of the lyrebird. I didn't feel confident in sculpting it myself (physically or digitally), so I looked for a figure online. I excitedly found a figure on Mercari, but realized after it was shipped that was a glaring problem: it was the wrong species. The one I had purchased was the the Albert's Lyrebird, but the one I wanted was the Superb Lyrebird. I considered trying to paint and transform the Albert's one into the Superb one, but I didn't trust my painting skills and was stumped on transforming tail feathers into an ornate arrangement.

I lucked out and a very nice 3D modeler online gave me a 3D model he made of the lyrebird for cheap! All I needed to do was 3D print it.

3D Printing Drama

I spent a good amount of time printing over my lyrebird model, only for it to fail continuously. Two huge lessons I learned were:

I was printing at too small of a scale (aiming for 1" long)
The original file was not good for printing because it was too thin

I finally got the bird to print when I scaled it up even larger and discontinued printing its feathers. After its success, I also found a model of a chick which I planned to paint as a kookaburra.

New Enclosure and Background

Because I had to size up the lyrebird figure in order to print it correctly, I ended up getting a larger box from Home Depot.

For the background, I found a rainforest floor one picture, split it up, and tried to tile it so that the repetition didn't seem too obvious

I ended up going back to Michael's in order to buy more of that nice foam...

Human Figures

In addition to the kookaburra birds, I wanted to include the human figures that would hold the tools the lyrebird would mimic. I found silhouettes online and then laser cut them - thankfully, this was a far less painful process than 3D printing.

Remaining Tasks - assembling and final painting

The last tasks I worked on were:

Painting the lyrebird, assembling its plumage and placing it in the scene
Gluing down the foliage and the human figures
Painting the kookaburra birds and placing them

Thanks to super helpful feedback from Eric Kalb, I also ended up cutting a square top open on the diorama to let more light in.

When painting the lyrebird, I wanted to conceal the infill that was exposed when shaving down its base.

I really wanted to hide the stand that the bird needed to be printed on, and so enshrouded it in the "dirt" foam. I lucked out that coincidentally because the bird stands on top of a mound when it begins its song - so this decision worked narratively!

Interactivity

Since I knew I wanted sound from the get-go, I ended up isolating and extracting the different sounds the birds makes in the original BBC video. Unfortunately, I was unable to get the Raspberry Pi to detect my button presses. Despite my alternate solution where I would use keyboard inputs, I soon realized that I needed a monitor to be attached because my script wouldn't work properly without one - and at that point, I stupidly realized "Why not just use the computer?" I whipped up a simple web page that served took keyboard input and played the sounds of the lyrebird imitating kookaburra, photographer's camera, and logger's chainsaw.

Final Result

Web page: https://oon5ct.csb.app/

Final Comments

My biggest frustration is how bad my painting job was because the birds don't look that realistic and it detracts from the nicer background and foliage I added.

In class, I got really great feedback from Sarah where this would be cool blown-up to be a room-scaled diorama that is almost 360. Visitors could come in and hear the sounds and then have be able to see where they came from.

Shoutouts & Big Thank-You's

This project wouldn't have been completed successfully without the feedback and expertise from:

Akshita
Anh
Casta
Eric
Kseniia
Laura
Minjun
Phil

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