Overview
Electrisea is a large-scale interactive installation design proposal, tuned for a specific target audience and environment. The project plan contains all of the project and management planning to execute the installation, including budgeting, staffing and logistics planning. The final product is encapsulated in a detailed grant proposal, that was submitted to the funding organization.
Concept
Electrisea was designed to fit the funding organization's water-related theme "The Floating World." The conceptual design consisted of an undersea kelp forest, with columns of animated bubbles rising into the night, and a treasure chest for scenery, and for the winner of its interactive games, treasure! Interaction was to be aided by multiple motion sensors on each element, that would allow a rudimentary sensing of participants, and produce a corresponding wide-scale animated reaction of the kelp plants, and bubbles, to them. Several interactive games were envisioned in the programming of the installations interactivity, eventually guiding the winners to an open treasure chest full of treats.
Inspiration
The piece named Blade (previous project) had always been envisioned as one of a collection of similar, but different pieces, mainly so that a viewer could wander among the collection of animated pieces feeling enveloped and small, rather than simply look at one of them from the outside. The vision was to create a more immersive feeling, with synchronized, global lighting programs that played with participants across multiple installation sculptures in tandem.
'Organizational Inspiration'
Beyond the conceptual design of the piece, this project also appealed to me on an organizational level. Grants are a common source of art funding. The larger scope of Electrisea made it an ideal opportunity for me to learn grant-writing. I enjoyed the process of building the prototype piece named Blade the year before, but didn't have the financial resources to pull off an installation of many similar pieces, without some form of financial support. My motivation has always been to work with teams of artists -- to reach a larger audience and inspire them with wonder. In my experience, money helps! Improving my ability to fundraise represented a powerful advancement of my artistic career. In preparing an effective design, and proposal, for Electrisea, I would learn firsthand what it takes to write a large-scale public art proposal.
