WOK IN PROGRESS - TRAVAUX EN COURS - LAVORI IN CORSO - ARBEITSVORGANG
  

Write - Ecrivez - Scrivete - Schreiben Sie
Title page - Page de titre - Pagina di titolo - Titelseite - Página principal
Ich wünsche mit Personen in Verbindung kommen, die dieselbe künstlerische Interesse wie ich haben. Deshalb habe ich daran gedacht, den ersten Schritt zu machen, und regelmäßig über meine letzte Arbeitsvorgänge zu berichten.
Started:   Finished:
July 17, 2003 : "Eject - Dashboard" - Acrylic and collage of computer circuits on a dashboard panel - (40x80)
July 26, 2003
 
 
The idea




Dashboard - Tableau de bord - Cruscotto - Armaturenbrett
25x66

About 10 years ago my car was stolen and totally vandalized, inside-out, before the police got it back after a shooting encounter with the thieves. The body shop in charge of restoration decided to change the dashboard because of a few scratches. It was a beautiful dashboard made of exotic wood. I kept the old one and stored it aside for all those years.
Recently I found it back by accident and, immediately, I thought it would make the base structure of an interesting collage of computer circuits. The 2 larger round holes were about the size of CD-ROMs. And since I have recently taken apart several desk-top computers I got an impressive collection of circuits. Then started the chase for convenient pieces to fill all the openings of the board. The large rectangle opening could receive part of a keyboard. etc...

I had a base structure and component pieces, but I did not have a theme yet! In such a situation the only path to progress is action: just start executing something. Details may suggest the fundamental idea. Work on details.

Execution
So I started cutting part of a keyboard to fir the rectangle hole and glued CD-ROMs in the largest round holes. Adding a few other knobs and circuits.

Then came the idea: I had not used the space bar of the keyboard - it looked like it would nicely fill a large part of the long and narrow rectangle just above the keyboard. Suddenly I thought: it should be varnished red like an 'EJECT' button - here it was 'EJECT' - that was the idea! Things can go wrong in electronics - and when real wrong you can only 'eject'!

Subsequently I added the red lights on each side - 2 large and 2 small LEDs - the small ones blink.

I cut and glued in several circuit pieces, put some connectors in the small openings and other smaller knobs in small round holes.

Click on the photos right & left for details.
Now I had a basic aesthetics problem. The shape of the dashboard created a large void bottom left: Something had to be put there. Well, a modern dashboard should have a screen. Here would be a screen. What should the screen say? The now title "EJECT" gave the solution. It should be a screen indicating that things don't operate well, the situation is desperate - something like
'The connections shall be re-established as soon as possible'.
I cut a thick wood panel to fit the available space and painted it with vertical colour bars like a television screen awaiting the opening of broadcasting. The text in the middle is in Italian - since I am in Italy. I also crossed the text with empty white lines, like on a defective screen.
Finally I decorated the wood panel on which to attached the dashboard, like a cockpit flying in a blue sky.
"EJECT" was completed.