The Picnic: the picnic mat

The final part of the Picnic project was to take the time-based drawing (notations), print them off onto A3 paper and mould the paper to resemble the information that it contained. The aim of this was to convert the whole drawing to 3D (similar to that of the time-based model) but this time finish off with an actual 3D object which displayed all of the information. This 3D object can in some ways be described as the picnic mat, as it is where all the observations made are located, similar to the mat of the original picnic. Also by converting the 2D map into a 3D model it places the observations back into a physical environment alike to that in which the observations were first made. This continues the reconstruction of the information from a different perspective. The 3D object I created is shown below:



This model was designed so that the peaks of the object were where the highest frequency of the notations occurred, while the troughs of the model were where there was little notation. On the non-printed side however these characteristics are reversed. For more information on this model see the following post:

1. Paper Model of picnic

The main criticism to be had about this model however is that the characteristics are quite difficult to identify through images such as those above. In the physical form the different folds are more easy to read, and so to make the key folds easier to recognise via images I have made the following illustration:

This also demonstrates the reliance of the observations of the existence of people in the image as each of the key peaks in this image are located at the points in which the people were located in the original photograph. This highlights an interesting relationship between the environment and the existence of civilisation, as a lot of the possible elements of the environment are most often sourced from humans, such as sound and movement.
This model almost acts as a complete reconstruction of the original picnic, but is however missing a vital element. The original picnic operated in 4D in that it occured over a period of time. The above 3D object however does not encorporate time and so cannot be described as a complete reconstruction. This final element however was not required as part of the project. The final 3D object created provides an abstract and intriguing perspective of the picnic, and acts as a viable conclusion to the project.