L’instrument Lighting and Mirror Apparatus
l’instrument
french
[noun]
tool
This hyper optimized set provides uncompromising illumination to reveal flaws, offering a cruel sort of honesty challenging how far one should go to “make the best of oneself.”
Photograph by Martin Seck
Header photograph by Andrew Thomas
This piece is a component of vanity3000, a vanity scene that satirizes the moralization of beauty practices and their re-branding as ‘self-optimization.’ It was designed, built, and displayed as my Master of Fine Arts in Industrial Design thesis project.
Photographs by Andrew Thomas
The lighting and mirror apparatus began with inspiration from surgical lighting.
I explored how I could use the visual shorthand of revealing, investigative medical lighting to literalize the forensic gaze.
The forensic gaze is a way of looking at ourselves enabled by technology that focuses on microscopic flaws in the skin.
As I iterated on the form, I took the surgical inspiration and exaggerated it, choosing forms that were unsettling.
Prototyping occurred at many levels of fidelity simultaneously.
I exaggerated the form, added vents, and used simple materials to test handle proportions.
I resolved heat management of LEDS within a thermoplastic housing with heat sinks secured by dowels to ensure airflow and no LED contact with PLA.
Gooseneck arms lent an alien, living quality to the fixtures.
I chose high power, cool color, low CRI LEDS with tight spot optics in order to make the light less flattering, exaggerating flaws and making one look worse.