The second First Friday Event of the semester was a workshop about creating your own camera filter and exploring the youth culture in America. This event was very exciting for me because the grad students in charge were the same grad students who were mentors in the Saturday School program so I already knew them.
After I greeted them I observed their usage of the gallery space. What they did was rather impressive because they managed to use the entire gallery and it didn't feel crowded in the least. The space felt natural and there was still room for patrons to walk around to see the exhibition. At the entryway, there was a video that was put together showing the process of creating a filter. It was artsy, effective, and eye catching and helped draw people in from the streets.
Down on the lower level, there were four different stations set up with old school projectors and tables with the colored cellophane sheets, bubble wrap, scissors, and other tools for the participants to use. There At each table, there was also a Polaroid camera and several film packs for people to take pictures with and instructions as to what to do. Each station was spread out fairly evenly and the projections fit into the spaces between the works of art, making it seem like the participants were making their own temporary works of art that were displayed in the gallery.
The flow throughout the night was slow but steady, and the stations were never empty for long.
An issue we had was that the Polaroid flash would make the filters hard to see. We tried to cover the flash with tape, but then it was always too dark and you couldn't see much of anything. The best solution was to only half cove the flash, that way there would be enough light to see the picture and enough darkness to have a saturated image.
All of the projectors were originally propped on tables, but once more families with small children came by the grads moved some projectors to the ground so that the kids could reach it easier. This lead to an amazing exploration in color and pattern layering, so much so that the filter ended up being brown from the mountain of colors piled on the projector! At one point, they started to use the scissors provided as a pattern.
Another interesting group was a gaggle of middle schoolers who needed their filters to be "aesthetic". The girls in the group only used two colors of "confetti" and had a yellow crown in the center. The boys were a big fan of using the scissors as a pattern. They were all taking pictures and whatnot. They sort of acted like they were too cool for the activity, but I think they all secretly enjoyed it.
What I sincerely enjoyed seeing was the amount of collaboration that was going on between the participants helping each other make and using each others filters. This was most prominent with a group of children and with some little girl and who I thought was their father, but turned out to be someone who was a total stranger to her!
I want to congratulate the grad students for putting on a successful event. It was well organized and was not chaotic thanks to their layout. I do think that they could have done a better job of making the instructions more visible right up front as I nearly missed it.