My project to create a sculpture of a CD using the equivalent amount of storage space in floppy discs has proven to be quite difficult so far, as floppy discs aren’t as popular as they were when they were the main way if storing data. Sourcing the floppy discs has been very difficult as many places did not have the required amount of stock, had exorbitant prices, were based in the US and wouldn’t ship to Australia or had shipping that was going to take an extremely long time. I eventually found someone who was Australian based and had the required number of floppy discs on eBay. Having to buy them from Australia meant that they were very expensive and I had to settle for a single colour (yellow) because no Australian based seller had enough stock in multi-coloured packs. After trying to locate a canvas big enough to fit my sculpture of 486 Floppy discs in the shape of a CD, I have decided that that would be unrealistic as they would be too heavy for the canvas or getting the size of canvas required would be too large. I have done large amount of research into how I should go about way of making my sculpture and have decided to the glue the floppy discs together through the use of a hot glue gun that I have purchased from Officeworks.

Trying to figure out how I was going to lay out the Floppy discs out in the shape of a CD was a greater task then I had first anticipated with my original idea not working out and many subsequent ideas also failing. I finally decided that I would glue the floppy discs together into 24 stacks of 20. From there I would lay the 24 stacks out into the shape of a CD and glue them together from there, this has taken a very long time as the process of gluing each individual floppy disc to another isn’t as easy as I had anticipated. The glue guns tend to overheat when they are used for an extended amount of time, waiting long periods of time for the glue to dry and being aware to not get excess glue stuck on the floor (as my apartment is mostly carpeted and I am renting) or stuck all over the other floppy discs was also a problem. These have been the most troublesome tasks to overcome in the process of completing this project.

So far I have almost finished most time consuming part, of gluing the floppy discs into their stacks of 20, next I will glue the 24 stacks into the shape of a CD. I am confident that my method of the gluing the stacks together will provide me with the finished sculpture as I had envisaged, while I was thinking of the idea for this assignment.

After my interview with louis, I became much more interested at how far technology has come in terms of the evolution of equipment. This inspired me to create something that showcased the transition and progress between old and new equipment. When I was in class, my friends gave me an idea that I felt was perfect for what I wanted to explore with project brief 4, the idea was to explore the evolution between old and new media by constructing a sculpture of a new form of media with a form of old media as the material. I feel this concept will show the contrast between old and new very clearly and get my point across quickly.

My goal for Project brief 4 is to create a sculpture that captures people’s attention. At first, I was thinking of using floppy disks to model an 8gb USB drive to showcase the vast differences in storage space. Thankfully, Daniel suggested I use a CD instead as an 8gb USB drive would be the equivalent of 5555.55 floppy disks, which would have been an absolute nightmare to acquire.

After some research, the cd did seem to be the best choice for the comparison I wanted as it was the most doable and least expensive to make. I will be using floppy disks as my material to create the sculpture of a CD, I used plenty of floppy disks back when they were the most popular form of media storage, I am excited that this project allows me a chance to interact with them again. I will be using the storage equivalent of a common compact disc(CD) to determine the number of floppy disks I would have to collect in order to fill up the sculpture. I have calculated that I would need 486.1 individual 3.5 inch 1.44mb floppy disks in order to fill up the 700mb of storage in a standard cd.

I am hoping to find a website that sells the colourful blank 3.5 inch floppy disks that were very popular back when they were they were widely used, they used to come in five different colours and would be a good variety of colours for the sculpture. I will be looking for packs of 50 that I could buy in bulk for a hopefully reasonable price. I would also need a canvas to make it on, I will look online and in Officeworks for one that could I fit the sculpture on. I am looking forward to starting on this project and I hope I will be able to source the materials that I need in time as floppy disks are not as widely available as they used to be and could possibly hinder my schedule of the sculpture.