String art is a technique characterized by the arrangement of strings made of wool, wire, or thread between points to create abstract geometric patterns or representational designs. The strings are wound around a grid of nails hammered into support, which itself can be wood, velvet, cardboard or even the wall. Also known as Pin-and-thread-art, string art has a long story and development behind it and after some years began to be used in alternative clubs and music festivals (often self-made) because of its possibilities in the camp of the scenography. This kind of art is especially attractive if it’s combined with UV-light, which will let some concrete colours punctuate and mute the rest.
Civitella d’Agliano is an old town that exuberates the tradition and the classical; no high-tech or extremely shocking exhibitions are going to be found there, only harmonious ones that fit perfectly to the environment, wherefore I desired to bring to it something new, something disruptive that this town stuck in the past has yet to see. That’s why String art meets (for the first time) Civitella d’Agliano.
This intervention in a room can also be interpreted as an introduction to the work gloWings.
[Text revision: Karl Stocker, Stephen Nash Kennedy]
That’s all you need!
If you are interested in copying this artwork, you may need:
· DemonCubicBloc font installed in our computer, it’s 100% free!
If you are as smart as me, use a projector and save time.
· Exactly 1307 1,6x22 mm nails. OK, you can also use smaller/bigger ones…
· Hammer and accuracy
· Around 60 meters neon wool. Remember that only neon colours light in blacklight, the others are nice but not that cool… in the market you can find specialty white, yellow, orange, red, pink and green strings. In this case I used only green and pink; I don’t want to look too kitschy…
Make a knot in every nail and avoid double stringing (they will glow lighter and not homogeneous! That’s not good….)
Cut the hanging rest of the strings and keep them- who knows if you will find another use for it later.
· Patience and a lot of time. As you see, string art is perfect for low material budgets (mine was only around 5€), but if we talk about the time it’s another thing…
Watch it under a different light…
As said, string art looks absolutely better if you use black light. If I am speaking too fast, here is a small clarification: although black lights emit light, this ultraviolet light is not visible to human eyes and would leave a room in apparent total darkness. But fortunately, Mother Nature gave us some substances that glow or fluoresce when placed under said light. Fluorescent substances absorb the ultraviolet light and then re-emit it almost instantaneously. Some energy gets lost in the process, so the emitted light has a longer wavelength than the absorbed radiation, which makes this light visible and causes the material to appear to glow.
Welcome to the new dimension
Especially in southern countries, stringed curtains cover the doors that separate interior from exterior spaces and the people have to go trough them while going in. As a parallelism, at the entrance of the exhibition simple strings were hanging from the ceiling to the floor that the visitors had to weave through when coming in, as a way of welcoming them to a new dimension and announcing the difference between normal vs black light.
