Feb 122016
 
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Full Moon Backpackers Hostel, Bristol painted by Chu

The Full Moon, in the centre of Bristol invited me to decorate one of their rooms in the 70-bed backpackers hostel at the bottom of Stokes Croft. I arranged for the floor to be laid again with new wood, linen was bought in and patterned, and a very large extractor fan was installed , as the hostel itself was open. Thankfully the room had no guests staying in it for a few days.

Plus – its only £7.50 per night in this mixed gender dormitory.

Concept

The owner of the Full Moon (JJ) said I could ‘go for it’, no surface untouched. This was to be the first, full room equivalent of my cubic experiment (see it here). I knew that I couldn’t count on a square repeat in a spherical environment due to the polar caps. This I learned through my experience of texture mapping on 3D computer models for games, and after experimenting at the Lunar festival last year. I devised a repeat that would be largely based on what I could physically measure with an aerosol can in my hand – I wasn’t using any other apparatus, no measuring tape, no projectors, no masking. And no squares…

This ended up with six segments (like an orange), with each segment having six vertical, stacked sections and each section had no sub-sections nearer the polar cap but 5 sub-sections around the horizon or eye-level. This resulted in 116 triangles of roughly similar sizes. Any more segments, or sections – the whole process of mapping the lines across different depths would be far too time consuming and far more prone to error.

The sketches below might explain this process a little bit better, and the viewpoint photographs and 360 panorama will allow you to see where the furniture is inside the room a bit easier.
Sketches for Full Moon hostel room

The surfaces were only painted if they were visible from the sweet spot (66″ above the ground). If they could not be seen then  they would remain unpainted. You can see this in the viewpoint photographs below.

Little did I know that the one-word brief that the Full Moon forgot to mention, was Kaleidoscope…

Viewpoints

A very special, big thank you to Omar, Steve and Damo for the effort put in to make this room a reality and of course, the staff at the Full Moon for looking after us.

Full Moon Backpackers Hostel, Bristol painted by Chu

Full Moon Backpackers Hostel, Bristol painted by Chu

Full Moon Backpackers Hostel, Bristol painted by Chu

360° panorama

There’s only one point in the whole space which allows you to see the complete illusion, midway beneath the two light bulb fixtures. I have made a 360 degree panorama so you can put yourself there without visiting yourself.

You can drag the view around by clicking and dragging the left mouse button, the gyroscope allows you to tilt the view around you on a mobile such as iPhone.

View the 360° Panorama FULL SCREEN

Mobile – zoom in & out by pinching, choose whether you want the gyroscope switched on or off by clicking the icon (only necessary for portables)

Computer – zoom with CTRL/SHIFT or mouse-wheel