septemberplay Mosaic

Time-lapse Creation (19 Hours)

 

• 20ft by 30ft mosaic
• 97,200 one inch square pieces of colored paper
• 19 hours and a team of 21 people.
• Blown away by leaf blowers in a minute and a half.

Created for the opening scene of the one time performance of the devised theatre piece, ‘SEPTEMBERPLAY’. The performance was a playful memorial that surprisingly reclaims ways we discuss, interpret and think about the attacks of September 11th – a performance that evokes our most innocent and imaginative answers to the country’s most difficult questions.

Mosaic Image

The original image, which had approximately 1500 unique colors, went through a series of filters and hand touchups to reduced the image t0  just 10 colors. You can see the results of those refinements below.

Breakdown of Colored Squares

Once we had the final image, we decided on the 10 colors of construction paper that best matched the original image’s look, and then I wrote a python program using the image module to programatically create a key that could be printed and used to construct the mosaic in 133 “frames” of approximately 49 by 17 squares. Below is the final key breakdown that we used. The key letters were chosen for the distinctness of the character, as one printed frame would contain 779 characters representing that square’s color breakdown.

View Full Color Key

Quantity	Color	Key
32,290	Vioet	A
23,013	Blue	E
709	Turquoise	I
10,565	Sky Blue	G
3,041	White	J
913	Chartreuse	R
6,590	Yellow	M
7,240	Gold	P
6,845	Brown	S
5,994	Dark Brown	X

 

Destruction

 

Read more about the production of ‘septemberplay’ at the links below:

• A Day To Remember – Know – The University of Texas at Austin – September 2, 2011
• septemberplay – The Duplicates Theatre Company