Ammo Table, Part 3

Now that the search is underway and I’m gradually gathering these casings, I’ve found I should start figuring out what on earth I’m going to do with them when I get several thousand of the little suckers.  I’ve tried to approach prototyping my art like I approach voting -- do it early and often.

While fondling some of the casings (why is it everyone edges away from my table at the coffeehouse when I do this?) I realized that the open end and the closed end are two very different colors -- the shadow of the open end is dark, even when viewed outside, and the closed end is reflective.  Now I’ve got a direction -- I plan to arrange the casings open-end or closed-end up so that the resulting pattern depicts a portrait, kind of like if you zoom in on a digital black-and-white photograph.  At some great magnification, all you see is black or white pixels.  

Who would be an appropriate subject for a portrait out of spent ammunition?  Martin Luther King, Charles Taylor, and JFK all seem a little too trite and obvious.  Mickey Mouse?  The McDonald’s logo?  Here are a few ides, pixelated to the approximate degree they would be on the table.

Several years ago I did a series of sketches on Humphrey Bogart, and was fascinated with his eyes in particular.  Here are some that have potential for the table design.

Since pixelated computer graphics only have a small resemblance to bullets, I decided to prototype the image again, this time by drilling holes (representing the open-end-up shells) into a board with the graphic of Bogart’s eyes.