Nightclub Decorative Light

The upcycling project that I constructed was a decorative light made out of plastic disposable water bottles and different colored lights to follow the club or rave aesthetic. The club aesthetic that will be achieved through this project makes people feel high energy and party vibes through its’ bold contrasts, different colors of lights, and lasers, which can be seen in the featured image by Pinterest (1). The lights tend to be a lighter color, such as bright greens, pinks, purples, blues, and yellows. This aesthetic overloads the sensory and is inspired by the chaotic atmosphere of urban nightlife that you see at clubs and raves. It immerses you in a futuristic and party environment to get you into the music and feel the energy of the people around you. One of the key elements of the nightclub aesthetic is the lights you see. Nowadays, there are LED strips, neon lights, strobe lights, and laser projections. It is truly a crazy environment to be in, where there are also dark tones. They add to the vibe by creating a contrast with the vibrant LED highlights. A couple more key elements are the materials and textures as well as the sounds. Inside of most clubs, there are metallic, glass, and glossy finishes. Everything tends to look shiny and there are a lot of mirrors to make the room seem larger than it is. It adds another element to the lighting as the lights reflect off of these surfaces to add to the ambiance. For the sounds, nightclubs are well-known for their high-end speakers, subwoofers, and soundproofed walls in order to make the place bump to the beats of the DJ. For an aesthetic that originally started in the 1920s and 1930s with speakeasies and jazz clubs, they have come a long way to where they are now.

This aesthetic inspired my upcycling project because I think it is unique and a lot of people my age can relate to it or know what is being portrayed by the project. Adults that are aged between 21 and 25 are the majority of the crowd that you see at a club on the weekend. Also, I love the feelings and emotions that it puts off, which is a fun, high-energy atmosphere. It makes me think of visiting an exotic club somewhere such as Miami or Ibiza, which are areas around the world known to be hotspots for clubbing.

The image seen above by Recyclopedia (2) is a design that inspired me to do this project. Before I chose the design, the nightclub aesthetic was chosen. When I was looking at certain projects that have been done previously with water bottles, this one certainly sparked my interest. I loved the way that they used the lights inside the bottles and had a design on the outside, making the color of the bottle a matte white. It adds a lot of character and makes for a good decoration, either outside or inside of one’s house.

When I first saw the image, I could immediately visualize a design that I wanted to target. This design was not my final design, but I wanted to go for a lantern-type object that could hang up multiple water bottles and involve multiple different colored LED lights. I figured I could add the lights at the bottom of the bottle and fill it up with some water to include lighting effects. All the bottles would be lined up and spaced out on top of a plastic platform which would be a plastic sheet or acrylic. Then there would be a string hanging from the platform that could be used to hang up the lantern. This was a great design, however, when I started my procedures and retrieved my materials, I realized that there was a better design that would look better. This one involved the same materials other than string. It was a decorative light that included plastic water bottles, LED lights, water, excess laser cutting material, and gorilla glue.

With this project, I was not aiming for a main goal of functionality but rather achieving my vision of the nightclub aesthetic. The function was to provide light to the room it was placed in, however, if I achieved the aesthetic, I thought that the functionality would come with it since I was adding lights into the bottles. The aesthetic was the most important to me because I wanted it to be more of an art piece because I did not have much experience in that field. Before I learned how to apply art to engineering combined into a project, I thought it was important to learn about art and the skills needed in product design.

Procedures:

This project started off with a couple of sketches, as seen above in image (3). The first one was for my initial lantern idea as mentioned previously. I retrieved all of my materials for free, except for the LED lights, which were purchased from Amazon for $12.99. The excess laser-cutting material was found from the ITL at CU Boulder while the water bottle pack was given to me by a helpful friend, and the other materials were found around my house. Once the materials were retrieved, I started brainstorming other designs that I could change to. This led to me pivoting to a decorative light design, as seen above in image (4). When a rough sketch was made, I began the process of cutting the tops off of the plastic water bottles. I did not have the best way to cut them as I used a pocketknife to cut the tops, so I used a few water bottles to practice on first in order to achieve consistent cuts. The practice cuts can be seen above in image (5). Once there were consistent, straight cuts, I used a few of the caps and glued them together with an LED in between them so I could place them in the middle of the bottom platform and add more lighting to the decoration. Originally I thought I could glue the top back onto the body of the bottle after adding a light and water, however, I found a better idea. A spiral cut could be used so that the top turned into a flap and the light could be put inside in a more feasible manner. Therefore I used this strategy for the rest of the bottles that I was using for the decorative light. Then, the bottles and caps were aligned onto the three circles I had picked out from the laser-cutting material. When they were aligned correctly, they were glued onto the surfaces before an extra platform was added on top to add another level to the light. The top light had two bottles with two lights in them, however, they were inverted and placed inside each other in order to add a unique aspect to it. The finished product can be seen below in image (6), and a picture of the light being made can be seen in image (7).

How it correlates with the nightclub aesthetic:

The decorative light that was made fits the nightclub aesthetic in multiple different ways and reaches several artistic goals. First of all, the plastic water bottles add a glossy finish. They correlate with the glossy floors and walls, as well as the metallic finishes that you may see at any nightclub. Different colored LEDs were utilized in the bottles to represent the many colors and various lights at the club. Water was added to the bottles to add the lighting effects as well. There are a lot of geometrical shapes that can be seen, hence the circles of different sizes. Also, there was a nice finish when I placed it on my dark countertop to include a dark tone around the light. Finally, there are multiple stories at many popular European and Mexican clubs, which is why I had a two-story light rather than one.

My functional goals were achieved by this project because the only function that this could have would be to light up the area around it. Although I would have liked it to shine a little brighter, the goal was accomplished and looked nice in a dark room. Ideally, I would have liked to refine the final product and use brighter LEDs as well as small mirrors in the middle of the platform to reflect more light to the outside. The batteries in the lights may not last long, especially since they are underwater, but I plan to keep using the light in the basement of my house until the brightness dims!

References:

(1)  Pinterest, n.d., https://i.pinimg.com/originals/de/a6/a4/dea6a43d055fabdc38ca5d2da0e5f4bb.png

(2) Recyclopedia, 2023, https://cdn.recyclopedia.sg/strapi-assets/medium_Clear_plastic_bottle_2dc92dc39c.png