This project came about because of a friendship that I've been developing with an anonymous street artist named Evereman.   http://evereman.com/   I'm not sure how much background on Evereman you'll want to give, but that's his website, and this is his about http://evereman.com/about/ It talks about the premise behind the Evereman project, and how it has evolved.  Also here's a link to his TedxPeachtree talk which is also a very good 3 min video about what he does.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/2KSmcJ-XLVI?autoplay=0&&KeepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=505&width=853?autoplay=0&
 

Around November I had the idea that It'd be fun to get Evereman involved with the students who worked in the Digital Fabrication Lab.  In addition to being a street artists Evereman has worked as a furniture maker for almost 30 years, so he has a lot of skills and abilities with traditional tools, but not with any of the big modern ones that we employ at the DFL.   Knowing that there's normally a gap between the end of finals and when most grad students actually go home, I asked him if he'd be interested in doing a short project with a group of Masters students just before Christmas.   Evereman has always been interested in large objects, and how the public interacts with them, so the possibilities caught his interest.   We met and talked about what we could do, and how we could do it.  He wanted something big, and I wanted the students to be fully involved in the design and fabrication of the piece.  I asked students that had worked at the lab to participate. 

The only ground rules that we set where
1. We wanted to students to work with Evereman and design something
2. We wanted them to build it in 2 days
3. To keep us sane we set the max size of the project at 8'x8'x8'
4. It had to be weatherproof since it would be outside

We wanted to put whatever we made in a public location where drivers going by would get enjoyment from the object, but that people up close would get a completely different experience.  After searching around Atlanta we obtained permission from the Midtown West Group to locate the project in the triangle of land where Howell Mill and Marietta split.

We met Monday the 17th of December, and as an intro to the project and an introduction to Evereman's art we had a making party, where we made 200 4"x4" Everemen to be dropped around the city, and the world.  Many of the students traveled home over the holidays, so Everemen went to Seattle, Chattanooga, Austin, etc  to be distributed there.   After the making party we had lunch and had a design charette about what to make. 

Our final design was akin to a children's playground tic tac toe game.  The whole piece has 3 faces, which given the triangular shape of the piece of land that it would be sitting on gave every approach of the piece a different view.  Rather than have a 3x3 puzzle though we liked the idea of a 8x8 puzzle, which fit our max height and width limits, and coincidentally 8 is also the number of letter in Evereman.   Each prism can move independently of the rest of its column due to 3 low friction washers between each prism.  The idea would be that participants or the wind would rotate the pieces, and then other participants could choose to modify the organization or even "solve" the puzzle if they choose. 

That afternoon we built some prototypes of the project, and drew out plans to be ready for the next days of building.  Over the 2 days we fabricated 64-1' prisms out of plywood, painted each one, and fabricated the large steel frame to hold the entire project.  After 2 days of making and painting, we carried our project down the street to octane and installed the piece in less than an hour. 

The project was in front of Octane Coffee west between Dec 18-Jan4.  The public response was  very positive, and Evereman intends to take the puzzle to other cities in the future.   Right now we're looking at entering the piece into the techarts festival(april11-13) to show off the piece on campus, and give the campus the ability to play with it. 

The participants were:
Evereman
Jake Tompkins (MID 2009, Manager DFL)
Keyon  Rahimzadeh(MArch 2013),
Jessica Marquardt (March 2013)
Dylan Bussey(March 2013)
Mike Carpenter (MID 2014)
Stephen Audy (MID 2013)
Madison Berger(MID 2012)
Juliann Tompkins (Arch 2007)

I have 150ish photos, in a drop box folder. which I'll send you an invite to share.  I figure It might help to see the process as I've described it in photos, and then choose ones that tell the story best.