Stage Designs

Refraction Faction

Nathan Whalen & Team from Brookville Road Community Church in New Palestine, IN brings us this string stage design that looks like refracted light.

For this stage design they wanted to do their own version of the yarn sets that they have seen here. They started by making 5 8′ x 3′ frames out of 2×2 with a screw every inch. (Use Pegboard for this!) Then they used two different colors of yarn (white and light grey) and strung some different designs on the screws. Nathan found that if you wrap the yarn around each screw that you use once it will keep the tension and not sag. They really didn’t have a specific design in mind when they started…they just had a few ideas from the graphic for the series. They used that same set for two series and just restrung the yarn for the second set. They used 10 ADJ Dotz Pars to light this set. One thing they found out in doing this set is that their video cameras did not like the yarn. When the camera would pan across the set it would not know what to do and freak out.

Throwback: Paint Can Lids Shatterboxes

7 responses to “Refraction Faction”

  1. Steven says:

    Awesome concept! What gauge of yarn was used for this?

  2. Jim says:

    Hi, do you have the patterns for the yarn designs?
    Or, written instructions? I’m thinking even something like, count 20 screws from the bottom left and run the yarn from that screw to each screw on the right starting at screw 8 and moving up to screw 40.
    Or, Can you tell us where we can find patterns of designs?
    Or, did you experiment?
    Thanks!

    • Nathan Whalen says:

      I just experimented with these designs. I had an idea of the feel I wanted based on the graphic for the series. You can do a lot of different things with it! Check out some of the other string designs of this website for more great ideas!

  3. Jason Cary says:

    How many spools of yarn did this take per frame & approx. how long did it take to build one frame??

    • Jim says:

      We did a variation on the Refractory Faction theme. We used 14 frames, over 4000 yards of yarn, and about 3,500 screws. The entire project needed about 12 people for various parts of the project. It needed about 98 “man-hours” to create.

  4. Nathan Whalen says:

    I used a total of 4 11oz spools of yarn for this set. Once I got the process down for how I wanted to build the frames it went pretty quick. I would say that start to finish on one frame(built, pre-drill, and screws) was 30-45 mins with one person. (Not including paint time.)

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