The Spider Web

The next day, the project was summed up in a bit of graffiti written on one of the signs:

The idea: Heather and I were talking this Saturday about things we could to at the next GALL meeting. I didn’t want to have another meeting at which we benignly plan things. I had thought about maybe going trick-or-bottle-capping, as we are currently working on getting enough plastic bottle caps for the junk art initiative.

Heather said something about putting spiders somewhere. I don’t remember where, but that precipitated me to suggest that we should make a spider web over the fountain with standards to be provided by facilities.

On Sunday, it dawned on me that Trinkle had a pretty awesomely shaped rotunda (a circle) with plenty of points to tie the thing from. At first I had thought that we would tie it from the second floor, but after a painstaking hour of trying to measure a 34’ diameter with a 25’ tape measure by myself, I gave up on the idea, and measured from the first floor.

Eventually, I realized that it would be much easier to just attach it to the eight columns on the ground floor and then raise the web up as high as it would go.

The design: The design was simple enough. We simply tied a 20’ length of twine to each of the eight columns about 2’ high and brought them to the center. From there, we measured a one foot mark from the center point of each rope (which ended up being 2’4¹/₄”). We then measured 9³/₁₆” toward the center and tied that point to the one foot mark on the length of twine next to it.

After doing that for each length of twine, we ended up with eight spokes joining an octagon in the center. From there, we tied the twine attached to the roll to the central octagon and began to create a spiral (spider web) pattern, attaching the free twine to each “spoke” (as bedubbed by Clem) with a small bit of wire.

After we finished with that, Dave painstakingly wrote the word “GALL” with twine in the center of the web.

When he finally finished, Clem and I went down the elevator to get some chairs. We were joined by a third party, to whom I said, “I have no idea what the fuck they’re doing in there.”

He responded, “Is Spiderman 4 coming out or something.” We both chuckled as Clem gave me one of those looks.

We returned with the chairs and I had everyone grab a side and hoist it as high as he could get it. I took the chair and, standing on it, tightened each knot around the tapered column, making sure to get opposite columns at a time so that the tension was even in the center.

After the thing was sufficiently high, we made signs to put on the columns, proclaiming effetely “This is GALL?”

Afterwards, everyone got caught in the spider’s web and was eaten. I managed to get out with most of my limbs

I think we were all pretty proud of our work. Even more so that we got it done in about an hour. It was really amusing to watch people flinch when they first noticed it. However, the next day, we were presented with a challenge:

For more pictures and videos of us doing nothing, check out the photobucket album

--Mike Isaacson, GALL President