COUR-JET 2000

Alchemy, turning something into something. Channelling that word through today’s society and culture we turned out attention to the hot off the press Courgette crisis happening at the moment due to the adverse weather in Spain. Forming the idea to make a machine/illusion/scientific discovery that was the COUR-JET 2000! A four day project focused around Rapid Response and generation of ideas with making being essential to fuel the group onwards. Day 4 was the presentation of the innovation at the Paraphysical Magic Conference.
DAY 1 - was idea sorting, forming the starting backbone to this project.
DAY 2 - The idea was that we (as Cougetteers) had formulated the perfect ratio of Gold to Courgette and made a machine that would stop this national panic. The start of a mass production of phoney Courgettes happened made from objects, lookalikes, stuck together parts, so aesthetic when next to one another. These phoney courgettes would spit out of our machine when the dials weren’t quite right, to add to the showmanship of the performance. The table was built, the cardboard outer skin was produced, ideas flying all about the place. Getting a photo set sorted of all the ‘courgettes’. (Photos below). The ‘last courgette’ plinth made promptly, we decided the look of our project was along the theme of ‘professionally shit’, so we stuck by this.
DAY 3 - Experimenting more with the courgette form, vacuum forming, making a logo and preparing it for badge embroidery the next day. Created a short film of courgettes ‘returning to Sainsbury’s’. The production of budget was £0, so we attached courgettes previously bought, attached to thread and dangled from dowel, and there you have it, magical hovering courgettes.
DAY 4 – Badge production in full swing, whilst constructing a script and timings for presentation. There were 7 roles: Presenter, Scientist, Machine specialist, Catcher, Model 1 & 2 and ofcourse the person sat in the machine.
We finished the CORE-JET 2000, a talking run through with the films that had been made, everything on track. CD burnt for the telly. 4 dials on machine had been confirmed – gold quality – gold quantity –courgette size – courgette ? Which were perfect for clarity when explaining machine and when a audience member tried to construct the perfect courgette for performance.
DAY 5- SHOW TIME