Sarah Anderson-LookingOutwards-1
Lotus 7.0 – Daan Roosegaarde
[vimeo 18002972 w=400 h=300]
I found this really cool blog by an artist named Leigh Davis. He fills his blog with projects he’s done or been working on and projects other people have done as well. This one project that I though was really powerful is called Lotus 7.0 by Daan Roosegaarde. The Project is a “wall” of “breathing” aluminum foil that opens and closes in parts as it senses people walking by it. The wall is lit up red on the inside. The aluminum pieces open up like flowers.
This project is powerful to me because of the scale of it, as well as the mechanics and programming behind it. I’m not exactly sure what it is saying; maybe something along the lines of “if you get close to opportunities or people, they will open up to you,” but I feel that it’s more along the lines of a genuine curiosity to just experience the project and see what it does. I wish that the artist would have included some sounds or maybe some movement of air, to make the project more of a feeling than just something pretty. If that red lights give off heat, that would be cool as well.
The artist is also commissioned to build a larger structure called Lotus Dome that blooms to the touch.
SnOil – Martin Frey
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAO5dTBMDkY]
Martin did something really cool with ferrofluid. For anyone who doesn’t know what ferrofluid is, it is a liquid that acts as some metals do in that it has magnetic attraction. Lots of people do cool projects with ferrofluid including mixing it with paint to created interesting effects and images or magnetizing a metal structure that the fluid can form itself around. Martin however, made a box containing a large circuit board and a grid of electromagnets and placed a tray of ferrofluid on top. He can make letters, shapes, designs, and even play Snake all with some programming. I found this project really cool because it treated ferrofluid like a grid of LEDs that could be turned on and off all with the press of a button. There is no real practical use for this as ferrofluid is a lot messier than LEDs are, but it is an interesting concept and structure with interesting programming. Another interesting aspect about this construction is that it has an accelerometer in it; to play Snake, you tilt the board, like some Ipad games. I wish he had utilized the structure to do some more interesting things, perhaps show off the strange spikes that ferrofluid can make by changing the intensity of the magnets, but it’s still really cool.
LED Hard Drive Clock – Ian Matthew
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1asNB0te0o]
This project does have a practical purpose but I found it so ingenious and pretty that I think it deserved to be up here. Ian Matthew created a clock from an old computer hard drive and a multitude of LEDs. The cool part is that it works because of the high frequencies being displayed to the human eye. The drive spins at over 90 times a second which allows us to see solid blocks of color instead of blinking colors. TVs work the same way. So I thought it was really clever that he utilizes the speed of the spinning drive as well as custom software to control the lights. What also interesting is that it resembles a zoetrope in that there is a slot cut through the drive to let the light in. The clock can also go into light show mode. What would have been really cool was if there had been sound also set to it. However, I love when people reuse old computer parts in interesting ways, so I really like it.