What’s Innate?

A few months ago this beautiful art installation went up on the side of a downtown building. It features around 20 glowing tubes that are 8 stories high and they slowly change colour from top to bottom. I was totally taken back at how they could do this! I’ve always had it in the back of my head that I should blog this and see if anyone knows anything about them and now I’ve decided to procrastinate no more! At first glance I thought it was some kind of moving gel that just coloured the light but the tubes were too small and there was not visible way for the gel to loop. My only guess is that they are some kind of tube shaped LED display, which would be very impressive considering how smooth and diffused the light appeared. You can stand there and be entertained for hours! Ok well maybe not hours but its a nice reason to stop power walking, take out your earbuds and look around you. Anyways, go down Yonge St. in downtown Toronto and check them out. If anyone has info on who this is by or how it was done please let me know in the comments.

Project Documentation

This past weekend (March 16th-19th) my program department at Ryerson University went on a group tip to NYC to look at art, have fun and gallivant about the city. A few of my friends and I went to The Met to see a new media exhibit that we had heard was on at the time. Overall we were disappointed with the quality and amount of work that was on display except for one work that impressed all of us. The piece is entitled Motion and Rest #2 by Jim Campbell (American, born 1956) which featured a simple 24 x 32 white LED grid board. On the board was the silhouette of a man walking and then stopping but what was really fascinating was the illusion that the sparsely placed LEDs gave of a full silhouette.

I tried staring at it from all angles convinced that the black board behind it was also some kind of display that was filling in the gaps between the lights only to discover my eyes were tricking me. The sign beside the piece stated that it was done using motion capture techniques. The piece also reminded me of Julian Opie’s work here in Toronto in both the AGO and on Bloor street featuring silhouettes of people walking along the street. For me out of the ten or so pieces there at Closed Circuit: Video and New Media exhibit this was the work that stood out from the rest. It has sparked an interest in me to explore the basic concept of light in art and light as art.

Perhaps it was the minimalism that Campbell achieved through the piece in which he was able to strip the human motion of walking down to the most basic possible visualization. No clothes, no hairstyles, no eye contact with the subject but yet the way in which they walk communicates a large amount of information about the person. Campbell even emphasized this minimalist subject matter even further by parring his medium down to as little as possible consisting of a few hundred white LEDs.

So I’m currently working on a short “improv assignment” for my physical computing class and for a long time there’s always been this really cheesy LED christmas light necklace around my house that we’ve always worn for jokes around christmas time. As part of the assignment we have to choose an action, an object and a result from a list we’ve been given and one of the objects we can work with is a necklace. Since the christmas light necklace died this past christmas I thought I’d take it apart and see how it functions so that I could incorporate it into the assignment. I’m thinking I want to try and add more LEDs to it and in a few more colours as well.

The most difficult part of the assignment is going to be the power supply. We haven’t really learned how to do battery power supplies yet, I’ve had a fair amount of experience growing up however with using batteries and what not on homemade devices. I might also try and merge the blinking reindeer antlers I took apart earlier as well.

The necklace itself is made of two thin black wires and a piece of black string spun together. Some of the light bulbs don’t flash and are just plastic while about five are bulbs with LEDs inside of them. Now what makes this wearable is the size of the housing for the components. It’s just a small silver cylinder housing the three 392 silver oxide cell batteries, a small switching device and the controlling circuit board.

The circuit board is a small circle board with the switch and LEDs soldered on. There’s also a black blob of some kind which I’m guessing holds the oscillator which makes the necklace flash. I think I’m going to try and use the circuit board in my improv assignment or maybe use the controller device from the flashing reindeer antlers.

I just came back from a 9 day vacation in southern California, my family + girlfriend stayed in a layed back surfer town right between LA and San Diego called Cardiff By The Sea. Some of the worlds top surfers live there do the beaches are great and there’s a nice easy going mood all through out the town. We spent most of our time in and around the LA area and on one of our days visited Rodeo Dr. in Beverly Hills. Ironically one of the few New Media/artistic type things I came across on the trip was here, one of the most “commercial” areas in the world. In the window of Louis Vuitton there was a series of large and bright lamp-like pieces of art shining out onto the street. The piece was by Olafur Eliasson who is a Danish artist that was commissioned by the fashion designer to create a Christmas window display. It’s an interesting creation that I find comments on the relationship between human nature, experience and desire. When a window shopper goes by the see this lamp that looks like an eye staring back at them while they also see the reflection of themselves in the window, as you can see in my photos. It also comments somewhat on window shopping and how many people look into windows with “eyes of desire” for a certain product. Louis Vuitton is certainly known for being able to create that desire for their fashion products in consumers. Overall it was an interesting artwork that made you stop and look at it deeply. Here are some more photos I took from different angles:

I found this extra pair of flashing LED reindeer antlers so being in the true spirit of Christmas I tore them apart to see what was inside. After about 15 minutes of hacking with scissors I managed to cut through the thick sweat shop grade glue (and a wire! oops…) and dug out the six red LEDs.

The lights were controlled with a printed circuit that had a battery and a switching device that the user would squeeze in order to turn them on and off. What I found most interesting about the circuit was the simple plastic casing around the printed circuit board with a tab to give the user a nice interface to interact with.

When using the antlers this little plastic case is really what makes the circuit usable, the fact that the user can squeeze it, feel a nice click and then the button returns to its normal state. This is what’s most important for the user…does it turn on and off? This is something to take into important consideration next semester when I’m working on physical computing assignments.