Category Archives: installation / sculpture

Garden for a Not Too Distant Future

Spanish art collective, Luzinterruptus latest creation, Jardín para un Futuro, No Muy Lejano (Garden for a Not Too Distant Future), is 110 clear plastic containers, each containing a few leaves and branches, along with a green LED.

The artist statement says that installation was a humorous statement about the lack of green space in modern cities; but given the frequency of their installations, I think that’s more just talk than anything.

Luzinterruptus weekly installations are a bit repetitive. For instance, “Jardín” is reminiscent of their December work, Naturaleza Contra Cristal (Nature Against Glass), where they placed green LEDs and tree clippings on the Madrid Metro elevators stations. Parallels to Graffiti Research Lab‘s LED Throwies and Goggin and Keehn’s The Language of Birds could also be made.

Yes, it’s repetitive. Yes, other people are doing the same thing, perhaps even better. But I’m a sucker for LEDs in the dark.

A Turing Machine

Now this is inspired. Mike Davey has built an actual Turing Machine.

A bit of background for non-CS people out there. A Turing Machine is a thought machine postulated by father of modern computing, and persecuted hero of World War II, Alan Turing. It was described as a machine that with a read-write head and infinite roll of tape that could pass back and forth under the head. Symbols could be read from the tape and then written back to the tape. What symbols, and where they were written would defined by rules that were triggered based on the symbols read from the tape.

In modern parlance, this is a machine whose behavior is controlled not through hardwiring, but through software.

Mike Davey isn’t the first person to build a Turing machine. (There’s at least one Lego Turing Machine.) But I do think he’s one of the few that built a machine that looks like a Turing Machine.

Video after the jump.
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LED Tables


Alex Schlegel‘s Day Table uses a photoresistor located in one corner, and eight ShiftBars (for a total of 24 channels) connected to an Arduino to play back the sunlight that fell on the table during the course of the day.

Macetech built this table to demo their shiftbrite RGB LEDs and a Seeeduino. It’s a 9 x 9 grid, but since each LED has its own controller, the cost quickly climbs.


While not a table, Dave Clausen‘s LED Cylinder is a good resource for discussing how to wire up set of addressable RGB LEDs, along with some good resources to parts and the like.

Recently I’ve been thinking about a LED displays. Originally, I was thinking about a full 640 x 480 display, but after doing the math, that idea quickly shrank to a more manageable 32 x 24 display. While part of me thinks that having one of these tables would be interesting, I can’t help but think that in reality they’d just be ugly and too bright.

I started to think about LED displays because my “coffee table” (It’s actually more an end table.) has a glass top and holes cut out in the back for electrical cables to pass through. What I really want is a multitouch display like either of these two guys are building. However, a multitouch is still pretty hacky and more DIY than I want right now. I like the idea of owning one of these tables, I just don’t want to build it.

Construction Lamps

Studio Job is exhibiting these two “new” works at Carpenter’s Workshop Gallery in London this month. While these are described as “new works”, it really seems like I’ve seen these. Like in a Restoration Hardware or something. Both of these lights seem really, really familiar. It seems like I remember swatting the wrecking ball once to see if it was a cord or a stiff wire.

All of this just seems oddly familiar.

Yuri’s Night 2010

Tickets are on sale for this year’s Yuri’s Night. April 9 (“Multiverse Education Day”) and 10 (Festival Day; noon to midnight) at NASA Ames / Moffett Field’s Hangar 211. (Alas, not Hanger One.)

Yuri’s Night uses Yuri Gagarin’s first (and only) flight into space, as an excuse to listen to music and look at art. Read WiRED’s 2007 coverage for a flavor. Beyond the music (headliners are: The Black Keys, Common, Les Claypool, and N.E.R.D.), the Flaming Lotus Girls will be there with the sculpture The Serpent Mother, and Alan Rorie will be displaying the Raygun Gothic Rocketship.

La Vitrine’s LED Wall

Lighting artists, the Moment Factory installed on the front wall of Montreal’s La Vitrine theater a full length interactive LED display. Made up of hellalot of RGB leds, the patterns react to people as they pass on the street.

Moment Factory designed the lighting effects for Nine inch Nails‘s (w00t) 2008 Lights in the Sky tour. There’s a video of them talking about the effects on the tour, and how they were controlled from the stage rather than pre-scripted like stage effects normally are, but a combination of flash and their website being in flux have foiled me. Still, if you like effects and/or NIN, find the video. It’s not that long.

Previously. Previously.

Another video after the jump.

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New Woo-Woos

I’ll admit it. This post is just here to look at pictures of police cars. I kind of like police cars. I like the flashing lights. I like that they go fast. The first time I sat in a police car, I was maybe five years old. An Illinois State Police trooper, having lunch/dinner at the DuQuoin Pizza Hut, let me sit on his lap and turn the lights on. I remember leaning out of the car and expclaiming, “The Woo-woos! They WORK!,” and that he had a broken thumb. I imagined that he got shot in it. The last time I sat in a police car, it was getting a speeding ticket after I blew past another Illinois State Police car going about 90 on I-57. I sat in the front, because the back was full of cardboard boxes containing files. (I’m sure Andrew Tanenbaum would have something to say about that.) I noticed there was a lot of crap in a cop car. A laptop and two CB radios. (WTF?)

Now with disclaimer out of the way…

New police cars!

Ford is eliminating the Crown Victoria police cruiser, and replacing it with the 2011 Taurus Police Interceptor (based on the 2010 Taurus). What makes this different from the Crown Vics? This one has unibody construction (which makes repairs more expensive), and 25% more fuel efficient V6 engines (263 HP and 365 HP available, with either front-wheel or all-wheel transmissions).

Not to be left behind, GM is releasing a new 2011 Chevrolet Caprice Police Interceptor which comes in both a V8 (355 HP) and V6 FlexFuel (i.e. E85 or gasoline) engines.

Dodge is staying with their Charger that released in 2006.

However, the coolest police car out there is not the lame-o police Lamborghini, or the from-the-mind-of-a-seven-year-old-boy Caparo T1 Rapid Response Vehicle, but Carbon Motors purpose built (as opposed to a normal conversion) police car, the E7. It comes with night vision, a heads up display,an automatic license plate recognizer, voice control, and suicide doors! (More photos from Jalopnik.)

Photos of all cars mentioned after the jump.
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Natural Deselection

This past weekend, Ming and I planted a couple of tomato plants in pots to grow. As part of the fun, we’re keeping a log of how fast the plants grow. Doing this has given me flashbacks to LDEF SEEDS experiment which involved both school children and “real” scientists growing tomatoes that were exposed to the radiation of space for almost six years. (FYI: Space seeds had higher germination rates, but tasted the same as Earth tomatoes.)

While thinking about plant growth rates, I came across Natural Selection by Tom Simpson of Studio Lithero. It is perhaps the most boring death race ever. (Actually, it’s pretty cool sped up.) Three plants enter. One plant leaves (HA!), and becomes president. Sensors at the top of the stand trigger cutters at the bottom.

Makes me want to breed some sort of super plant, á la the Russiansilver fox experiment.

BarBot 2010

Next Wednesday and Thursday, (Feb 17-18), at the DNA Lounge (“A disorderly house injurious to the public welfare and morals”) (375 Eleventh St; SF) is BarBot 2010. Tickets are $10 advance, $15 day of show.

Come out and have iZac pour you a fuzzy navel, and the girliest drink in the house!

UPDATE: Tue Mar 16 05:23:28 PDT 2010
Photos! Video!

The Splinter

NC State industrial design grad student, Joe Harmon is building a car by hand. Not just any car. A sports car that can reach 240 MPH. Not just any 700 HP, 240 MPH sports car. A 700 HP, 240 MPH sports car made almost entirely of wood. The body? Wood. The dash? Wood. The seats? Well, they’re wicker. The wheels? Oh, they’re wood too. The suspension? Yes, it’s wood too.

Because he wants strength, but also a reduced weight (wood has a higher strength-to-weight ratio than steel or aluminum), he is creating the body out of custom made plywood that consists of layers of eighth inch wide cherry veneer strips that are then weaved together, and glued on top of a weaved birch veneer, a core of balsa wood, and then another woven layer of birch. The panels are then vacuumed formed into shape, using the same technique that’s used for carbon-fiber composites. All told, about 30 species of wood are used to make up the car.

According to the last update, which was about a year ago, the outer shell was complete, but the internal components such as the V8 Cadillac Northstar engine and six speed Corvette transmission were yet to be installed. However, the car has drawn industrial sponsors like Delta/Porter-Cable, and has been making the rounds at different car shows.

Thanks Dad!