music, improvisation, technology, design
I’ve been working on a new project over the last 5 months, but keeping it quiet so I can surprise people with it… Well I’ve now posted an instructable so the cat’s out of the bag!
Head over to the instructable for all the details! Oh, and while you’re there, please vote for me so I win the laser cutter!
I’ve linked up with the jam jar collective in Leeds. They have independently developed a virtual graffiti tool called Friispray.
Last weekend I went up to Leeds for a mini residency to develop the software and hardware further. It was great working with Stuart, and we managed to come up with a way to track where the can is pointing (a big problem with both our previous versions).
Here’s a sneak preview of our new laser based system…
For all further developments of this project, please see the Friispray website, or our github wiki and source code repo
The “science of snow” is an interactive exhibit that starts by illustrating how snowflakes form and ends with a unique snowflake postcard to take away.
By controlling environmental conditions, you grow a unique snowflake; its shape is a visual history of the journey from cloud to ground.
The exhibit has been shown at many galleries including The Crypt (London) Motorcycle showroom and Lakota (Bristol).
More photos of the build process and the final product including example snow flakes. Source code is here.
I would like to thank Janko Gravner, David Griffeath and Clifford A. Reiter for their research in the field. Their work was used extensively to build this computer model. Lou Smith for his interest and work building the physical installation. Rachel Carless for help with the funding application. David Murray-Rust for computer help and advice. The open source community for providing all the excellent free software with which this exhibit was built.
Comments by the public:
Finally I had an opportunity to play around with this cool stuff! Silvia and I built this Chladni plate from a blown speaker and some recycled components. We were inspired by this instructable. I used Processing to make a simple sine wave generator with volume, coarse and fine frequency control.
my first slice of home laser cutting action! Here is the x and y axis ready to be installed. The motors and controllers are done, the laser is on its way – watch this space!
