The Earth v Sky light sculpture installation is driven by a hardware and software computer system. At the input end is an IP security camera pointed at the horizon. In the middle small, low powered, air cooled single board computer runs several software programs to process images from the camera and change the colours of the lights. At the output end are DMX controlled LED lights pointed at the fig trees.

Every day a tiny program on the computer calculates the time of sunset based on the location of the site (33.87° South,151.18 East). At sunset another program wakes up and starts processing images that it is receiving from the camera. Every 5 seconds or so it takes a picture, crops out a small pre-defined region of the sky, calculates the average colour of that piece, saturates or intensifies it and then calculates the reverse of that colour. This colour is converted into its component colour intensities in RGB (red, green, blue) and communicated to the lights via DMX512 (a standard for controlling stage lights). After a pre-programmed period of time the system returns to sleep awaiting the next sunset.

As we are processing transmitted light (additive colours) rather than reflected light (subtractive colours) the following is a rough guide to these inversions.
Red is opposite cyan (a bright mix of green and blue).
Blue is opposite yellow.
Green is opposite magenta (a bright pink or fuchsia).

Because we are saturating or intensifying the colour of the sky, it is often grey overcast days that produce the most dynamically changing patterns in the lighting system. Grey is never quite grey due to the reflection of city lights, rain and haze. When saturated, this (often) human produced colour, can fall strongly in one direction and then another. Other dynamic nights can be caused by fleeting clouds being struck by the sun’s dying light. Strangely the clearest most beautiful sunsets can cause very calm lighting displays.

The wind turbine provides a balance between energy consumed by the installation and that produced on-site.

Technical solution details
Computer: Norhtec Microclient JR/SR
Software: Python with PyEphem (by Brandon Craig Rhodes) and the DMX library (by Stock)
Controller: DMX USB Pro
Camera: Samsung SNC-570

This is not the only sustainable art project that House of Laudanum has helped create, check out Thunderbolt.

We were given an exciting new concept to run wild with by our friends over at the creative agency Three Drunk Monkeys, and New Media Curator Deborah Turnbull. The mission was to deliver ideas for intelligent viral sculptures that were socially aware and star-like in complexion. They were to be placed in public spaces for a top secret campaign at a number of Sydney’s most celebrated landmarks. They had to be self contained, with the ability to operate for up to 10 days at a time.

Upon receiving the initial brief outlining general requirements, we conducted an extensive brainstorming session around our trusty oval marble table. Ideas and sketches flowed freely as many a geeky discussion took place regarding programming and possible materials to be utilised.

Both House of Laudanum and the City of Sydney favour sustainable projects.  Having a long and established relationship with a solar research unit, we had access to equipment and support to successfully power the pieces with the very light they were going to portray.

Viral Installations

Three similar proposals had now been conceived. All three pieces were inspired by pulsars, which are rapidly rotating neutron stars that emit bright bursts of electromagnetic radiation at rates of up to one thousand pulses per second.

Vela Rigid was proposal 01, an architectural piece that was loosely inspired by Leo Villareal’s Flying Star. It comprised of approximately eighty weather sealed acrylic tubes and was anchored by a polymer ruff at it’s core. Each tube was to contain lighting strips with individually addressable LED panels. When operating, sharp edgy sounds and cool white illumination would whip and crackle at increasing speeds and luminosities. As the number of moving spectators around the sculpture increased, so too would its intensity. This simulates the act of accretion or inward falling matter, which fuels a pulsar and builds its momentum up to an almost incomprehensible speed.

Proposal 02 was Vela Soft. This ingenious inflatable piece relied upon flexible conduits containing LED strips that would be wrapped around a large plastic core. Warm light would lash around the nucleus in 3D, displaying a mesmerising pulsating pattern. Much like proposal 01, this sculpture is socially aware and controllers, speakers, computers and battery packs could be concealed inside the array.

Vela Floating was proposal 03. This piece moved further towards the abstract and comprised of a helium filled chloroprene core encrusted with a myriad of perfectly circular bubble balloons. Each bubble balloon would contain an independently controllable LED module and contribute to this beautiful orb-like pulsating display that was to float between two to eight metres in the sky.

Creative Campaigns

Unfortunately the client that commissioned the concept decided to go with one of their other campaigns and these sculptures were no longer required to be built. We remain proud of the work and ideas that poured into this project and continue to actively engage in building beautiful social art for our clients.

We hope to one day make project star a reality.

whale:king st rossetti$ convert ribbons/*.png -append composite.png

If one wanted to append them horizontally instead of vertically one would switch out -append for +append.

Earth v Sky

“Thunderbolt is a temporary public artwork created for the 10th anniversary celebrations of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

“Made from a recycled windmill found in Broken Hill, the nocturnal lighting of this dynamic meta sculpture changes in repsonse to the amount of electricity consumed in the nearby neighbourhood.”

Thunderbolt is a public sculpture piece by Bonita Ely of the The Environmental Research Initiative for Art at CoFA UNSW. Version 1 is installed at Sydney Olympic Park and will run initially for 3 months. The lighting of the structure is powered by solar cells and altered based on the power consumption of the surrounding residents. Long time collaborators Allan Giddy and Rob Largent have put together the lighting control rig, EnergyAustralia have kindly donated their data, and Laudanum have provided the glue between the two.

On site we have a tiny Microclient SBC connected to an Arduino board and a 3G modem. Each of these 3 parts are seriously overspec’d for the the job but are all part of our usual toolchain and were on hand. The lighting rig expects its 5 inputs to be tickled to which it responds with a mix of its 3 lighting colours. So our computer connects to its data source and tells the Arduino to bring up one or more of its pin outs.

In order to work around a couple of techno-political issues (the temporary nature of mobile broadband connections, and who connects to whom, when and how) we elected to move the central data source to Google App Engine. Having done that both the data provider (the company providing our stats) and data consumer (the computer driving the lights) were able to abdicate all the data munging to the App Engine too (which was a boon).

Some GAE gotchas.

• Large XML archives of prior data to pre-populate our database. Fine consumed in small chunks but quickly exceeded the GAE quota
• Unique keys are provided for each `put` in GQL – but you can specify your own key thereby making a UNIQUE KEY field. We hashed together our timestamp and station ID to use as a key. Each time GQL puts with the same key it REPLACES the row. There is also a get_or_insert GQL method which either gets existing data for a keyname or puts new data where the keyname doesn’t exist.

Parts

• Microclient SR
• Huwei mobile broadband USB modem
• Arduino Duemilanove
• Ubuntu, Python, Google AppEngine

Location: Bondi Junction Westfield atrium, Bondi Junction, Tower 1

When: July 2007

Zina Kaye installed Hyperplex, an intervention within a sophisticated LED system that disrupted the media saturated environment of Westfield Bondi Junction shopping centre with a series of obscure, but subversive conversations. Shoppers and flanneurs were able to peek into the lives of several people who corresponded via the LCD system. Three pairs of characters: an eloquent couple who have moved from lovers to best friends; an eccentric brother and sister who correspond through coded exchange; and two teenagers tossed about by their desires, ’spoke’ to each other in a mix of colloquialisms, aphorisms, sayings and mixed metaphors.

The conversations dealt, in part with the proliferation of the language of fear. These tensions were subtley translated within Kaye’s script from different generational perspectives. Viewers eavesdropped on part of a conversation and could contemplate the familiar yet fragmented nature of interpersonal communication.

To view the work and artist interview:

Zina Kaye: Hyperplex interview and installation

Press:

Hyperplex – Ella Maudie. ANAT Filter 67.

Active Loitering – James Dodd. ANAT Filter 67.

Text Messages: Zina Kaye, Caia Hagel & Tim Georgeson – George Alexander. ArtAsiaPacific No. 56.

Hyperplexic, desalinated by not scary – Ann Finegan, Artlink Vol 28, No. 1

See also:

What’s in Store: Visual Merchandising News – Amanda Carr. WGSN.com, September 2007.

T100 October 2007 Visual Merchandising Report. T100.cn

An artist is scanning ACARS at Melbourne Airport, and showing the information on LED signs at a new exhibition in the Australian Centre for the Moving Image opening 8th June 2004.

Zina Kaye makes visible a cross section of the data that orbits an airport, drawing connections between the dispersive & disorientating nature of air travel, and the quietly invisible chaos of radio traffic. The work is called ‘The Line Ahead’ and can be seen during the ‘2004: Australian Art Now’ exhibition until mid-September.

Viewers in the gallery are presented with a giddy vision of the chaotic movement of data and the private conversations of aeroplanes: flight numbers, origin and destination shown on three giant LED screens. Behind the scenes, a Winradio-built antenna is bolted to the roof of Melbourne Airport, connected to a Winradio receiver sitting on top of a Linux server. The Open Source ACARSd project decodes the messages, transmitting them to the signs at the gallery and to The Line Ahead website.

Kaye finds inspiration in big engineering such as space stations and radio telescopes, and her work often reflects on the systems that make these things work. She exhibits in Australia and Europe.

Note for the present

This work is still live and scanning Sydney: visit the website for latest flights: The Line Ahead.

Collector’s Edition

A collector’s edition of this work is available. Please contact Clare Lewis at Terminus Projects for enquireies. Clare (at) terminusprojects (dot) org.

Wade pulled together a small team to build a prototype semi-autonomous robot in a Victorian dress. Our job was to provide an interface between the web and the controller board. We installed a small webserver on an EeePC netbook. An Adobe Flash socket sent mouse clicks and speech instructions to a tiny Python server that interpreted whether the instructions should be forwarded to the controller board or handled by the EeePC. Speech commands were forwarded to the onboard Festival server using an MBROLA english male voice and then piped to the sound card.