Recipie for Firefly Environment Part TWO

An earlier blog talked about the building of the actual fire flies. This continues from that posting (4/26).

After the LED's had been soldered and heat shrunk to commincation patch wire, the other elements needed to be built. A shallow 4' x 4' box was constuced out of the 1/2" ply and the 1 x 1's using 45 degree angled corners and wood glue/ nails to hold. It is just like building a frame or shadow box. After the build, the top soil or potting soil was spread into the box and 1lb of seed (Rye or Oat grass) was spread evenly over the surface making sure to cover the entire area, especially the sides and corners. After a heavy watering, a tent was construced over the box with the clear drop cloth to form a make shift green house to accelerate the growth of the seed. Rye grass takes about one week to really look good. Oat grass is about the same, only wider blades. Here are a few photos of the planted box with minimal growth. A standard clip light with outdoor flood bulb was added to increase the heat in the greenhouse (I had less time to grow the stuff for the opening).

Now that the grass was underway, the 3 fans were painted flat black to prep for the installation. They were hung from the ceiling by their bases (upside down) on the three walls surrounding the piece. They are there to move the LED's hanging from the wires attached to the ceiling at varying lengths. Also, the speakers were hung the same way, just high enough out of the viewers site line. All al the wires were coated with liquid shoe polish (black) to hide them and create more of an illusion. Also, the two larger speakers were attached to the meeting of the floor and wall in two opposite spots in the installation. The idea was to create a "surround sound" of crickets to fool the senses of the viewer. Here are some pics of that and the grass at 4 days growth.

And lastly was the actual installation. Each of the LED's were stapled to the ceiling joists at random lenths and spaces with the breadboad and LOGO chip in the center of the room. Each LED was connected together and paired into 16 units to connect to the 3 chips. Muaz did this part really, so check out his blog as well (http://techartsound.tripod.com/). The grass box was placed on the floor off to one side and the CD player was connected the speakers. And B-24, BINGO! Here are a few more pics for you.

Recipie for Firefly Environment, Part ONE

I'm not really sure how to list the information for the Firefly Environment that Muaz and I produced for the WIRED show at Shift Space. Since much of our piece relied on hiding the technology and utilizing more art installation, it it difficult to show step by step. And overall, due to the low light of the piece, it is difficult to show in a photo. Here are the basics for your recipe:

48 Yellow LED lights

1000-1500 feet of communications "patch" wire

Breadboard, LOGO Chip and components (resisters, switches, etc)

Heat shrink

Soldering gun and supplies

5 computer speakers (small 2" round)

4' x 4' sheet of 1/2" plywood

16' of 1" x 1" pine (any wood really)

1lb of Rye or Oat grass seed

8-10lbs of top soil or potting soil

H2O spray bottle (for watering grass during growth)

Large clear plastic painters drop cloth

3 oscillating fans

2 cans flat black spray paint

CD player and reciever/amp

Sound clip of outdoor evening sounds/cricket sounds burned to CD

Wood glue and nails

Electrical tape

Staple gun and staples

So, go out and gather all of this shit, um, I mean stuff. When put together with some persistance and luck, you will end up with the following environment. Really.

Oh… not that. You might feel like that, but it won't look like that. More like this:

Sleep

Long day.  It's 4:53 am and I just got home from Shift Space.  Everything looks great.. except the chip decided to not work at the very end of the test run.  It did fine all evening, but stopped.  So, another chip will be put in tomorrow afternoon.  The "flys" look great… but I am wondering if I need yet another fan… totaling 4.  I'll sleep on that one.  Tomorrow is going to be very long I have a feeling.

Second stage of Firefly environment.

After some discussion, it was decided to add some sound to the piece. So I downloaded a great MP3 file to use. It's a summer evening sound bite. I will be using 5 small speakers hanging from the ceiling and on the floor. Each speaker was mounted to hang by using electrical tape to decure the wire onto the back and then taped around the magnet to secure the entire thing. They are small speakers (2"-3") and incredibly light so there will be no problem with their weight.

The space has been hung with 45 "fireflys" from the ceiling and there will be 3 on the floor in the capture jar. The grass is also growing nicely in a container that was built for the installaion. People keep asking what illegal drug I am growing to subsidise my graduate career. I will post some pics of it later after they are downloaded off Steve's camera. I will also take some pics this evening of the space to post.

It all seems to be coming along nicely.

Pictures of “fireflys” being built.

My high speed has been down at home for a week and couldn't get pics downloaded. And god knows I'm not doing it at WSU in my studio with dial up. But here are some pics of the "fireflys" being constructed at Henrion. Each of the pics are listed from left to right below. All together there were 50 "fireflys" constructed, 48 will be used in the installation.

1. Cutting the LED wires down to cut down on heat shrink tube.

2. Cutting heat shrik.

3. Using soldering flux on the wires.

4. Soldering the wires to the LED posts.

5. Affixing three pieces of heat shrink on the fireflys. One on each LED terminal post and ove around both wires to keep from pulling apart.

6. Pile of finished "fireflys".

7. "Firefly" detail.

8. "Firefly" detail.

Fire Fly Environment

Muaz and myself came up with another idea for the final project. The mason jar idea is something that there really isn't time to do the correct way and I don't want to show them half evolved. They can come along at another time.

Muaz had said something about lights in a past discussion, which got me thinking about a more visual idea instead of auditory. The Fire Fly Environment will be 50 LEDs hanging from different lengths from the ceiling, each lighting randomly like fire flys do. There will also be a hint of an outside environment with a plot of grown grass on the floor (probably 4' x 4') with a jar or two on it… full of fire flys. This is a simple idea to evolke feelings of childhood and summer evenings. There was also so discussion the other day to put some sapling trees in a couple of spots for another hit to the outdoors.