Schlagwort: kinetic art

  • This kinetic light installation illuminates the Finnish snow

    This kinetic light installation illuminates the Finnish snow

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    If you’re ever driving through rural Finland about an hour south of Jyväskylä, you might come across the Haihatus art center. That includes KITA, “the house of kinetic arts.” You’ll recognize it right away by its bold swaths of vibrant paint. And if you come by at night, you’ll see the snow illuminated in dancing colors by a kinetic art installation built by Niklas Roy and Kati Hyyppä.

    Because the building is unheated and can reach temperatures as low as -30°C (-22°F), KITA remains closed through the winter. Roy and Hyyppä approached this project with the goal of turning the building itself into a kinetic art piece for people to enjoy through the cold months. To achieve that, they lit the windows and added movement. Lights inside the building move along tracks and motors pull them with spools of twine. An Arduino Nano development board controls the motors through H-bridge drivers. Various reflectors and filters alter the lights as they move.

    To make that even more dynamic, they animated the illumination and introduced sound. A control box built into an old tool case contains another Arduino Nano that can switch the lights through relays. That Arduino also generates sounds and melodies from algorithms based on random inputs, but synced to the lights. 

    This project came with unique challenges related to the weather, as many electronic components act unpredictably at these extreme temperatures. But the installation worked well enough to unveil on New Year’s Eve 2023, when the people living in the town of Joutsa got to enjoy the dazzling inauguration.

    The post This kinetic light installation illuminates the Finnish snow appeared first on Arduino Blog.

    Website: LINK

  • This kinetic sculpture is incredibly mesmerizing

    This kinetic sculpture is incredibly mesmerizing

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    The great thing about art is that it doesn’t have to serve a purpose. When utility is irrelevant, the artist is free to express their creativity in whatever way they like. A painting doesn’t have to inspire introspection or revolution — it can just be something pretty to look at. In the same vein, Eirik Brandal’s Intermittent Luminal Phase kinetic sculpture is both gorgeous and useless.

    Brandal started this project as an excuse to experiment with his new CNC router. Cutting gears seemed like a good way to do so, but he didn’t have a need for any mechanism that utilized them. That led him to the concept of a kinetic sculpture and Intermittent Luminal Phase is the result. It spins endlessly, making noise and blinking lights. But it is almost hypnotizing to see in action.

    An Arduino Nano Every board controls two motors that spin a central input shaft, which turns all of the other gears. The gears aren’t perfect and produce a fair amount of vibration, but Brandal converted that bug into a feature. He added a piezo element that picks up the vibrations. Those are then amplified and pumped out through a speaker on the sculpture. The gears also have LEDs that make contact through DIY slip rings, so they light up at certain points in the rotation.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXaGP5tik9o?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

    It may not serve a purpose, but Intermittent Luminal Phase is still mesmerizing and a great project for practicing fabrication techniques.

    The post This kinetic sculpture is incredibly mesmerizing appeared first on Arduino Blog.

    Website: LINK

  • Flux is a kinetic art installation brought to life with Arduino

    Flux is a kinetic art installation brought to life with Arduino

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Art may be subjective, but all of our readers can appreciate the technology that goes into kinetic art. That term encompasses any piece of art that incorporates movement, which means it can be as simple as a sculpture that turns in the wind. But by integrating electronics, artists can achieve impressive effects. That was the case for Nicholas Stedman and his Devicist Design Works team, who built the Flux kinetic art installation for Shopify’s Toronto offices.

    Flux is a massive 40-foot-long kinetic art piece that hangs suspended from the ceiling in the Shopify offices. That length is divided into 20 individual planks, each of which contains two reflective prisms. The prisms rotate in different patterns, resulting in mesmerizing visuals as light reflects around the art piece and the surrounding office. It is striking in its industrial minimalism, but subtle enough that it blends into the space instead of overpowering it.

    Stedman’s team used stepper motors to rotate the prisms. 20 Arduino Uno boards control the steppers through silent TMC2160 drivers and receive feedback on position via AS5600 magnetic encoders. A Raspberry Pi single-board computer running a Node.js program coordinates the operation of the Arduino boards through USB. The team also developed 3D simulation software that helps them create animation patterns in a virtual space before deploying them in the real world.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2o9WQWpmp4?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]
    Boards:Uno
    Categories:Arduino

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  • Brenda is classic automata nightmare fuel

    Brenda is classic automata nightmare fuel

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Arduino Team — July 5th, 2022

    Art is a strange thing. Sometimes its purpose is purely aesthetic. Sometimes it makes a statement. And sometimes it exists to disturb. Kinetic art is no different and some robots fall into this category. Graham Asker’s art elicits pondering on the relationship between humans and robots, as well as the relationships between different robots. But as Brenda, a classical-style automaton, demonstrates, Asker’s art can also induce nightmares.

    Brenda and her companion Brian are strange, bodiless robots designed to mimic the aesthetics of automatons from myth and history. Each robot is a construction of beautiful brass, mechanical joints, linkages, and cables. Servos hidden inside the bases of the robots actuate the various joints, giving Brenda and Brian the ability to emote. Most of their “facial” movement is in their eyes. Lifelike eyeballs look around from within heavy eyelids, while pivoting eyebrows help to convey expressions.

    Arduino boards, also hidden within the robots’ bases, control the servos that actuate the joints. Asker programmed the Sketches with a variety of different servo movements that correspond to facial expressions and eye movements. Brenda even received lips, so she can smile – or frown. Both robots’ bases rotate, so the robots can turn to look at their surroundings. Brenda and Brian do not have any communications hardware and so they can’t interact with each other, but Asker can sync their pre-coded movements to create the illusion that they do.

    Asker, who is a retired engineer with a Master’s degree in fine art, displayed Brenda at London’s Espacio Gallery and on the Walthamstow Art Trail.

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