Author: Tony Garside

I cut the acrylic squares:

 

I put the acrylic squares into the structure. I’m very happy with how snug they fit.

 

I tested how the LEDs shine through the acrylic. My camera doesn’t capture it very well. It looks much better in person.

Assembling more sides:

Finally assembling the whole cube. The mess of wires was a major challenge.

As of writing this post the cube is fully assembled and working. I plan to save the final reveal for class this Thursday.

Remaining work: continue to write scripts for LED patterns

Since I last posted, I’ve made a lot of progress.

I have 3d printed the remaining sides of the cubes. And installed LEDs into all of them. The following are pictures of that process.

I have received the acrylic that I will use to diffuse the LEDs. I have scheduled a time to meet with someone to discuss using the WPI’s laser cutter.

Moving forward I need to actually get the acrylic cut and then I will be ready to finally assemble the cube.

For my project I will create a cube, roughly 4×4 inches that has LED’s on each face. The LEDs will be controllable with scripts, allowing the project to be expandable. The patterns generated by the LEDs may be for visual stimuli or may convey information such as projecting a specific pattern based on the current weather.

This project is inspired by Micah Elizabeth Scott’s Triangle Attractor.

Progress so far:
I have modeled a rough draft of the structure for the cube.

I have 3d printed one side of the cube.

I ran into some challenges with the printing, as you can see in this picture, the inside of the individuals did not print correctly. I will have to make some changes to my design.

Next steps:

• Wire LEDs into first side
• cut acrylic squares to go on the cube faces
• print more sides of cube
• continue to assemble cube
• begin writing scripts

Micah is a visual and new media artist that takes an engineering approach to her work. She has a degree in Computer Science from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Micah hacks/reverse engineers electronic devices and computer programs to create interesting words of art that bridge the gap between art and technology. In collaboration with Adafruit, Micah developed FadeCandy, an open source NeoPixel driver designed for LED art. She uses FadeCandy in her own art projects, such as her piece “Triangle Attractor” as well as “Ecstatic Epiphany”.

Triangle Attractor

From her art portfolio website she describes Triangle Attractor as “… a generative algorithm based on this triangular form. Bundles of glowing particles fade into existence to be immediately drawn to three attraction points at the corners of the piece. The forces from these competing gravitational attractors chaotically separate the particle bundle, until the algorithm loses interest and the cycle ends. Colors are sampled from a photo taken at the High Desert Test Sites. Negative space in the sculpture is made tangible by a set of triangular plastic cut-outs from each layer.”

Ecstatic Epiphany

From her art portfolio website she describes Ecstatic Epiphany as “… a human-scale window into an imaginary space, installed in public behind an existing glass block wall. This piece is for anyone on the sidewalk to watch and control. Walking past it, your movement is amplified into a shift in perspective. Sometimes this is a passive action, other times it can lead to a dramatic change as chaos unfolds in the generative algorithms. The choreography of this mathematical world forms a continuous cyclic narrative of creation, depression, agency, and rebirth. Each moment is unique, echoed but never repeated.”

Micah has many other really interesting artistic/technical projects documented on her webpage. Check out more of her work at http://www.misc.name/. Also check out her technical blog: scanlime.org as well as her youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/micahjd for some of her really neat hacking projects.

 

My name is Tony Garside. I am a Computer Science student currently wrapping up my Senior year at WPI. I’m fairly experienced in software engineering having interned at Cimpress (better known as VistaPrint) and having done my MQP in Silicon Valley with NVIDIA as well as doing general computer science course work at WPI.

I have experience with many programming and scripting languages including Java, C#, C, and Python. My electronics background is basic. I took electronics classes in high school and I spent two summers working at an electronics manufacturing company, however, most of my experience is in assembling circuits rather than designing them. I’ve played a little bit with Arduino and Raspberry pi.

My experience with art is mostly digital. I’m very comfortable with Photoshop. I would like to expand my artistic ability with light and possibly music mediums. I think it could be very interesting to create art that utilizes programming, perhaps merging artificial intelligence with music creation.

This is a surreal scene that I made for a digital art class using Photoshop. It pictures two very unlikely friends hording a stash of Halloween candy in an alternate universe. I’m not quite sure what I was thinking when I made this, but I think it looks pretty.

This is an art project that I created with two other WPI students while taking the Essentials of Art class. The goal of this assignment was to create a work of art using similar methodology to how Andy Goldsworthy creates sculptors. Andy Goldsworthy is a British Sculptor that creates temporary works of art using only objects that he can find in a particular environment. Pictured is a colorful combination of liter that we found on WPI’s campus. Featured at one end of the colorful liter snake is a used condom, hence the name of the piece is “Reused Condom”. (Don’t worry, none of us actually touched the condom and we washed our hands thoroughly after cleaning up the liter).

I tend to be more interested in weird, unconventional, and psychedelic pieces of art. One of my creative inspirations that I may use to influence my project for this class are the live light shows from Daft Punk concerts that took place around 2007.

By the end of this project, I hope to have created a piece of light art that I can be proud of. Ideally I hope to create something that is expandable so that I can continue to build upon it after this course is over. Lastly I hope to learn more about the process of creating art that utilizes technology to allow me to further expand my ability to create interesting projects.