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A while back I proposed an upside down chandelier of 5′ long grasses. Before I even had a chance to work out the details, I create some renderings of what it might look like. Sometimes the opportunities drive the creative vision. The proposal was rejected, but that never stops me.
Lately I realized that Cormark Steel had a bunch of stainless steel tubes that would make this idea possible. They were overstock that Cormark couldn’t get rid of. They were selling them for a dollar each. So I made an offer and bought them for about 25 cents each. It looks like there are about 900 units.
I’m going to start experimenting to see if this idea is worth pursuing. The thing that I love about it is how the sculpture can be made to respond to the people below it. When people start to realize they can play the art just by moving their arms, the work will take on a whole new relevance.
I estimate there’s 900 tubes, all 4′ long. The smaller fits loosely into the larger. With a 1inch overlap and clear epoxy glue, these could easily make 8 footer, shy an inch.
Small tube:
.123″ OD
.104″ ID
Larger tube:
.149″ OD
.131″ ID
It takes three wires to activate an LED light. Two if you use the tube as ground.
It wouldn’t be difficult to program in interactivity. Using LEDs makes it fairly easy to make the light and color respond to motion and sound.
I can imagine two ways to use these to create the upside down grasses:
- Use the shaft to thread fiber optics down to a clear, plastic 3d printer grass seedpod. With an LED at the other end in the ceiling.
- Use the shaft to thread wires down to the LED embedded into the a grass seedpod.
I’ll probably experiment with both.
AT the heart of this idea is the NEO Pixel, the technical name for these is the WS2812. Without this technology it’s just a fancy light.
Neo pixels are individually addressable, which means you can program it to be any color your choose. Add sensor to the electronics and you can make the lights respond to external events.
Before I can go much further with this, I will need to find the best neo pixel to embed in the grass seed pods.
There are micro LEDs that would be bright enough to light the seedpods, but the are so small that it might be difficult to attach the wires. I will need to find a micro WS2812 LED that has it’s 3 wires already attached. Even better if it has a connector at the other end.
So before we can design a new seedpod we need so what’s available off the shelf.
Another thought is…we might not need micro LEDs. If we make the seedpod slightly wider normal size LEDs could be used. I need to include some specs here in this blog page so we have some references.