Prisme

During this summer, at the same time I built my workshop, I worked with my wife on an artistic project.

It’s a huge polyhedron made in a single piece of Oak on the saw mill. We called it the “Prisme”. This piece was exhibited during the summer in our region along with Anne’s other works. It served as a starting point for a workshop with the visitors.

More of this project can be found here : matieredeschoses.com/prisme/

Up v2

About 4 years ago, I build this first version of Up for the FICAM festival in Meknes (Morocco). As I am more and more asked to exhibit this installation, I decided to rebuild it in a more robust and reliable way. This new version was shown for the first time in Paris at Forum des Images for the Tout petits Cinéma festival 2013.

Basically each step of a staircase is equipped with an infrared emitter and an ir receiver. When someone is putting his foot down on a step the ir beam is stopped and the receiver sends its new status to the main controller box. This box generates MIDI signals that can be played by any type of MIDI synth.

I completely revisited the technical aspect of the project: while in the first version, each of the 16 receivers sent their status through a dedicated wire (which ends up in quite a big cable in the end), now they each embed a small microcontroller (Attiny 45) and are daisy chained. This means that each sensor is sending its data over the SPI protocol to the next one until it has reached the main controller (Arduino). With this design, I ended up with only one 5-wires cable linking the sensors together.

Other improvements of this version are : solid plastic cases for the emitters and sensors, nice enclosing box for the main controller and better MIDI integration.

Anyone interested in exhibiting this installation for an event ? Contact lab212.

Some pictures of the build process:

Appel d’air

Lab212 were asked to design an exhibition for young children (2 to 4 years old) at Stereolux in Nantes. I worked with Pierre on his idea. Basically it’s a huge industrial fan that responds to your blow on a tiny pinwheel. It’s not a simple on/off interaction, the big fan reproduces exactly the same speed curve the user applied to the pinwheel.

I primarily worked on the technical aspect of the project. The big challenge was to drive the Altivar 3 phase frequency controller with an Arduino. I had a hard time to study the MODBUS / RS485 protocols and the Altivar documentation about MODBUS communication isn’t very DIY’er friendly…

The speed of the pinwheel is measured with an old ball mouse mechanism that sends it’s PS2 data to the Arduino (this part was easy thanks to all the libraries that exist). The Arduino on the other hand outputs the fan speed data through an RS233 – RS485 transceiver connected to the speed controller via an RJ45 cable. The Altivar also delivers enough power through the RJ45 connector to feed the Arduino and mouse board so we ended up with rather clean setup.

A dedicated website shows all the projects of this exhibition and you can read more about Appel d’air on Pierre’s website.

Lab212’s installations through France

During October in a lot of cities of France a special event is taking place during one night. It’s called “Nuit Blanche” for sleepless night. It primarly took place in Paris in 2001. The goal of this event is to invest the city with a lot of artpieces that work well at night. Over the years, more and more cities in France have they own “Nuit Blanche” and this year Lab212 were invited in some of them all over France : Bordeaux, Metz, Amiens, La Motte Servolex…

Here are some pictures of the events I went to.

In Bordeaux I worked on Kikko’s project called Bruit de fond. It’s a probe that moves up and down a light according to the deepness of a lake measured with a sonar. While the probe is moving on the water surface, a camera is taking long exposure shots to reveal the lake bed as light lines. I worked on the mechanics and electronics of the project, machining and building a lot of parts of the probe.

Find out more on the dedicated website.

In La Motte Servolex, for their “Nuit de la Création”, Stop-it was exposed for the first time in its new version. Stop-it doesn’t require a drawn grid anymore to stick the post-its on since the grid is now video projected. This improvement sound simple but it brings a lot :
– the light is perfectly uniform and improves the color detection
– the grid is adjustable in size through the software
– we have a play head precisely showing what notes are being read
– and the installation is now way easier to carry around

The setup shown on this pictures looks a bit wobbly but in fact worked very well relative to the 2 hours of time I was given to install 🙂

Au delà de 1 m/s

Au delà de 1 m/s (Beyond 1 m/s) is an art installation from Albertine Meunier materializing the speed of the Internet. Every 30 seconds Google is asked for the last results of the keywords “je pense” (I think), the machine then rise one marble per result. The device is autonomous and directly connected to the Internet through an Arduino Ethernet.
More on this project here : www.albertinemeunier.net/au-dela-de-1m-s/
and thanks to woodgears.ca for his very inspiring Marble Machine (among a lot of other stuff…)

L’empreinte du mouvement @ Cité de l’architecture

This project is a piece for the exhibition Circuler at the Cité de l’architecture in Paris. It was designed by Catherine Ramus at Orange labs. I worked on the lamps modifications and the integration of the projectors. An Arduino is used to simulate the clicks of the projectors’s remote controls to launch the videos when the whole piece is switched on.

More in this video starting at 2:30.

Stop-iT @ Beijing

From now, I’ll try to write my articles in english and gradually translate the rest of my site. So welcome to all non french speaking visitors !

I juste came back from a one week trip in Beijing with Pierre where we setup our interactive installation Stop-iT. We were invited from onedotzero to participate to the first exhibition of the new China Museum of Digital Art (CMoDA). First trip in Asia for both of us, this opportunity was a great experience in terms of human encounter (many thanks to all members of the CMoDA and onedotzero teams) and artistic inspirations (lots of amazing projects were exhibited there).

By the way, Stop-iT has now a records feature and a dedicated web site where you can listen to the real time uploaded creations of visitors.

DM02 @ Belgrade

Quelques images de DM02 installée à Belgrade au musée de l’Ethnologie. Le manque de signalétique et d’organisation a limité le passage : le dessin est loin d’être aussi rempli que prévu…

Dessins génératifs avec DM02

Test de dessin génératif codé avec un module d’interprétation Javascript intégré au logiciel de pilotage de DM02.

DM02 premiers dessins

Voici les premiers essais de dessins de ma nouvelle drawing machine. Comparée à DM01, celle-ci est beaucoup plus légère à installer : pas de câbles à tendre, seulement deux modules à fixer au mur. Un mécanisme permet de lever l’outil de dessin et la précision est améliorée. Les deux moteurs pas à pas sont pilotés par un Arduino associé à des contrôleurs LitleStepU. Un logiciel développé sous Cocoa permet d’envoyer les instructions de dessin à l’interface électronique.

Pour le moment, DM02 est plutôt conçu comme un outil pouvant servir dans différentes installations interactives.