Month: June 2019

Art Projects

Stellarium

Posted on by Rob J

Temporary sculptural installation, mixing geometry of platonic solids with light and motion
Rob Jones, Saba Komarzynski
Rainbow Serpent Festival, January 2019

This was an installation piece built for Rainbow Serpent Festival. After many years of procrastination, my co-conspirator Saba and I finally decided we’d like to have a crack at doing a temporary outdoor installation art piece. Much to our surprise, they liked our proposal and asked us to build it.

Art Wank

Designed specifically for the festival and site, it was not intended primarily as piece to be considered or interpreted in it’s own right, but more as a facilitator of reflection, creating and holding space within a calm and sheltered area of the site; the slowly evolving shapes and colours dialled for quieter moments of contemplation and introspection.

Design

  • Small stellated dodecahedron with most faces cut away, creating a framework exposing the many axes of symmetry, and allowing light to propagate.
  • Interior perspex dodecahedron, with light filtering and reflective films applied.
  • Interior element rotates, reflecting incident light onto the ground and into trees around the structure.

Tech

  • 12 zoom-focus 300W RGBW LED fixtures
  • Interior piece rotation driven by custom DMX->stepper driver interface running on a humble AVR 8-bit micro.
  • Show control/lighting program built in TouchDesigner.

Construction

  • Modelled and shop drawings created in Fusion360
  • 18/12mm exterior grade ply, CNC cut and drilled, waterproof sealant
  • Built Ikea ‘flat pack’ style, allowing primary construction to be quickly performed on-site, and minimising wastage of standard 2400×1200 ply panels
  • 7mm clear acrylic central element, chemically welded, CMY+mirror films applied
  • Hundreds of bolts and screws

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