Wind Interaction :: Part Four - Finished!

Here are the photos of the finished turbine. The LED's brightness directly relates to the speed of the wind. It makes a beautiful dimming, brightening, dimming, sort of breathing pattern when in use. I originally wanted to make a bigger more extravagant diffuser than the little bird, but it was so cute, and it works very well for its purpose.

Materials :  PVC, an old 2x4, old case fan, laser cut acrylic, a couple diodes and capacitor, rice paper, 1" and 1.25" electrical conduit tubing.

The steel tubing attached to the wood mount slides inside this much longer one so the turbine can freely pivot to always stay in the wind. Laser cut a small square of acrylic to serve as a tail/guide.

Little bird diffuser cut out of some extra rice paper I had in my studio. Neatly covers a 10mm LED connected to the motor.

The turbine only generates 2 volts at max speed so it powers exactly one 10mm LED. I do love the rather simple form. Beautiful, but so little energy for the labor! I tried to get some footage of it in action, but of course as soon as you build a wind generator you will be faced with a series of days devoid of any breeze. Right now I only have two finished, but ideally I could make dozens and stake them in series on a hill. Especially in the dark all you will see are the birds fading in and out of existence with the whirring of the fans.

Wind Interaction :: Part Three - Making the Blades

Super tired, so here's just some quick photo documentation of the finished fan blades/bases. Blades were cut from 3" PVC in order to get a beautiful curve. I'm a bit concerned they will be too heavy for the tiny motor, but blades cut from plastic bottles seemed so flimsy in comparison.

Wind Interaction :: Part Two :: Prepping the Motors

Documentation of  the wind generators I'm working on to power an installation. Made from an old case fan, PVC, scrap wood, and some steel tubing. (mentioned previously here)

I just clipped off the wires from the actual fan and resodered them onto the correct coils to convert the fan from receiving energy to outputting it.

Testing the motor with another LED scrapped from the same computer as the fans

Wind Interaction :: Part One

So I'm currently operating under a set of "obstructions". After viewing my entire body of work the class collectively came up with a series of things I was prohibited from doing in my next art piece. These were....

1.) The piece has to be collaborative
2.) It also must be impulsive/respond to real world events
3.) No Computers

ha.ha.ha. No more visualizers. So I started thinking about computer art and what I believe it is. Essentially you are taking a set of data, ANY data, unrecognizable, mundane, profound, and using it to create something that has never existed before. The beauty of the medium is the responsiveness, the interaction. Static data is boring, once computers are introduced, the art can be constantly changing, reacting, and reinventing itself.

I decided to take some tangible data, wind speed, and turn it into light. Instead of passing through the some magic function, its a simple input changed directly to output. Next few posts document my process of creating the wind turbines out of recycled parts. Ideally when finished, I'll have a light installation that "breathes" with the wind, fading in and out of existence with the speed and power.