Standing in a deep haze, full of reflections of the past, this feeling just won’t go away.
Driven by a force stronger than all of us, events just seem to unfold.
Whether we like it or not, Time stops for no-one. And, eventually, overwhelms everything.
But we may choose. Choose to stand up and influence Time’s course.
Stretching 3 meters tall, Ghost in the Machine is a monumental kinetic sculpture.
Massive cylinders dance slowly to a soundscape assembled from mechanical noise and recordings of the deeply transformative 1989 Czechoslovak velvet revolution.
Clacking gears and shouting protesters join together, forming a never-ending chorus.
I helped this piece in two key areas – motor control and show programming.
Controlling the speed and direction of each cylinder in real-time was achieved by pairing each stepper motor driver with a dedicated microcontroller. All of these were in turn connected to a PC running Schéma, Tilda and vvvv beta.
Schéma functioned as a visualising and behavior authoring tool, reacting to timed parameters coming from Tilda; custom vvvv beta patches bridged communications and filled in feature gaps.
Geek Board
- The cylinders moved using stepper motors with a 1:50 worm gear transmission
- USB controlled ESP8266 microcontrollers generated pulses for the drivers
- Tilda (VL) was used as the timeline solution
- The object reached 3 meters in height