Arduino

This week David Boultbee talked to us about his work with the Bread Art Collective. Their installations incorporated light, technology and viewer interaction. The environment of their work was very important, as viewer interaction was integral to a lot of their installations. Like David Ogle, they used simple materials of lights but repeated them multiple times to create impact, for example placing hundreds of outdoor lights on a hill at night to mirror a star constellation.

He introduced us to Arduino technology, which could program LED lights to turn on and off according to our specifications. Using a laptop we plugged in a sun founder breadboard via USB, which connected to the LED lights, resistors and different coloured wires. I had little experience working with this type of technology, and found it difficult at first to understand. However, working in a team of two, we were able to work through the software together, brainstorming idea solutions, and it allowed us to draw from a greater pool of different experiences and knowledge. By the end of the session we had collaborated successfully and had mastered how to set the lights off on a pattern we had programmed ourselves. The effect we created was evocative of lights at a fairground. I then knitted a metal dome to surround the light, in order to create interesting shadows, which I captured in the photographs below.