Creating the UFO art installation
[Vision][Credits][History][ufo home]
================ VISION ================
...interactive chillout space...beautiful changing lights...bubbles...
Way out in the play, you'll see an UFO. It changes colors and it has
a lot blue intense dots with changing patterns..
You can walk into the UFO... inside you have the feeling that you are
in an egg or a cocoon. From the middle you can see to the outside
with a 360 degree view.
There is a control board - play with the knobs, buttons, switches,
invisible sensors - the colors of the UFO and the light patterns
change with your interaction - playtime!
Photo Montage, computer rendering, May 2004
----- THE UFO -----
It's an inflatible tent, 5 meters diameter, 2.5 meters high - oval,
in the shape of an UFO. There are no structural elements, the UFO is
hold in shape with air pressure. The door: push the side a bit open,
slip inside. An airpump pumps air into the tent constantly. There are
no structural elements, only fabric (withe nylon) and air. There is
space space for about 10 to 20 people. If you sit down in the middle,
you can see a 360 panaorma of the playa.
The ufo will be located somewhere way out in the playa.
----- INTERACTIVE LIGHT EFFECTS -----
The ufo will look at best during night: there are over 200 super
bright red and blue leds inside and outside: blue rings around the
UFO and a red antenna.
There is also a lamp inside that illuminates the inside of the tent
in any color. From the outside the ufo will take on this color,
since the tent fabric is white and lets some light trough.
The lights are controlled by the movements and interactions of the
visitors - there is a control board for people to play with -
the lights react the actions of its visitors.
A control board allows the visitors to interact with the lights:
potentiometers, knobs, switches, distance sensors - all influence
the light patterns.
----- THE CHALLENGE -----
Living in Switzerland - I can't really pack up everything into my
car and drive to the playa. All has to travel with me in the plane.
Max aloud weight in the plane per person is 70 kg, so I should be
able to manage. I have to organize a power generator and an airpump
in California.
Luckily I have great support from my camp (Astral headwash) and my
friends in the bay area and Seattle.
================ CREDITS ================
All these great people helped me - thank you so much!!!
- My brother Urs Meier, planning and lots of help during building the tent,
use of his shop and tools.
Urs builds incredible inflatible stuff for a living.
A picture from his shop, where I spent a lot of time working on the
inflatible tent:
- My dad Heiner Meier: mechanical work for the electronics control box,
soldering the LED wires
- Carl: letting me use his super cool extra bright
all color LED panels. He is the LED King!
- Christoph Ramseyer: soldering the LED wires
- Bryant Hansen - official night photograph
- Raeala, Jason, Dominique: helping an afternoon removing the extra
threads from sewing
- Philip Scheidegger: help in Electronics and PIC stuff
- Raj: (Transport and logistics)
- Susanne: creative vibes
- Dana - California Setup team (Astral Headwash)
- Michael Leopold (Tranceflute) - organizing polycarbonat plates
for the light boxes.
- Astral headwash camp - my home base at Burning man!
- Spiralgirl - Encouragement and Inspiration
================ CREATION HISTORY ================
August 28 - Sept 6 2004
Premiere at Burning Man. The installation works!
August 25,26
Last minute preparations, trying out the Yamaha generator
for the first time.
August 22th:
It looks like I will finish the project in time...
Finally - it works! Details of the Ufo lit with regular
entrance white party lights.
The LED controller and all 200 LEDS work great. I had some last minutes
worries about the ventilator, the one I was intending to use was simply
to weak - you can't image how I felt when I saw the UFO half inflated...
I can use now a ventilator of my brother, it's quite bulky and heavy to
transport by plane, but has a 180 Watt motor and kicks ass.
August 12th:
Second official inflating happening, first time at night.
See more pictures!
We are trying to solve A) how to make a mechanism that closes the
door all the times (fiberglas rods and super magnets) and
B) how to regulate the indoor pressure - how can I measure
if the tent is fully inflated? If I can detect that, I can momentarily
turn off the air pump. Quiet a control problem with possible
instability issues... but I'm working on an idea how to solve it.
August 11th:
Carl lets me use his super cool extra bright
all color LED panels. He emailed me out of the blue and offered
his help. So cool!
July 29th:
The UFO tent is DONE - yesterday nite, half an hour past midnite
I let air into the tent. As you can see, most UFO photos are
blurry, so is mine :).
Inflating it worked wonderfully - it is a great feeeling to be inside.
I am VERY relieved that it works and very happy about it. More pics
First time the UFO was inflated, on July 29th 2004 at 1:00 am
in the morning.
July 27th:
The UFO tent is almost done - it will be completed by this week.
Well, at the least the Alpha version of it... :)
July 8 2004:
Created webpage. In the middle of sewing the fabrics together.
Middle of June 2004:
- Learning how to sew with an industrial heavy duty sewing machine
- Started cutting the fabrics
- finally got the serial port of PIC prototype boards running...
Beginning of June 2004:
- PIC IDE, compiler and burner are starting to work
- All ordered parts have arrived
- Tent: in the middle of construction (sewing)
May 2004:
Ordering of all parts (fabrics, electronics, LEDs, controllers,
software, compiler, flash burner, PIC book, ...)
April 2004:
Decided definitly to go to burning man. Started with the
first sketches and designs.
================ CREATOR ================
Bubbleboy aka Fabian, living in Zürich, Switzerland
Email: meierfabian@hotmail.com
================ ORIGINAL BLUEPRINTS AND SKETCHES ================
First sketches: inside and outside few
Computer rendering of the tent.
Needed to compute the exact pieces of
fabric parts.
================ TECHNICAL DETAILS ================
--- TENT ---
Material
PE coated nylon, white, non-flamable
transparent nylon (windows)
Weight
about 15 kg
Dimensions (inflated)
diameter: 5 meter (15 feet)
height (tallest point): 2.5 meter
--- Electronics ---
Controller
8 bit, 10 MHz, Conrad C-Control
HC6502 based, Basic interpreter
8 analog and 8 digital inputs
8+2 digital LED channels out
2 optical distance sensors
Original controller, didn't use it:
PIC, 16F877 20 MHz
Custom programed in C
SourceBoost 5.4 IDE and C-compiler
Lights
150 blue high intensity LEDs
50 red high intensitz LEDs (antenna)
4 colors (r,g,b,turquois) colored bulbs, all light
sources are mixed to one color and dimmer controlled.
--- Power System ---
Power usage:
total about 60..200 Watts
40 Watt air pump
30 Watt for electronics and LEDs
Air Ventilator
150 Watt,
2400 Rot/min, 0.2 meter diameter
1200 m^3/hour
Electric Power Generator
1000 Watts Yamaha EF 1000iSE
[Comparison of Power Generators suited for Burning Man]