One popular Vietnamese folk tale told during the Mid Autumn festival is the story of Chu Cuoi, the man on the moon. In one variation of the tale, Chu Cuoi observed a mother tiger healing her baby tiger with the leaves of a banyan tree. He takes the tree home for its magical properties and instructs his wife to water it with great care and pure water every day. His wife becomes bitter and jealous of the tree; one day, she waters it with dirty water. Cuoi arrives in time to see the banyan tree lifting from the ground, as it rejects the dirty water. Jumping to hold onto the tree, he is carried away with the tree all the way to the moon. Some say that you can see him and his tree on the moon every year during the festival so children light lanterns to help guide Cuoi back to earth.

The story is childish and playful, keeping in theme with the happy and light mood of the mid-Autumn festival, or Children’s Day for Vietnam. A great retelling of the story can be found here: https://fromsaigontosowerby.wordpress.com/2016/03/27/the-story-of-chu-cuoi/

Inspired by the story, and keeping with the theme of tradition and childhood, this light art installation features an animation of Chu Cuoi walking down from the moon back to earth.

The animation and “live” storytelling of the art piece can be seen in this video:

The background music for this video was a piano cover mashup of several popular mid-autumn festival songs. The first song in particular is what was always played during my childhood celebrations. The cover was done by Fix Piano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXeYZKjiy88

I also took and edited some photos of the project to highlight different aspects of the project that I was proud of.

The light art animation was achieved through a simple servo-motor and LED sequence on Arduino. I referenced the example Blink code and an example Sweep code to compile the final code.

Blink code: https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/BuiltInExamples/Blink

Sweep code: https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/LibraryExamples/Sweep

Final code:

#include <Servo.h>

Servo myservo;  // create servo object to control a servo

int pos = 0;    // variable to store the servo position


void setup() {
  myservo.attach(7);
  pinMode(6, OUTPUT); 
  pinMode(5, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(4, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(3, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(2, OUTPUT);
}

void loop() {
    // man on moon moving through servo rotation
   for (pos = 170; pos >= 60; pos -= 1) { 
    myservo.write(pos);              
    delay(30);                          
    }
  // stepping stone leds turning on and off in sequence
  digitalWrite(6, HIGH); 
  delay(1000);           
  digitalWrite(6, LOW);  
  delay(250);            
    digitalWrite(5, HIGH);
  delay(1000);            
  digitalWrite(5, LOW);   
  delay(250);             
  digitalWrite(4, HIGH);  
  delay(1000);                       
  digitalWrite(4, LOW);    
  delay(250);              
  digitalWrite(3, HIGH);   
  delay(1000);             
  digitalWrite(3, LOW);    
  delay(250);              
  digitalWrite(2, HIGH);   
  delay(1000);             
  digitalWrite(2, LOW);    
  delay(250);              
}