Author: Everett Johnson

 

By: Everett Johnson

The process of building this dragon started with learning how to mold wire into a dragon figure. It required me to learn different weaves and twisting techniques to make the sculpture of the dragon. I had to individually craft each part of this dragon.

After I was done molding the dragon with metal wire, I then had to solder LEDs together in pairs of 7 and attach them one by one onto the sculpture. After that I had to use wire to individually attach each set of wires together with solder. As I went one by one, I made sure to check and light up individual sections of the dragon to make sure that it still worked. After many hours of work I finally finished the dragon.

Below are the final images of my dragon finally all lit up and completed. The Dragon was hanging in the sub-basement of fuller for the presentation. It has since been removed but will now be hanging in my living room as a decoration.

The Dragon is made entirely from LED’s, Aluminum Wire, and fishing wire to hang it from the ceiling.

My Dragon is now entirely working, I have all of the LED’s in place and able to be turned on by the power source. This week I will look to put the Dragon in the fuller sub basement so that I can continue to polish it and set it up for Thursday.

 

Everett Johnson

This week I failed at one minor thing but was able to move past it. I failed at not getting the correct materials for my project, but ending up making due with what I ordered. I was originally hoping to receive some thicker wire to make the main support structures on my project thicker than just the base material. However what I received was very small wire, so what I ended up doing was using the base wire thickness to create the frame and then double up on it later instead of waiting even longer to create the frame that I desired. I then ended up using the smaller wire I received to act as a thread to sew parts of the wire together. I am currently continuing to build my dragon and will have its frame work probably done by the end of the week where I will then focus on the LED’s and getting them all set up within the dragon, making sure that the light part of this project works as intended and is positioned to not just be super bright but also be visually appealing. Below is an image of the work that I have done on the dragon so far:

Everett Johnson

Here are all of the images from my Maquette, This Maquette is a proof of concept and is demonstrating the basis for what I will be doing. I will be using the Aluminum wire to make a full scale version of a human being, and will use the copper wire that I will be ordering to string the lights inside of the aluminum figure.  This shows that the power supply I will use will work.

Draft Shopping List:

• LEDs (a bunch, nearly 200 maybe)
• Copper or Aluminum Wire
• Power Supply

Schedule of the Actions for the remainder of the course:

This Week (1st):

• Finish my Maquette
• Start on the Final Result

Next Week(8th):

• Have the model completely designed
• Also work on the model

Week of the 15th:

• Work on the Full Scale model wire

Week of the 22nd:

• Complete the full scale model
• Finish all of the LEDs

Week of the 29th:

• Finishing Touches
• Make sure that the final model works

 

Everett Johnson

For this week we needed to develop 1-3 ideas to be presented for the final project. The three ideas that I will be proposing are an LED head,  a 2-D long exposure printer, and a new Infinity Mirror.

The first of these three is an LED head. This head would be inspired by Makoto Tojiki and his work involving 3 dimensional LED works of art. Including the one shown below. It could also end up being a sort of Exo-skeleton of LED’s that could be worn or just supported. 

The second of the three is a 2-D long exposure printer. This printer would work almost the same as a normal printer except the image it would be producing would be a trace of light or a filler of light that would ultimately create a long exposure image on a camera that is mounted above the printer.

The third and final concept would be a different kind of Infinity Mirror which would have some distinct feature that would set it apart from other infinity mirrors. This could possibly have a design that was laser cut and then made into a infinity mirror with LED s. I was possibly thinking of a laser cut famous person.

Everett Johnson

For my presentation, I looked into Luftwerk. Luftwerk is the artistic collaboration of Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero. Luftwerk explores light, color, and perception in immersive installations. Focused on the context of a site for each project, Luftwerk applies their own interpretive layer, integrating the physical structure, historical context, and embedded information into each piece. Luftwerk primarily uses geometry and different shades of colors to capture symmetrical and well flowing designs. Luftwerk focuses on the concepts that are introduced in architecture and in the color spectrum. They combine ideas about projection and human interaction in most if not all of their works.

           In my presentation, I focused on four main works of theirs including Spectrum, Luminous Field, Turning Sky, and Color Code. 

           Spectrum is a large-scale, digitized and re-imagined color wheel with 529 painted square panels that cover an entire wall. Once illuminated with animated, colored light, the reception of the colors shift in more than 3,174 tones of red, yellow, and blue.

            Luminous Field is work that is comprised of projections that video-mapped the tiles of the plaza creating a digital mosaic. Inspired by Italian marble floors, the tessellation patterns, the digital mosaic added a new, contemporary layer to the work.

            Turning Sky is an ephemeral lighting station that visualizes local weather and atmospheric conditions on the trail. Patterns of clouds varying in speed coincide with wind data, velocity, and direction, and the ever-changing colors represent temperature.

            Color Code consists of nine paintings applied to the gallery’s walls. The paintings, using the International Morse Code system of dots and dashes to spell out “SOS,” are configured with a variation on complementary color patterns, creating a playful visual excursion.

Hello Everyone,

My name is Everett Johnson and I am a sophomore robotics major. I went to an art school as a child where I was able to work with sketching and shading. I have been doing art my entire life and have done many works of art pertaining to sharpie and pencil. On the technology side, I have always been fascinated with robotics and other electrical projects. I have experience with Arduino and Java, but I have also had experience with 3-D printing and laser cutting. I have some general knowledge about most electronics and have taken some ECE courses. Besides drawing, I do not have any other experience with art. My creative inspiration is drawn from many different aspects including my family and friends but mainly from cinema and comic books. Art fits into my goals in life anytime that I create something that I have control over making I not only want it to be efficient but also visually appealing as well. Art is where I have acquired most of my design creativity and I will continue to explore that as I continue with this course. I am extremely proud of my sharpie drawings that are at the bottom of this post. I am also proud of the designs that I have made in solid works for my robotics course. All of the images below besides the color one were produced with sharpie and the color photo was made with crayon. I primarily enjoy sharpie as a medium because of its simplification between light and dark and how I can make visual illusions to make it appear as though there are shadows and different shades of gray.