An interactive audio / optical sculpture
We’ve got ourselves a beautiful piece of reclaimed jarrah ( Eucalyptus Marginata / Djarraly / Swan River Mahogany) to make the new control panel out of.
To make sure we don’t waste the timber and to test the proportions
we knocked up a mock-up from foam core at the kitchen table on Friday night after work over a glass of wine with friends…
We are very pleased to announce that we have received an Art Grant for 2020 Perception.
Special thank you again to Blazing Swan Incorporated and the Art team for their generosity in helping us bring our vision back to the playa!
Getting the ‘Tree out to site is a lot of work and it takes up a fair amount of space (although it’s not too heavy).
We’ve already got a standard 7’x5′ single axle trailer.
If you’re able to head out to site pre-start (or come back a few days after the event ends) and are able to tow out trailer for us (we’ll be towing our camper and the tools) it would be greatly appreciated!
It occurred to me that being able to record people on-site at the event would be amazing. Even better if it was automated – so today we spent our “5% on personal projects time” on knocking up a quick test rig…
If you are heading to Blazing Swan “Perception” in 2020 and are on-site pre-event (or want to be) we need your help.
We need 1-2 people to help erect the Whisper Tree.
The 2019 build took 2 people the better part of two days to put up – to be fair it was a first time learning curve and the weather was pretty wild!
If you think you can help out drop us a line at whispertree@blazingswan.com.au
Today was the last day to polish off the Art Grant submission for the first round of applications as we head towards the 2020 Blazing Swan event.
We are hoping to improve the project by creating a much larger backup power supply solution (in the event we have extensive site power problems again), add a better amplification system, add more lighting and greatly expand / ease the submission of spoken word from Burners around the world…
We’re currently testing the use of the “SpeakPipe” WordPress plugin to make it easy for people without technical nous to get their submissions to use.
Will see how it works out…
After the site power fiasco of 2019 (the small cheapo generator supplied to power several sculpture on Esplanade was utterly unreliable) we are exploring ways to better power the Whisper Tree.
Explorations in solar didn’t yield the expect answers – $1800 would be the minimum cost for a second hand system capable of running WT (assuming not more than one day of poor sun). A silenced Honda generator could be had new for <$1500.
Instead it has been decided to use a larger UPS with a custom AGM battery pack (~200Ah of second hand batteries) and run off the grid. This should keep the costs, noise and carbon footprint as low as possible.
Whisper Tree is physically huge and very time consuming to assemble – it’s been frustrating not being able to easily demo it or test out development work in the workshop.
So we are examining a different, smaller implementation called Seed Pod.
More news to follow…
Nano helped set up a time lapse of us building the Whisper Tree – head over to the Media page to check it out…