Having built Tensegrity it was time to take it on the road!

Packed into a trailer, and a roof rack that’s close to it’s weight rating.

Arriving on site

You can see the effigy from here, and vice versa!

Night time is show time

Throughout the burn, I’d ocassionally see people lying on their backs underneath the structure. Looking up at the cylinder as it spun. Jessica Mills took these two photos from that perspective:

Peter Jennings probably got the best photos of the structure while it was at Kiwiburn:

Kiwi Burn WYRD Kiwi Burn WYRD Kiwi Burn WYRD

Conclusion

The original vision was a 3m high cylinder that could spin itself on a pole that was also 3m high for a structure with a total height of 6m. Instead, Tensegrity was a 3m high cylinder inside a 2.4x2.4x4m scaffold box and invited the observer to spin the cylinder by hand. Ultimately, I think this worked better. Seeing people spin it by hand, while others watched from afar had a great community aspect. While spinning Tensegrity was kinda fun (if a little disorientating) in itself, one could only really appreciate the visual aesthetic from afar.

All the videos we took, including some timelapses are available in this Youtube playlist. If you were there and got any additional photos or videos, we’d love to see them.

We’ve submitted Tensegrity to some future light festivals around New Zealand, so I will announce here if those are accepted.

Acknowledgements

Beyond Patrick and Felicia who put in as much sweat (and blood!) into this art as I did, I’d like to thank the following people for helping make this crazy idea reality:

  • Wendy Allison, for believing I could do it and not minding the noise of grinding metal, sparks, and circuit breakers popping.
  • Everyone who lent a hand to set up and tear down the art work at Kiwiburn. You all rock.
  • Kiwiburn Art Grant Committee for their contribution and entrusting me to bring the concept to reality.
  • Micah aka Scanlime for not only creating fadecandy but for fostering a great open source community for it. When I was struggling reasoning about 5V supply lines and shared connections, Micah posted a great overview to help me (and hopefully others) understand the issues involved.
  • The local Fish and Chip shop, for refueling us at the end of a day in the sun working with metal.