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Special Topics in Interactive Art & Computational Design

Carnegie Mellon University / Spring 2010

Project 1 Icicle

by Karl DD @ 6:12 pm 24 January 2010

Concept

This project involves the fabrication of polluted icicles based on the amount of traffic in proximity. Pure

water is trickled out from a container at regular intervals, while passing vehicles cause darkened water to

be dispensed and pollute the icicle. The project explores how we can visualize information though

physical fabrication and also hopes to raise questions about how our presence impacts upon nature.

Background

Being a new resident of Pittsburgh and experiencing for the first time in my life a lot of snow, I was

struck by how beautiful the fresh white snow can appear. I was also impressed by the beauty and temporal

nature of the icicles that formed in the cold weather. At the same time, I also noticed how quickly the

snow darkened at the side of the road as vehicles pass by.

For this project I was interested in exploring how fabrication could be used as a form of visualization.

Digital Fabrication usually means, creating some kind of digital model, then outputting it to a given

fabrication device such as a 3D printer, milling machine, or a laser cutter. In general, I am interested in

exploring how we can unify this process more so that realtime factors contribute to the fabrication

process, i.e. the input more closely affects the output. An icicle for example, forms in an incrementalprocess when water flows then refreezes repeatedly. Nature has no prior design for the icicle, but rather its

form is derived from the process. This project is one small step towards exploring this bigger idea.

Some Related Artworks

Marco Evaristti,Ice Cube Project, 2004. From Wikipedia:

With two icebreakers and a twenty-man crew, Evaristti used three fire hoses and 3,000 litres

(790 US gallons) of paint to color the iceberg blood-red. The artist commented that, We allhave a need to decorate Mother Nature because it belongs to all us.

Although a very simple idea, it immediately communicates a powerful open message. This could be

commentary on whaling, general environmentalism, or even protesting a war. The juxtaposition of blood

red, with pure white is strongly out of place.

cial Topics in Interactive Art & Computational Design Project 1 ... http://golancourses.net/2010spring/01/24/project-1-icicle

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icicledrops, tEnt, 2006

We have developed the device which invites/induces natural icicles. Our device is

composed of two parts- a pot and a string. A pot can preserve snows, control ices, and make a

drop of water. A drop of water freezes again by an electronic-controlled cold string duringtrickling down. The accumulation of iced strings grows up to a big icicle.

8 LEDs which is attached to a string light up an icicle from inside. Light flickers like virtual

drops, and generates new optical phenomena. Real water drops generate poly-rhythmic

percussive sounds.

Using the above technique they can create icicles artificially regardless of the environment. What is really

beautiful, especially in the top image below, is the way the icicles have been illuminated. They dont look

at this work as a fabrication experiment, but rather an exploration of the aesthetics of icicles.


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Prototype

Here is an overview of how the prototype works.

The water is released using a gravity feed solenoid valve. Its regular state is closed, so by turning an

Arduino pin on HIGH for 100ms or so it will quickly open and close, releasing a dribble of water.


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Here you can see the two valves attached to the bottom of the water containers.

The solenoid valves are controlled by a very simple circuit: a Boarduino and some transistors to deliver

the 12VDC to the solenoid.


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A photo-resistor is used to detect cars passing by. As icicles are made overnight when the temperature

drops, it is easy to detect the jump in light levels when a vehicle with headlights switched on passes by.

To get an idea of how many vehicles were passing by on my street I made a small program to record the

time and light level reading overnight.


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I live on a reasonably quiet street, so there is not a constant stream of vehicles going by. You can see that

between 2am 5am it is pretty quiet, but from 6am it really picks up as people start their day. I also

recorded the temperature on a given night, and was surprised at how little it changes. Granted the valuesbelow are rounded to the nearest integer, I still expected a more dramatic change.

From the image and movie below you get an idea you get an idea for how the icicle would form from the

dripping water in the right weather conditions.


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Trials

The next stage was to do a trial, and try and fabricate an icicle. Surprisingly, there is such a thing as

black food coloring, which serves the purpose of polluting the icicle every time a vehicle passes by.

When you drop some full strength coloring into the water it creates an interesting effect.

Here are the containers, one clear and one dirty.


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After several more attempts, Pittsburghs weather just hasnt been cold enough to go below freezing.

Unfortunately I am away at a conference for the last week of this project, so it is frustrating to see it is

going to dip below freezing during that time!

I have several improvements I would like to make to the device, thanks to suggestions from people in

class. Firstly make the point where the drips form curve to a vertical. This should slow down the drops to

allow them to freeze easier. Secondly, another suggestion was to attach some sort of freezer-made piece of

ice to the dripping tip, in order to get the icicle started. I am hoping to try this out when I get back.

The most disappointing thing about not being able to form the icicles, is not being able to see how the

data would form a visualization. For example, would small black patches form? Or would layers of clear

and dark ice build up over time? These patterns would be interesting to observe and also try and

accentuate by varying the mixtures and release rates.

Comments (1)

1 Comment

Hi Karl, here are the notes from the PiratePad from the crit.

Lovely web documentation. You did a lot of work on the physical end of things but did you do

the right work? The black dye strikes me as an unnecessary and confounding complication. It might

also have helped to do (or present) some research about icicle formation

Beautiful idea, painful, painful execution. Can you use a material besides water with a higher

freezing temperature that still freezes clear? There *must* be a better solution than waiting for the

temperature to drop. Or did you think thatd hurt the authenticity of it? Oh, and we should chatabout that car detection hardware/algorithm. -SB

Is there a way to keep the water in the containers from freezing? Might be interesting to try to set

this up inside of a freezer, with the tanks positioned outside of the freezer.

Yeah, along with the first comment Im wondering if theres another material that will yield a

similar effect but be perhaps more permanent than an icicle as well. Especially when I envision this

in some kind of exhibit thats like art and environmental awareness I think seeing pollution

visualized this way would definitely have an impact on people, but youd have to have something

that can stand up to being displayed. The use of icicles from water also seems a bit counterintuitive

for me because icicles melt but air pollution changes our environment forever so I think your

message would be stronger if your artifacts didnt just melt.

Hehe, its like a mad scientist projectBeautiful idea though. I agree with the other comments

though: I wonder if you couldve displayed the data you collected maybe with *digital* icicles

(although I also agree that there is something enchanting in the idea of creating your own icles). Im

still not exactly sure what data your trying to portray herehow does the freqency of passing cars

show information of pollution? Maybe you could have collected data on polution and then used

that. Keep making icicles though! Really cool! -Amanda

I LOVE this idea of making a physical visualiztion of the pollution in your street. really wish ithad worked

Wouldnt most of the icicles be similar dirtiness?

1.


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Cant you gather the data first and then make the ice in a more controlled environment (with

constant temperature)?

Something Karl told us about in our small group was that using the car traffic as a data source was

intended to have an interesting side effect of a sort of chronological record of the pollution/unique

data source. (like bands of pollution along the icicle as it freezes over time) nvm, he talked about

this at the end

Really, really interesting ideaI hope you give it another shot! Maybe you could keep the tanks

inside your house, and feed the tubes out the window.

Comment byplacebo 2 February 2010 @ 1:57 am

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