emily conrad

Happy New Year! As much as I enjoyed 2009, toward the end it began looking like we needed a little bit more love around us. Since it wasn’t known for sure if this need for love was something only I felt or a cultural phenomenon, it only seemed right to track the frequency in which the term “love” is used.  The Love Lights offer an ambient snapshot of how much love is passing through a few corners of the world at any given second. When love is expressed in one five different languages; swedish (kärlek), english (love), indonesian (mencintai), greek (αγάπη), and norwegian (elsker), a light will pulse on. The Love Lights are built off sentiments publicly divulged through Twitter, which has nearly 50 million users worldwide. I’ve been noticing that the lights for the non-english words stagger on as the day goes by, and are most active late at night. English, of course being the dominating language of Twitter, remains fairly consistent.

The Love Lights are made from LEDs, copper tubing, handblown glass bulbs, beeswax, and electronic components. Each bulb is etched with the word kärlek, love, mencintai, αγάπη, or elsker and then dipped in beeswax to give the light a natural quality. 15 x 9 x 21 inches. The only requirements to get the lights up and running are an ethernet (cable) connection and a power source.

The Love Lights are one of four light pieces I’ve created over the past year. Each one is made from similar materials with a different concept, such as the Belief Loop and War Lights. As an artist, it’s important to me that traditional electronic components are not the dictating aesthetic. Electrical parts like LEDs, wire, and pcb board are just a few of the tools needed to create these pieces. What is more important is how they reflect the human sentiments that go into making them work.

Contact me if you have any questions or are just curious about how it works. Many thanks to Jeff Gray for technical support.

Field, An interactive LED Display on Prince Street, NYC Created by Emily Conrad, Todd Holoubek, and Jeff Galusha

What it is:
The PWMer is a kit that allows electronics enthusiast to rapidly construct an interactive project made of up to 100s of LEDs, each with the ability to dynamically change it’s brightness independently of the other LEDS. PWM, or Pulse Width Modulation, is the term for making a digital component fade in and out, in the same way the light on a Macintosh computer “breathes” (more about PWM here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-width_modulation). In addition to LEDs, other outputs besides could include servo motors, DC motion control systems or for that matter any IC that takes a PWM signal. This kit offers 100+ PWM outputs.

The PWMer is designed with five analog inputs and nine digital I/O to be used with sensors, switches, or other ICs. So, for example, your installation will trigger or change functions when it’s dark, when a certain temperature is reached, when someone walks in front of it, when it gets twittered about, and so on. The options are wide open.

Kit includes step by step instructions, circuit board, Atmega 328 (Arduino bootloaded), TLC 5940, resistors, capacitors, diodes, terminal blocks (for sixteen outputs), three test LEDs.

Things to keep in mind:
• The PWMer uses the TLC 5940, which allows for 16 PWM outputs.
• TLC5940 standalone boards are sold separately. These boards can be easily connected to the PWMer for more outputs.
• Our boards can be connected using a DB9 serial cable (Male>Female) connector, which can be purchased with your board(s).
• You will need Arduino Duemilanove board, the downloaded TLC5940 library, a soldering iron, and some soldering skills to get the PWMer up and running.
• Also available as an Arduino shield for rapid prototyping.
Why:
Currently most microcontrollers only allow you to PWM a few pins independently. The PWMer includes a chip specifically for PWM capability, the TLC5940, that allows the user to easily PWM 100+ pins independently. This dramatically changes the electronics landscape. I often hear students and professionals asking “How can I power up to XXX LEDs? They must PWM!” Usually it’s for a lighting display or an installation that needs to have a strong impact, something a lot of lights programmed in animation can produce. It is now a lot easier to create these possibilities.

Contact hello at emilyconrad dot com for more details or to pre-order. Available in September.

This September the New York Public Library is celebrating the New York Harbor Quadricentennial (400 years!) with an exhibit of rarely seen maps, atlases, and cartographical delights of all kinds. Including an animated overlay of the shoreline in Google Earth. The exhibit Mapping New York’s Shoreline, 1609-2009 opens September 25th.

Where: D. Samuel and Jeane H. Gottesman Exhibition Hall (First Floor)
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, 5th Avenue and 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018-2788

“September 2009 marks 400 years since Henry Hudson sailed into New York Harbor and up the Hudson River, almost to what is now Albany, performing detailed reconnaissance of the Hudson Valley region. Other explorers passed by the outwardly hidden harbor, but did not linger long enough to fully realize the commercial, nautical, strategic, or colonial value of the region. Once the explorers returned to Europe, their strategic information was passed on to authorities. Some data was kept secret, but much was handed over to map makers, engraved on copper, printed on handmade paper, distributed to individuals and coffee-houses (the news centers of the day), and pored over by dreamers, investors, and potential settlers in the “new land.””