LAb[au] used 512 vintage split-flap modules to create an immersive, kinetic installation. Joseph Flaherty at wired.com writes:
Inside an aluminum structure, roughly the size of a narrow body airline cabin, 512 vintage split-flap letter mechanisms are arrayed in four rows at eye height. Controlled by a hidden computer, each of the individual mechanisms flip continuously through letters until the software recognizes that a word has been formed by adjacent units.
The computer freezes those nodes and flips their color to red while the others continue to cascade, revealing a hidden signal among the noise. “As artists we try to extract the character of our time, to give contemporaneity a form and a meaning,” says Lab[au] principle Manuel Abendroth. “The circular installation invites the visitor to plunge into an audio-visual composition right in the center of a calculation process of an auto-poetic machine.”
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
