Glowing sculptures that visualize bitcoin and bullet wounds #ArtTuesday
Seen above is James Clar’s work entitled Two Times One Sun– a visualization of the sun from two different perspectives, rising and setting. Wired has a great piece on the artist and his work which features 3D printing, glowy lights, and clear, complex work.
James Clar insists that he’s not a control freak, though there’s evidence that suggests otherwise. For starters, Clar’s studio is impressively tidy. The Brooklyn-based artist’s studio is filled with wires, 3-D printed components and his bold-colored fluorescent sculptures, but everything has its place. “I try to keep very orderly and structured and systematic,” he says. “Otherwise things get out of control.”
Then there’s the fact that the artist himself kinda admits it: “A lot of the work I do is about control,” he tells me. “I’m trying to have control over the medium.” Even with a confession like this, control freak isn’t quite right. The word connotes uptightness, a lack of flexibility, neither of which describes the very genial Clar or his colorful work.
“What I do is a craft,” he clarifies. “And I treat it like a craft.” Clar is known for creating glowing light installations out of linear fluorescent tubes. The artist builds his lighting systems from scratch, beginning by designing each piece in computer programs like Adobe Illustrator and Maya. Though the lights look neon, it’s actually just a clever use of colored filters, which Clar prints out via a high-resolution printer and slips inside the tubes to create the glowing colors you see. Then using a Makerbot, he prints customized electrical connectors that hold each piece together and hide the wire routing.
The piece above is called Bitcoin Spiral and displays data taken from the Mt.Gox bitcoin market which it then displays on the lights in the work.
It’s a complex system distilled down to a clean, streamlined finished product. All of Clar’s works have a sense of purpose, which is perhaps the most compelling thing about they outside of their bold aesthetics. “For the most part I’m not really into art that’s messy or happenstance,” he says.
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 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
