Silo 3

Silo 3 is an installation by Electrotexture Lab. The installation consist of 42 triangular kites mounted on the north facing side of a silo in the east harbour in Aalborg. Each kite has Controllable LED light behind it as well as a sensor to measure the elevation of each kite from the side of the silo to be used as an expression for the wind on the face of the silo. The public can send sms messages to the silo thus changing the appearance of the installation using messages such as "red", "green", "<3" and "?". Further more the public could add a message that would be collected and showed on a webpage where a debate on the future use of the area would take place.

In february 2009 a large part of the Silo 3 project had its first test setup. The lites were mounted and the "sms to silo" functionality was implemented and tested. A mock up of the electronics to be mounted on the face of the silo was created. The installation is aiming for a final setup in october.

My part in the project were to create the central control of the installation including interfacing to the electronics mounted on the silo and the sms backend. Furthermore full unmanned operation and remote control was implemented and a video stream mode that allowed "video" to be streamed to the installation. I also made an interactive previsualization of the installation where all the sms functionality worked.

Credits

Electrotexture Lab
Esben Skouboe Poulen, conceptual artist
Dan Overholt, Electronics and microcontroller
Tobias Thyrrestrup, Electronics and microcontroller

Smallstorm
Torben Thomsen, sms gateway and queue system and website for the debate about the future of the area.