I've been promising myself for the last two years that I would make some time to play with an Arduino. This weekend, thanks for Stuart Childs, Matt Venn and, in particular, Adrian Mcewen, it happened. In just 48 hours I managed to knock together a light installation that interacts with Twitter. Admittedly, I had a huge amount of help from some seriously experience people, but I'm chuffed with what I've achieved and think I may be hooked.
It all took place at the third in a series of 'MAKE OWT' events that I am organising with Duke Studios; they're collaborative design events that bring creative people, with different interests and skills, together to make something in response to a brief. This time around we challenged ourselves to 'Make Light'.
My goal was to create something that could be installed in our Made in Leeds store, which opens in Trinity Leeds this Thursday. I wanted to make something that paid homage to Leeds' old arcade systems, including both the Trinity and Burton's Arcade that Trinity Leeds has reinvented.
As a child my mother would take me to the Thornton's and Grand arcades to watch as, on the hour, mechanical figurines came to life inside huge clocks designed and made by Robert, James and Joseph Potts of famous Leeds Clockmarkers William Potts & Sons Ltd.
Inspired by Adrian Mcewen's Bubblino, my project uses an Arduino Uno, a WiFi Shield to connect to Twitter every 15 minutes in order to count the number of Tweets that contain #madeinleeds, and then to instruct the shops lighting system to pulsate once for each Tweet. Modest by comparison to what the Potts family imagined for the great arcades but hopefully something that will remind visitors to the store that Made in Leeds represents an ongoing conversation about Leeds fashion and textiles that is much bigger than a shopping experience.
