Abbi’s Assemblage

Everyone has been working extremely hard the past few weeks to get this intense show together. I never thought my life would be consumed by lamps. The opening is happening this Thursday July 10th, in three locations:
Greylock Arts, 93 Summer Street, Adams MAMCLA Gallery 51 Annex, 65 Main Street, North Adams and on the web at: MAturbulence.org/networkedrealities

A lot of work has been put into the Lumens space that is located at 65 Main Street in North Adams. It was at one point an old sports store and new walls and floors had to built in order to accommodate the show. At the moment we are really close to our goal of having 180 lamps in the exhibition – and to getting them to all respond to people as they walk by! The gray box in the picture holds a microcontroller (that were all hand built), a fan, and a power source for a cluster of six lamps that are plugged into the bottom. There will then be a motion sensor placed on the lamps to respond to people as they move through the space. In addition, there is a web component that allows people to also turn the lamps on as they interact witht the web page.

Here is a closer look at all the boxes that were built to accommodate a power source, a fan and microcontroller.

Most of these were hand wired by Marianne!

Here is a picture of the fans and the general craziness that has been happening in the space.

Our friend Larry Alice, who is also an electrical engineer, has been an incredible help on this project. He has been in several days helping Matthew trouble shoot all the technical issues and has even helped with the tedious task of stripping wires. I believe that here he is soddering a breadboard. Thanks Larry!

Another time consuming part of this project has been photographing all the lamps that are then photoshoped and uploaded to the website. Sean Riley, one of the Lumens artists photographed most of the crazy lamps that we have received.

Saturday night The Summer Street Association of Merchants held Adams’s first street fair of the season. There was everything from fried dough (which everyone ate), to a band, a Velcro wall, raffles and and a bungee run.

Greylock Arts set up a table to demonstrate the upcoming exhibit ‘Lumens’. We got lots of people in the gallery and had fun explaining the technology and ideas behind the project for all the crazy lamps that we have been collecting.
Here Ven Voisey, one of the artists working on “Lumens’, is explaining the upcoming exhibit to a couple of Adams residents.

And here I am demoing how the lamps work to the nuns of Saint Stanislaus Church.

<

One of the best moments of the fair was when Hallie and Ven did the ‘Bungee Run’.

Matt Belanger, co-director of Greylock Arts and Dan Rose, an artist currently showing at Greylock Arts got into the fun with a couple of LED headbands.