Jim
Jenkins
February
2002
"Deux
Carrottes Heureuses"
(Two
Happy Carrots)
Exhibited at:
Museum
Of Neon Art
Lost & Found: A Group Exhibit of
Neon
and Kinetic Art"
August 28, 2002-March 2, 2003
Jim Jenkin's kinetic art is often
playful and wacky, this one is
definitely one of the sillier
ones. When you press the red button
below the globe, the globe spins, and
the
carrots dance over it
to the sound of a whistled tune.
See
a QuickTime movie(169K) of it in action!
(download the QuickTime player
here)
Jim asked me to build him a sound
chip playback device that would
play the whistled tune and also control
the
power to an AC gearmotor.
The power to the motor had to be timed
quite
accurately
so that the motor would shut off when
the
sound ends.
Jim sent me his recorded sound on an
audio
CD that he had made
of his recorded whistling, and I
recorded it onto an ISD audio chip.
Timing a motor is a simple
programming task using a cheap PIC
microcontroller chip. PIC chips
have
a timing resolution of less
than 1/10000 second, and Jim only
really needed
1/2 second accuracy.
I built a kit of parts that Jim
could easily
assemble into his mechanical
design. The parts (below) consist
of
the power transformer
on the left, speaker and electronics in
the
center, and the
motor control relay on the right, with
the
red start button below it.
Jim built these parts into the metal
box
below the globe.
Here's a closer view of Jim's
brilliant piece of mechanical engineering:
Click here
to see a short Quicktime movie of the globe spinning
with carrots dancing over them.
Jim teaches art at Cal State
Fullerton in California,
contact him at: jjenkins@fullerton.edu
See more of Jim's work on his web
site at:
http://www.jimjenkins.net
back to top
