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Michael Hayden
"Quadrille"
Public
art on Duke Energy building
Charlotte,
North Carolina
1996
See also the design and installation of "Arpeggio"
in
Nashville, Tennessee.
This 80 foot
square
neon artwork contains 53 neon elements. It dominates the Charlotte
skyline, facing
the
Panther's stadium. By day dozens of holographically originated
diffraction
grating panels cast rainbow colors, while by night the colored light stips
flash in ever
changing animated
choreographies.
NOTE In February 2011, Duke energy
repaired Quadrille and replaced the failing neon tubes
with state-of-the-art LED strips.
Michael wanted
the
neon to contain many hours of distinct programmed animations
that would be
randomly
selected so that an average commuter would never see the
same animation at
the
same time on subsequent days.
The client,
Duke Energy also wanted an interactive element since the artwork can be
seen from the
upper
levels of the Panther Stadium in downtown Charlotte. They had it in mind that the
artwork
would be appear
to
respond to goals scored in the stadium with short hyper active
animations.
I
engineered the controls so that 9 different short animations can be
activated
from any
telephone.
The controller
that
I built contains over 9 megabytes of data which is fed to the 53 power
relays.
I used a
Basic Stamp II microcontroller
to
select from 128 banks of memory containing
the animations.
The animations
were
programmed by myself; my wife,
Rebekah
Younger ; and light
sculptor Milton
Komisar.
The control
system that I designed (seen here before the 2011 upgrade).
It measures about 2 by 3 feet, and contains a control
box with a LCD
status
indicator display and test buttons.
