Sorry if the quality of the video is bad. I had to use my cellphone to capture the footage. Real video coming soon.
Moulin à vent from Claudine Lamothe on Vimeo.
The initial idea for this project was the create a weather vein but that concept did not allow as much interaction with the piece as I had wanted, so, instead, I created a windmill. Other aspects changed from the original idea to the present one too, I realized along the way that aluminum foil is highly conductive, so I replaced the idea of the key in the center for aluminum foil running down the “wings” of the windmill. Aluminum foil is very thin and blended itself very well to the project, on an aesthetic and a practical point of view.
I started by taking regular paper and cutting it into a square shape, and then I spray glued wrapping paper on the outside layer for design purposes. Once it was dry I made cuts until close to the middle, I took two diagonal connected quarters and spray glued some aluminum foil on the inside layer for conductivity. Afterward, I curled the tips together, and inserted a nail to hold everything down the center.
Then I nailed the piece to the wall and connected all the alligator clips and L.E.D to the wall. Everything is held vertically with nails and clothespins. I put two nails on the side of the windmill, and clipped wires to it: since nails are conductive, if the windmill “wings” don’t come in contact with the alligator clips then they will connect with the nails. Since the windmill with glide over the “wings”, I added some aluminum foil to the outside of the wings to improve connectivity. Once everything was set up and plugged, all that was needed to do was blow into the windmill and watch the L.E.D blink.
The effects are exactly what I had planned them to be, even if it was hard to make it work perfectly. The L.E.D blinks using a natural and physical delay, instead of a programming one, which is very interesting as an analog technique. If I could improve anything I’d like to make the project stand-alone so I could go outside and run with it, using the wind instead of a fan to power the windmill.
I’ve learned a lot doing this project, though, first harsh lesson was the fact that my alligator clips weren’t soldered properly and connectivity was bad. I also learned that Dollarama batteries aren’t a reliable source of energy (all batteries I bought there were already dead) which is why my project is powered by arduino instead of batteries.
These are the materials used for the project: regular paper, wrapping paper, scissors, spray glue, aluminum foil, L.E.Ds, nails, clothes pins and alligator clips.