Blowing pixels

Déplacements consists of 24 computer case fans forming a rectangle. Each fan is a “pixel�, its number of revolutions and the intensity of the light of its LED change according to the level of gray corresponding to the pixel of reference.

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This screen of fans is controlled by a computer simulating a cellular automaton entitled The game of life (devised by John Horton Conway in 1970). In this mathematical model, each fan is a cell.

0faaans4.jpgDisplacement is a hijack of this object, a component of the computer becoming image. It is not a question of a physical “displacement� but of a movement, a flow.

Video. A work developed by Manuel Braun for his Diplôme Nationale Supérieure d’Arts Plastiques at the Aix-en-Provence School of Art.

Via abstract machine.

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More fans in art: The Art of Breathing (Circulation); Circular Breathing, a personal breath recorder; Avantilator, a performance where 100 modified fans were playing the music along with the DJ; Rabbit Field, an infestation of inflatable rabbit-like forms; Blow-Up (image above) records, amplifies, and projects your breath into a room-sized field of wind; Breathe On Me, a space with fan/webcam devices on the walls. The fan/webcams are modified netcams such that Internet users can control the direction of the fan from the remote webcam view; Twilight, a breathing installation.