The 80s are back

Published by Paula Bray on November 20, 2009 11 Comments

welding

I’m excited about my first blog post. As the museum’s industrial designer I have been realising John Hirsch’s dream of a 1m³ interactive Rubik’s Cube replica for the upcoming 80’s exhibition. He’s our Interactives Department Electronics Engineer, something of a McGyver.

It’s a touch sensitive cube with colours you could drag across the surface, all made possible by new sensing technology we developed and coloured light projected by LED’s from behind plastic sheets.

I started with CAD concepts of a metal light box of laser cut parts welded with the precision necessary to fit the many layers of parts still to come.

Photo collage and post by Krister Gustafsson, Industrial Designer
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  • David

    I still remember waking up one morning several years ago to discover that someone turned the Astor Place cube into a Rubik’s Cube. It was nonfunctional, but it brought a smile to my face. Photos: http://www.alltooflat.com/pranks/cube/results/

  • http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/blog Erika Dicker

    Krister this looks so great!!!

    It is so interesting to see who interactives like this are made.

    cant wait to see it in the exhibition and have a play!

  • http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/blog Melanie

    Amazing – do each of the rows actually move? I’m also trying to make sense of the barrel looking object in the middle – does that move around?

  • Krister

    David, you rock! That’s awesome. I wish I had been there, especially it being in NYC. I especially like the process photos: http://www.alltooflat.com/pranks/cube/

    What did you think when you saw it, and how did people react to it?

    In a way maybe it was interactive perhaps, with all that got done to it by the public and authorities.

  • Krister

    Erika: Yes, the stories for each interactive are very unique. We’ve decided to include a some suprises in the interactive to spoil our visitors. I can’t wait to give a hint of them in the next post.

  • Krister

    Melanie: Yes, and it all pappens in real time. You also get a wonderful rainbow effect between the two colours. (I’ll illustrate in another photo to come).

    No, the barrel is a fixed hidden structure we used to attach all 6 lightboxes and to hide the circuitboard.

    John has programmed the cube with a few other functions that mimic those on the toy, plus a reset feature for those who want to cheat the game. I think there were a number of us as kids who pulled the toy apart and put it back together again solved, as if we had solved it in reckord time.

  • Chris Bell

    Have seen this in the build process and was quite intrigued by it. Great design. Looking forward to having a play.

  • Krister

    Thanks Chris, it’s been quite a crafty and experimental process of improvements, so I can’t wait to see the next phase of it as much as the end result too. I’d be glad to hear what you think of it once it’s launched.

  • http://www.groovik.com Barry Brumitt

    I’d love to share with you the project I lead last summer — we went pretty wild with a cube project this year for a festival (“Burning Man”) in western USA. See pics at: http://octopup.org/burning-man/2009/cube# or http://michaelholden.com/pics/v/bman09/DSC_8414.jpg.html. This was built in 6 months, 7000 man hours, about $20,000, by a 60-70 member volunteer team largely from Seattle, WA. Very, very fun. Are people solving it?

  • Krister

    Hey Barry. Wow, the videos are awesome. I love the process photos and story. Our light boxes for each coloured square were shaped in a similar way. I hope to post a few more sets of photos. The finished result was at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/8412086.stm
    How did your UI work? I’m satarting to become a real fan of events based interactives like this. Have you seen any similar style festivals and interactive works / events?

  • http://groovik.com Barry Brumitt

    Each of the 3 UI stations, located at 0′, 120′ and 240 degrees, about 50′ out from the middle had 6 buttons, arranged in diagonal pairs. Each pair controlled the CW/CCW rotation of a slide of the cube. Hence, each UI station had control of all the slices along one axis. Participants had to work together to solve the thing. It was solved 6 times in the same number of nights, best time around 48 minutes. Are you seeing solutions of your installation?

    As for interactive festivals, Burning Man is on of the real standouts — there are region ‘burns’ as well, where people bring similar art. (http://www.burningman.com). There are recreation engineering organizations, like dorkbot, too…

    What did you use for controlling the LEDS? We used a central computer -> USB -> microcontrollers -> digital PWM -> custom LED driver -> current-controlled LED output. Ran at about 1.8KW for lights, I think. Depends how you want to count. :)

    Feel free to drop me a note at barry b at gmail dot com if you like.