Pickable flowers (2012)
These flowers appear in various scenes. They light up when picked, and possibly have pressure sensors built in, so that the harder you hold them, the more intense the pulsing and light intensity gets. Otherwise the pulsating could be a timed event that grows more intense over time, then relaxes and grows again.
In the script there are three or four scenes in which flowers are picked. Only in one of the scenes does it explicitly mention that the flower lights up as soon as hemming picks it (this is when he is recalling how he met pali). Could also add a pressure sensor to the stem, so that the more it is squeezed the brighter it gets.
How should these flowers should look? simple/extravagant, real/futuristic, natural/industrial….? Sketches for a set of three different looking flowers that all light up as soon as they are picked (the stem is touched). As they are held, their light(s) starts to pulse. for the pickable flowers i will use RGB LEDs, meaning that they can also change colour to white/orange/yellow/gold and red.
In addition to having the flower light up as soon as they are picked, i am trying to make one of the flowers open up using nitinol wire (a shape memory alloy), similar to this example >> http://vimeo.com/18650899
Making the petals move:
Nitinol, thread, fabric:
Nitinol, thread, tracing paper:
Nitinol, thread, printer paper (using Jie Qi’s wing pattern):
Flower design with multiple lights:
SMD RGB LED with translucent red fabric and polyester stuffing as diffuser:
Video of flower during the day:
Video of flower at night :
Prototyping the circuitry. Capacitive sensing between two wires. One wrapped around the other, with yarn as a spacer:
Trying different diffusers:
Sketches:
