We’re having a party, a big dog-party, to solder a zillion LEDs, harness up a bajillion wires, and light that puppy up! Over 15,000 LEDs are going to be on the outside of VIXToscope II – Infinite Recursion, pulsing, dancing and generally being unruly while people melt their minds on the inside, staring into alien visions of infinity…
If you’d like to help turn this art project into reality we’d love your help the weekend of June 15/16 2024. We’ll have a work party where we’ll solder, heatshrink, bolt, glue, harness, and test LEDs while playing ukelele and piano. If you have soldering experience, that would be most excellent (bring your soldering iron) but there’s plenty to do if you don’t have that skill. If you’re interested, its on Mercer Island from Saturday June 15 and Sunday June 16 from 9 to 4: please sign up.
This is a rendering of VIXToscope-to-be, with boring looking white lights because that’s all my program would render. Reality will be vastly cooler, with >15,000 individually addressable RGB LEDs all synchronized with the video effects that are driving the mind-melting view inside.
“But wait!” you say, “What on earth is a VIXToscope?”
Its a giant kaleidoscope — big enough you can stick your head in, losing all peripheral vision. All you can see is infinity, all the way left, right, up, down… all showing very trippy melting visuals, all synchronized with a hypnotic alien musical soundscape… all controlled in realtime as you twist mysterious glowing knobs.
I brought a smaller one, VIXToscope I – Gateway, to Burning Man 2023. It was in our camp out by 4:00 and G, and I got an amazing amount of positivity and encouragement to bring a bigger version out onto the playa. Here’s a picture of the original at our camp, and a video of the insides — which is constrained to your computer screen and doesn’t really have that overwhelming infinity of the actual piece, but at least gets the idea across of what you’re looking at.
The first one had a 12″ oculus with 2’x8′ mirrors; the new one has a 20″ oculus with 3’x11′ mirrors; both of them look at a large monitor driven by a complex Resolume Arena VFX composition with dozens of trippy video effects all morphing in realtime, all controlled by those mysterious knobs.
The new one is housed in a large (12′ wide) structure to give some sun, wind and rain protection, but it has to be well lit to be out on the playa, so yeah, 15,000 LEDs later, this thing is going to be LIT. All those LEDs are going to be controlled via ArtNet from Resolume, all synched with what’s going on within the kaleidoscope.
At least, that will happen if we can get some volunteers to help us put all those LEDs together, play music and hang out. Happy Father’s Day weekend!