Client: Anonymous
Location: Pittsburgh, PA, United States
Completion date: 2017
Artwork budget: $150,000
Project Team
Concept, design, handmade glass, installation, project management
Jenn Figg
The Art Firm
Concept, design, handmade glass, engineering, installation
Matthew McCormack
The Art Firm
Overview
Convergence, 2017
Hot sculpted glass, steel, wire, 3D printed plastic, LEDs, weather sensor.
14′ tall (from ceiling), 45′ in width, 22′ in depth
Location undisclosed online
Convergence draws from the building’s environment and the advanced digital & technology development within. The optical glass elements light up in real time, mapping the wind, temperature, humidity, and dew point. Informed by both the surroundings of tangled vines and a major waterway, the sculpture flows from chaos to an ordered eddy of lines.
Each of the 700 pieces of hand made glass glass curves features an individually controlled LED on a custom circuit board assembly. A Raspberry Pi interfaces the weather station sensor array with the LED display with a Java application. An internet connection provides system monitoring and offers redundancy for weather data.
Goals
The client asked us to bring the outside in. Convergence is a wind map, visualizing the breeze immediately outside the building. The concept design was to visualize local environmental data as inspiration to keep the ideas flowing inside the building.