Sunday, February 21, 2010

Flyfire

clipped from www.popsci.com
FlyFire: This 3-D face (left) is built of a swarm of golf-ball-sized, LED-equipped helicopters (right).  MIT
Meet the next generation of art installations. Together, the SENSEable City and ARES Labs at MIT have created an adaptable, remote-controlled display comprised of dozens of robotic, flying "smart pixels."

The concept is simple: As with any digital image, the picture is made of groups of tiny dots of varying colors that, at the right scale, appear as one large image. Now imagine the pixels in a pointillist painting like a Georges Seurat aren't tiny flecks of paint, but thousands of miniature helicopters with varying color LEDs arranged as the image.