[Noisebridge-discuss] An introduction, and a plea for help with electrical systems

Morley John morleyroarly at gmail.com
Tue Dec 23 18:00:09 UTC 2008


Hi there!

I'm Morley. I already know some of you (Rubin, Audrey, who else?)
through NIMBY/Interpretive Arson. To the rest of you, greetings! I've
been by the space once to check it out and was quite inspired. Glad to
see people throwing their energies into all sorts of fascinating
endeavours :)

I write not just to introduce myself, but to introduce a project I'm
working on, and to hopefully recruit some interested folks to help
out.

The project, working title Timescale, is a scaled representation (time
scaled to distance) of the last 4.57 billion years of the history of
the planet Earth. It will be installed at Burning Man in 2009. The
installation will measure exactly one mile from end to end, starting
with the Cryptic Era at the beginning of the formation of the planet,
and finishing with the Holocene Epoch, the 11,430 years since the last
ice age.  The beginning of each Precambrian Era and Cambrian Epoch
(see: http://www.stratigraphy.org/chus.pdf ) will be marked with a
concrete column, 8"x8" square, rising up from the playa. Atop the
column will be a clear polycarbonate box that holds a sculpture
evoking some element of geologic/biologic/evolutionary/climate history
from that period of geologic time.

The columns will be fabricated at the new NIMBY2 - anyone who wants to
learn about casting lightweight concrete, you're welcome to come help
out!  Fabrication will begin in earnest this spring.

But the more pressing issue, and the one I suspect is more up the
alley of folks on this list, is how to power these columns.  For each
column we'll need to light the sculpture (luxeons? 5W compact
fluorescents?), light the explanatory text on the sides of the
columns, and power some sort of strobe/floodlight atop the column so
you can see them from afar.  In the Precambrian, there's up to 1000
feet between columns. (The entire Cambrian, on the other hand,
representing the vast majority of the evolution of Earth's biological
diversity, is 660 feet long).

Sets of small 7AH to 12AH batteries in each column? (No, we will not
put a deep cycle next to each column, they must be stand-alone). A
generator and a mile of trenched wiring? A generator powering just the
Cambrian, batteries in the Precambrian? A quick calculation indicates
that four luxeons will burn out a 7AH battery in about two hours,
leading me to think that pure battery power is untenable. What we
really need is an electrician to help us figure all of this out.

I am far from an electrician - as you might have guessed, I'm
primarily a geologist.  If any of you have experience with such things
and would like to help us figure out our power systems, we'd be most
grateful. (We being myself and my co-conspirator, Flint Hahn). And of
course, down the line we'll need plenty of help constructing the
actual lighting assemblies for each column. And if anyone wants to
claim a column and create a sculpture, great! We'll be putting out the
general call for column artists in a few months, once we have funding
secured.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to meeting more of you in the future!

Cheers,

Morley


"How do I stop being afraid? Know that there is no safety anywhere.
There never was and there never will be. Stop looking for it. Live
with a fierce intent to waste nothing of yourself or life." - Ann
Shulgin



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