FERRUM - Indian International Jewellery Show, Signature Goa

Ferrum - Indian International Jewellery Show, Signature Goa from niveditaganjoo on Vimeo.


Held in Kala academy, Goa in Feb ‘10.
Designed an outdoor interactive installation ‘Ferrum’ for a pit in kala academy. Ferrum is an interactive installation that provides the user a chance to engage in the playful activity of generating and enjoying exciting patterns formed by iron dust & magnets.
Working: When anyone comes near the installation the PIR sensor detects the presence and the magnets make patterns with the iron dust.




























Concept

The installation had two aspects-
1) Act as a piece of art, aesthetically sound
2) Interactive, capable of providing people with a engaging experience
For its functionality the installation largely depended on electronic components .

Electronic Components

The functionality was as follows-
Proximity of an observer was detected through Passive Infrared Sensor ( PIR, incorporating an Fresnels lens and a motion detecting IC )
PIR sent a signal which was received by the IC
The IC in turn triggered a DC motor ( 100 rpm ) to rotate.
A limit switch was incorporated to limit the height of the platform housing another "motor-magnet" setup.
The limit switch triggered a signal, which caused the DC motor to stop rotating.
At this point, the stepper-motor,kept on the platform started rotating, in pre-programmed fashion.
In case, no-motion was detected for some pre-defined time, the PIR resets, sending a signal.
Receiving this signal, the IC made the stepper-motor to stop.
Then the DC motor starts rotating in the reverse direction, hence the platform came down.
Another limit switch at this point is used to limit the minimum height of the platform.
A AC-->DC (12 V , 1.5 A) adapter was used to supply power.

Mechanism of the piston







The greatest hurdle in piston mechanism was the motion of the platform in the vertical axis. I tried to do this motion by following how a piston work i.e. transforming circular motion to linear motion.



I devised another method to do this. I used a screw attached to the motor axis. As the screw rotated, the nut attached to it moved up/down (depending on the direction of rotation). This worked.



Electronics, motor, PIR





Site Measurement





Form Exploration





Electromagnet test


I tried to generate different shapes by changing the shape of the solenoid, This too did not worked well, as I realized that iron-dust magnetized along the magnetic lines of flux and not on the body of the solenoid.





Glycerin test
I did the following experiment, trying to achieve a structure of iron-dust in the cylindrical tube when magnets were applied at both the ends by use of some viscous fluid.

Student: Supreet Kumar, Nivedita Ganjoo
NMD-09