TEDx Austin

F1 - Suspension  Designed and built for TEDx Austin at COTA

The curators of TEDx Austin 2013 invited Mike Brannon and myself to design and build a custom light fixture to act a center piece during the Washoku Lunch as well as the VIP after party. I'd always wanted to be part of TED and still hope to be invited to speak one day, my talk would probably be about the lost art of craftsmanship and the use of ones hands to build something rather than running to Target to purchase a mass produced blah-bject, but that's whole other topic...

F1 Suspension
So, TEDx Austin was held at the nations only Formula 1 race track, Circuit of The Americas just south of Austin Texas.  When designing the light we knew little about track and even less about the exact location the light was to be installed.  After a bit of research a concept emerged and side-kicked us in the gut.  We had recently procured a couple pieces of salvaged aluminum sheet and thought we would be able to capture the speed of the race track into some forced curves held in tension with aircraft cable.  Of course Mike had to sandwich a couple pieces of Dichroic film between the sheets, we then countersunk some Stainless steel hardware to keep it held together and played around with mounting some strip remote controlled LED's on the top side.  It ended up being 9'-6" long, 10" wide, and a sexy 1/2" high.

After a quick dissembling, we managed to affix two lengths of cable throughout the fixture to keep the curves in place and act as method to mount the light to whatever structure we would be faced with installing the fixture onto.

Track tower in background, 18 stories tall with alternating colored lighting

The Talks
The speakers this year were amazing!!!  I can't wait for "The Wire" an Urban Cable installation to be built in Austin, this is definitely the most innovative and probably the most efficient means of mass transportation ever imagined for an urban center.  There was an amazing discussion about an ancient Japanese culinary tradition Washoku, my goat pate was amazing btw!

Washoku Lunch

Favorite quotes of the weekend were " Don't should on yourself, get out there and do something" & "there's only time enough to iron your cape before you have to take to the skies again"  both by Anne Mahlum, founder and CEO of Back on My Feet.

-charles

Harris County Brick

This idea came to me a few years ago while working on a studio project. I have found a little extra free time so i have decided its the right time to start moving forward.

The bricks are placed back into a mould, roughly the same size as the original brick. Although these bricks were salvaged from my neighbors back yard i feel that more historically significant materials would tell a more interesting story. My ultimate goal for this project would be to have many more of these bricks and in a manner of speaking, rebuild a fallen wall. I think using the actual fallen materials, with varying amounts of wax/brick and then placed in its original setting would be quite moving. Maybe after some time in the sun the wax bricks will somehow collapse and become its own ruin once again.

I feel that this is only the beginning. I could vary the type of materials, using large cmu or even old termite ridden wood beams. Questions, comments, suggestions? Most of comments i have heard have been rather positive so more critical eyes are welcome to as well. More bricks are on the way.