"Talking" Waterfall

[Wuddy]

I don't understand the science behind this as it's way, WAY above my payscale but I was thinking you could colour the water with fluorescent nanobeads and then by some process of ionistaion you could seperate them out from the waste water and re-use them.

[ImagineerTom]

.....or just use a projector

[timd]

I don't understand the science behind this as it's way, WAY above my payscale but I was thinking you could colour the water with fluorescent nanobeads and then by some process of ionistaion you could seperate them out from the waste water and re-use them.

 

It would theoretically be possible, but in practice remarkably difficult. I imagine those systems work on a semi-closed loop principle, so recycle a large proportion of the water back to the distributor bar. Designing a separation process to remove into separate streams the three particles that runs at a fairly high flowrate and results in concentrated beads would be almost impossible. It would also mean that you'd need three or four times the number of valves, depending on how you did it. You might have better luck with a large supply of fluorescent protein and then mixing a protease enzyme into the recycle stream to get rid of it again, but that would be expensive to run as you'd need a lot of the protein.

[peternewman]

Gas's rising (in air or water) wouldn't work - there's a host of turbulence issues that mean they would never travel as straight as a raindrop falling down would.

It might not work in water, but I wonder if you'd have more success in a more viscous fluid, the bubbles seem quite controlled when I've played with a "goo timer", like this. Mind you that's only got one source of bubbles at a time.

[timd]

Gas's rising (in air or water) wouldn't work - there's a host of turbulence issues that mean they would never travel as straight as a raindrop falling down would.

It might not work in water, but I wonder if you'd have more success in a more viscous fluid, the bubbles seem quite controlled when I've played with a "goo timer", like this. Mind you that's only got one source of bubbles at a time.

 

But then the bubbles will rise extremely slowly. Also you find that the bubble size has a significant impact on speed, so it would be all to easy for a wide line of bubbles to merge and rise too quickly. You've also got to consider what happens to the displaced fluid as you inject the gas, too much and it could overflow. And then you need a tank for it all, if it's a thin tank you have edge effects to consider and the bubble size becomes even more important. Also, a tank of the required size would be very difficult to empty, transport and fill again, and would certainly be too heavy to fly.

[Superpants]

It is indeed possible to do this with bubbles in water, but these tend to be constrained in a tube per bubble. At least one full size wall capable of showing images has been built;

Pipedream

 

I have been playing with trying to get a horizontally running signwriter working, which is proving a challange, but I am making progress on. Work so far on a basic version yields a fluid sculpture;

Fluid sculpture

This has been working with water so far, but I have quite a low bubble resolution. The pipedream is done with oil, which I may well do next (the base oil used in baby oil probably)

 

There is an artist in the US that has produced some fairly spectacular items using the bubbles in tube process, and is where I got my inspiration. His video's are great!

Casual Profanity

[Richard the chandler]

Funny how all this has come up.

 

 

Flints actually rigged up the Bit.Fall project at Bankside and the big one under the DLR bridge at Canary Wharf. I didn't do the Bankside one but the Canary Wharf one was basically like descirbed earlier in that its a shed load of pipes, a computer setup and then these units that bolt together to extend the length of the thing.

 

In practice actually a fairly simple thing, the hard bit is in the computer control side of stuff as always. The Canary Wharf one actually literally hung under the main bridge (with all the issues of vibration that goes with hanging from a railway bridge!) and the droplets just fell away into the dock itself and there was a rather large tube that was dropped over the side to draw water up. All the pumps and computer lived in a sort of custom flight case that sat on the quayside.

 

It actually looked much better under controlled light conditions with some nice side and top down light when it was dark. And yes you could text your message to some number and then have it 'typed' out by the water droplets. Not sure what the delay on that was though.

 

Interesting that 'commericial' versions are out there after being involved with the very art scene based one. (The festival also featured a man who folding up giant paper boats before trying to paddle across the dock in them!)

 

I most remember it being freezing cold and being a good test of some new safety lanyards we'd had in for evaluation that week (in a cherry picker 25ft above the actual dock) and slightly taken aback by the amount of bird sh%t on the bridge!

 

 

 

Richard @ Flints

 

http://www.drift-london.co.uk/artists-10/

 

The website for the festival has some good pictures of it.

 

 

 

 

Couple of videos off the Flints YouTube channel that show it as well.

[delicolor]

Anyway, I'm looking forward to see the Le Maitre one in action on Saturday.

 

Oh yes I am...!