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LEDs, Tubes, and Clay
August 29, 2008

The Champlain Valley (Vermont) Exhibition, which runs until August 31, has many of the usual things you'd expect to find at a country fair--rides, junk food, and farm animals. What I didn't expect to find is an artist who makes achitectural sculpture out of clay. John Brickels, shown in the photo, makes mechanical sculptures from clay that include some electronics. The sculpture in the photo has three vacuum tubes that light up.

Vacuum tubes?

John Brickels creating a mechanical sculpture from clay,
with vacuum tubes on top.

Brickels doesn't actually apply power to the tubes, for that would require a power supply and and AC mains cord. Instead, Brickels mounts LEDs under the tubes and the light shines through the glass, illuminating the tube. "The LEDs contains a chip that makes them flash," he told me. "So I just have to connect the LED to an AA battery and it flashes." But, Brickels goes a step further, providing a measurement of the current passing throught the LED. He placed an analog milliammeter in series with the LED and battery. The neele provides more motion, moving as the LED lights and turns off.

Some of the other sculptures on display included a five-foot-tall "robot" with three LED-lighted tubes on its head. Brickels said the robot took 80 hours to sculpt. The old tubes are more aesthetically pleasing that standard tubes, but they're difficult to integrate with an LED. Because these old tubes have bases, Brickels has to drill a whole in the base to get the LED inside. You can imagine that he's destroyed a tube or two this way.

Brickels created a "robot" sculpture with
lighted tubes on its head and a millammeter
in its chest.

Posted by Martin Rowe on August 29, 2008 | Comments (0)