What is Firefly?
Each "firefly" apparatus is a small wind turbine that powers an LED light; it is mounted on top of a ski pole driven into the ground. When windy, the light glows with an intensity proportional to the speed of the turning blades. When a lot of them are placed on a landscape, they make the wind visible in the dark.
For a video of what they look like up close and from hundreds of feet away in a field in the dark visit:
https://segue1community.middlebury.edu/sites/jmbyrne.
For more info: jmbyrne@middlebury.edu or 802-443-5043.
[ Note that events are wind dependent. Hope for wind! ]
Thursday, January 15
2:30-3:30 p.m.
Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest 103
Discussion with FireFly creator Jito Coleman, an engineer and artist who has been in the wind energy business for decades.
3:30 p.m. to sunset
Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest 103
Meet to form Firefly teams for Jan. 16 and 17 installations followed by a learning session to install Firefly wind and light turbines.
Sunset to 9:00 p.m.
Firefly viewing for passersby on their way to dining halls. Flatbread, refreshments and conversation about art, energy, and the wind will be provided during viewing hours for installation teams.
9:00-10:00 p.m.
Takedown of the installation.
Friday, January 16
3:30 p.m. to sunset
Mahaney Center for the Arts
Meet at entrance to design and implement a Firefly installation around the arts center for viewing by people attending arts center and athletic events that night and passersby.
Sunset to 10:00 p.m.
Mahaney Center for the Arts
Viewing of installation. An indoor display of Firefly will also be installed in the MCFA, with explanatory information.
10:00-11:00 p.m.
Mahaney Center for the Arts
Takedown of installation.
Saturday, January 17
3:30 p.m. to sunset
Mahaney Center for the Arts
Meet at entrance to design and implement a Firefly installation at the Center for the Arts, for viewing by attendees of the Beaux Arts Ball later that night.
Sunset to 1:30 a.m. (Jan. 18)
Mahaney Center for the Arts
Viewing of installation.
10:00 p.m.-1 a.m. (Jan.18)
Mahaney Center for the Arts
Beaux-Arts Ball sponsored by IHC: "Fire and Ice" masquerade theme, benefiting the Warmth program. Includes an indoor display of Firefly. Tickets: $10; available at http://www.middlebury.edu/arts/tickets/
1:30-2:00 a.m. (Jan. 18)
Mahaney Center for the Arts
Takedown of installation.
About the Firefly Project
To visualize wind flowing across a landscape. What is it about fields of wheat waving in the breeze, flags flying in the wind, snapping to and fro, waves lapping the beach, that entrance and capture the human imagination?
Why is watching nature so compelling? So easy to lose one’s sense of time? To become mesmerized by the rhythms ? To become immersed in just watching?
Those questions probably have a thousand answers. Some profound and universal, some personal.
What I’m interested is not the question or the answer, but in expanding the viewscape to include a visualization of the wind / land interaction. To give a visual voice to a phenomenon we know and sense but cannot see or feel. To visualize wind flowing across a landscape.
The Firefly project plans to experiment with the visual images that emerge when a number of small wind powered lights are placed on a landscape. (300 lights on 10 acres say). These lights are powered by the wind and their intensity varies with the wind speed as it rolls across the landscape. They display, in real time, the winds patterns on the land, catching the gusts, the eddies and the swirls, the hot spots and the lees. The images will be alive with unknown/unseen patterns emerging and vanishing constantly.
What might emerge can only be guessed at. What might emerge one day might be entirely different another day, when the wind direction shifts or the wind’s character changes. Finding how to place the lights on the land will be like spreading paint on canvas, but it will be invisible ink until the wind sparks it to life.
The land’s interaction with the wind is the medium, the lights allow this interaction to be visualized and appreciated.The lights will be placed in patterns, randomly or in rows across open landscapes.
The light patterns that dance to life will be driven by the gusts, eddies, and lulls in the flow. The responses will vary depending on the strength of the wind, the direction, the turbulence and how the land shapes the flow.
The process of choosing the site and defining the patterns will create a remarkable variety of visual images. Video and still photography will be the lasting images of the project, but the art of capturing these images itself will be a creative process with multiple threads.
Understanding the flows across a field and interpreting the patterns and then adjusting the lighting pattern to highlight the flow visualization will be a creative and interactive process. A process that touches that blurred space between science and art. A study that can provide visual evidence of the complex flows and evoke wonder of nature’s underlying processes.
The concept behind environmental art is to explore and visualize natural places and natural forces in ways that stimulate the imagination and create a deeper appreciation. They may let us see things that are all around us, but never known or never viewed from this new perspective. The Firefly project will allow us to see what we have not seen before. To allow us to see the forces that surround us constantly but which are un/under appreciated. Creating an awareness and new sense of awe can expand our appreciation and our sense of nurturing or protecting the environment that allows us to live and breathe.
Wind is an emerging energy source that may well become ubiquitous on our landscape. This project provides us with a way of looking at wind turbines, exploring their interaction with the land and visualizing the impact. This project may be a visualization that can bring a new awareness or perspective to the use of our land for wind energy production.
The Firefly project is an attempt to explore this visualization. What comes from this project can only be envisioned.
– Jito Coleman
Warren, Vermont, Spring '08
Project Sponsors:
- Mahaney Center for the Arts
- Office of Sustainability Integration
- Office of the Dean of the College
Creative Team Participants:
- Architecture Table
- VACA
- Interhouse Council
Documentation Team Participants:
- Students in SPAN 1005, Role of Language and Culture in the Climate Change Dialogue, taught by Maria (Sasha) Woolson.
Description of SPAN 1005: The subject of climate change is finding new spaces in political dialogue and public opinion. In this course we will begin by addressing the connection between nature’s cycles and human impacts, to acquire a solid grounding for discussing current concerns on a global changing environment. Students will observe how human activities leading to these impacts have affected South American societies. To explore ways in which language transforms information, we will center discussions on the relationship between knowledge, perception and rhetoric. These transformations will be addressed through selected readings, translations of English text into Spanish and by engaging students in service interactions.