A resource-sharing installation at TEDxSMU

In June 2010, TEDxSMU commissioned me and three others from the Dallas Makerspace to create an interactive installation for the lobby areas at the conference, held in October.

We built two giant canvases on which attendees could paint using five-foot paint brushes.

The brushes needed to be dipped in a paint bucket before they could apply color, and would run out of color over time. The two canvases also shared a mysterious connection – when you painted enough of a certain color on one canvas, that color would begin to disappear from the other canvas. The paint was a shared resource, and keeping the balance between the two was part of the challenge of the installation.

My contribution to the project were the five person-sized paint brushes used to interact with the canvases. I collaborated with an engineer to incorporate an electronics core into a cartoonishly large foam handle. All of the outer pieces were hand-carved and hand-assembled in our workshop at the makerspace.