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Ich wünsche mit Personen in Verbindung kommen, die dieselbe künstlerische Interesse wie ich haben. Deshalb habe ich daran gedacht, den ersten Schritt zu machen, und regelmäßig über meine letzte Arbeitsvorgänge zu berichten.
Started:
Last update: Nov. 24, 2003
 Finished:
Oct. 12 , 2003 : "Electronic helmet " - Motorcycle helmet decorated with electronic circuitry
Nov. 24, 2003
 
 

The idea...

and the result


What about taking a real motorcycle helmet and decorate it with a mosaic of electronic circuits?

It would make a nice Halloween present to my grand son!

It all started with an old helmet of my son Nicolas.


And what about putting on top of it a "Chiocciola", that is a snail.
The snail is the name and symbol of the Siena's Contrada to which the whole family belongs.
I already made several pieces with and around the beloved "Chiocciola"

At left is a detail of one of my paintings representing the last Palio victory of the Chiocciola in August 1999, the last Palio of the millenium.

At right iss a sculpture I had made for the vistory parade.

The colour of the Chiocciola are yellow-red-blu.

Execution

First I make a wood skeleton of the snail - with 2 CD-ROMs glued on each side to represent the spiral circumvolutions of a snail house.

Oct. 13

The helmet is varnished black and the wood skeleton of the snail is screwed on - after adding a tail to the snail.

I start gluing mosaic pieces of electronic circuits on the front of helmet. Click on it to enlarge.
Oct. 16
During the last 2 days I spent hours gluing small screws on the wooden frame of the snail. The idea came to me as I was looking for some parts and almost by accident came to the cigar box in which I had saved all the small screws when dismantling dozens of PCs during the past 18 months. Immediately it appeared to me that they would make a nice skin for the snail.
But first I had to sort them out by relative sizes - making 3 sets: the smallest, the medium and the larger sizes.
Then I started gluing the screws. It was more difficult - or boring - than I had thought because the wood frame is rounded and I had to do it side after side being careful that the screws did not slide away until the glue was somewhat hardened. In some cases I had to place the screws one at a time.

So it took me almost 3 days to do the job - but it was worthwhile because the effect is excellent for a snail skin.

For the house of the snail I attached CD-ROMs and smaller disks coming from a hard disk drive.
On each side I put 2 smaller disks and 1 CD-ROM in between - all slightly translated.

Waiting for the glue to dry, I worked on the helmet, cutting mosaic pieces of circuits boards and pasting them on the helmet with a paste used to tile.
I coloured the rim in red and yellow, the main colours of the snail Contrada.

Tomorrow I shall mount the snail pieces and fixed them on the helmet. But I am not yet finished with gluing screws on the tail of the snail.

Oct. 18 - Here it is:
Click to enlarge.

The snail is attached to the helmet.

I still hesitate about using the transparent plastic eye protection front cover.

I have to put some lining and fitting inside the helmet so that it can be worn.
 
 
Just trying something for the eyes.
Tried with CD-ROMs. Not good!
I have to find something else.
Tomorrow, October 19, I leave for a 10 days tour of France. So next progress shall be postponed until November. See you then.

Finally I got the idea to use old core storage planes from the Control Data 6600 super computer (1963) as eye protection - they permit to see through reasonable well, as you can see in the extreme right image - HELMET is written in red behind the plane. You may enlarge it.

The planes are about 12x12 cm. In the center are 64x64 core ferrites barely visible with the naked eye. In each of the core there are 5 minuscule wires passing through and connected to the printed circuit frame.


.

I think I am one of the very few owner of these old memory blocks which are museum pieces.
I have taken apart one block to extract the core planes.

This one was varnished with gold to get the brilliant colour.

I also had to curve the planes, heating them, so as to fit the shape of the helmet front.
Here is the finally finished piece.
It was more work than I had thought.