The people with light up ping pong ball palm tree bikes

Tiger Lily · Post by **Tiger Lily** » Sat Sep 08, 2007 12:57 am

They would sway gently back and forth as the rode past in group of 3 or 4. I saw them all week and loved them!

Can anyone put me in contact with the people who run that?

Tristan · Post by **Tristan** » Sat Sep 08, 2007 1:30 am

Playaflies by Michael Brown and the Chinchilla camp.

http://www.playaflies.com/

Tiger Lily · Post by **Tiger Lily** » Sat Sep 08, 2007 2:30 am

[quote="Tristan"]Playaflies by Michael Brown and the Chinchilla camp.

http://www.playaflies.com/[/quote]

Do you know who started the playa flies? I had a friend I met on the playa im trying to track down who was invited to join them, and was hoping to get their info through the playaflies people...but it looks like theres a TON of them :(

Tristan · Post by **Tristan** » Sat Sep 08, 2007 11:35 am

it was started by Michael Brown and the Chinchilla camp.

Tiara · Post by **Tiara** » Sat Sep 08, 2007 2:06 pm

Tristan speaks the truth. Michael Brown is the brainchild. In addition to the Chinchillas, Michael and his crew led a few workshops in 2007 to help others make their own playaflies.

sharpstick · Post by **sharpstick** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 7:34 pm

i wanna make some.
did the swarm of playafly bikes have synchronized and/or programmed lights, or did my whole party have a mass hallucination? there is nothing about that on their website.
billy sharpstick

Ebenezer Squeezer · Post by **Ebenezer Squeezer** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 8:44 pm

sharpstick wrote:i wanna make some.
did the swarm of playafly bikes have synchronized and/or programmed lights, or did my whole party have a mass hallucination? there is nothing about that on their website.
billy sharpstick

The LED's they use have an chip embedded in it that does the sequencing. I'm not familiar with the exact ones they used, but I've used others. On those, all the LED's have the same sequence, but quickly get out of sync so it appears more random. I don't think that they are synchronized between the bikes.

I had the pleasure of speaking with one of the Cubatron people, and he said they use plastic balls now because ping pong balls are flammable.

Badger · Post by **Badger** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 9:18 pm

Sharpstick,

I believe the synchronization of some of the playaflies came as an afterthought to Michael who incorporated them into a few of the pieces built during the latter part of the summer. Some of us referred to that particular model as Playafly 2.0. I imagine that Michael will post all info on the web site when he gets time to recover. In the mean time for our group who made around 20 of them in one afternoon the cost for *all* equipment including marine battery and trickle charger came out to around $300. The links on the web site are for the companies that provided the best deal for the materials in bulk.

bigbluedoggy · Post by **bigbluedoggy** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 9:39 pm

Late on Wednesday or Thursday nite, we were up on the Crude Awakenings platform and saw out by the trash fence a swarm of these bikes changing colors in unison at times it seemed. It was spectacular!!!

Tiara · Post by **Tiara** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 12:35 pm

Wednesday night, starting at 10pm, the Playaflies went on a group "swarm". Leading the procession were the 20 or so "version 2.0" rigs that were indeed sequenced. So you weren't hallucinating, or at least not that part.

I think there were nearly 40 of us in all, including the 1.0 rigs that just blinked randomly.

Teo del Fuego · Post by **Teo del Fuego** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 3:43 pm

did anyone notice the lightning bugs that surrounded the base of the strobe light monkey piece? Tiny yellow-green LEDS on impossibly thin wire with a computer fan wired in a foot above the LED. Little LEDs flashed just like a firefly and computer fan made them meander around just like a firefly. A really impressive detail to an incredible art piece.

Anyone have construction details for this type of firefly?

bigbluedoggy · Post by **bigbluedoggy** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 6:09 pm

The fireflies you saw may have been homemade but I saw something just like you describe mass produced at the LA county Fair last year in one of the stalls... almost bought some but they were overpriced. They were something like these I found with a quick net search: http://www.entomon.net/moving-firefly-t ... eflies.htm

May even be the same ones.

Woof

blush · Post by **blush** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 11:26 pm

A very nice guy on a bike gave me a patch when i was watching them go by this year. I had remarked to a friend, "that was one of my favorite pieces of art last year."

Thank you Mr.!

xo,

-s

Teo del Fuego · Post by **Teo del Fuego** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 7:35 am

thanks bigblue...thats exactly what I saw the strobe monkeys..wish they were cheaper...Im from Tennessee and now in Denver and I miss "lightning bugs" (as we called them.)

lucky420 · Post by **lucky420** » Sun Dec 01, 2013 9:01 pm

delle · Post by **delle** » Mon Dec 02, 2013 1:03 pm

And a darned fine bump that was, Lucky420! Thank you!!!

The people with light up ping pong ball palm tree bikes

The people with light up ping pong ball palm tree bikes

Re: The people with light up ping pong ball palm tree bikes

Re: The people with light up ping pong ball palm tree bikes