derstrudel

schmelzolan on overhead

schmelzolan on overhead is an installation that features schmelzolan a granulated plastic that was very popular in the 70’s for handicrafting window decorations, belt-buckles and other fancy stuff. little solar powered robots with solar-panels made out of schmelzolan and tiny photo-diodes are suspended on top of an overhead projector.

the light from the overhead projector powers the solar robots and projects the colorful schmelzolan objects onto a two dimensional screen. the hanging objects are transformed into an image, that seems very different from the physical objects: the world on the screen looks like a liquid mix of differently colored substances, the screen becomes a liquid light show.

the robots are suspended on three thin wires, to each of these wires a pickup-piezo is attached. the robots produce through their own motion and collisions small movements on the wire produced which are then transformed into sound by the pickup-piezos and softly amplified.

schmelzolan on overhead was shown at the art of the overhead festival 2009 in malmoe, sweden