For Christmas I bought Wen an “Etch” by Tom Dixon. It’s a tetradecahedron (14 sides; mixture of hexagons and squares) where 13 of the faces have hundreds of holes cut in them and one face is open. You’re supposed to leave the open face up and drop a candle in it.
However, our apartment is full of candles (they were my mom’s gift of choice for years; we have a great selection) so I’ve basically sworn that I’m not allowed to bring any into the house. Plus, I thought it would be more interesting if the Etch was flipped upside down and instead powered by a brighter-than-a-candle-and-more-colourful-too BlinkM (an LED that can be programmed to cycle through colours).
Here’s the result:
I built a little box to house the BlinkM and it’s battery pack; the Etch sits on top of it. The video doesn’t do it justice (I don’t really know how to do low lighting video) and definitely doesn’t capture the range of lights and shadow-or the nifty projections it makes on the ceiling.
Here are a couple of photos to give you a better idea of what it looks like when lit up:
