Digital Marbles

For the theater festival Tweetakt the SETUP Utrecht initiative was asked to created a new interactive new media installation. For Tweetakt Jelle van der Ster ( z25 ), Levien Nordeman ( Netniet.org ) and Vincent Ruijters build a digital and analog marble lane where children can create there own marbles. When a new marble is created it is measured, weighted and named during it's travel through the marble lane. If the marble passes all these test the visitors can take their marble home.

The digital marblelane was on display from the 20th till the 28th of march on the Neude Square in Utrecht. About 2800 children of all ages visited the marble lane during the week, and about 15 kilo's of marbles was used.

The digital marblelane was build in February 2010 in the headquarters of z25.org. We wanted the marblelane to have a outerspace, underground organic feeling. Vincent Ruijters made some smashing designs for the birthplace, the xray and the other island. The main testing island where build with MDF wood. The organic effect was created with insulation foam, black spray paint and green sparkles. We used about 35 bottles of insulation foam.

To create the veins of the marble system we uses transparent insulation tubes filled with colored hair gel and small 18mm marbles. We discovered that you can fill these tubes very easily with a vacuum cleaner. About 25 liters of gel was used in the marblelane.

The soundscape was designed by Levien Nordeman. Levien discovered that the sound of a coffee machine, if you slightly change the pitch, sounds just like a marble clapping.

For the detection, mechanics and intelligence of the marble lane we used two arduinos, two solenoids, one plan DC engine, three infrared detection gates a capacitive sensor and a lot of telephone wires to connect everything. The whole system was controlled by two computers. One computer for the visuals and the marblelogic and one computer for the soundscape.

• Levien Nordeman - concept, design, sounddesign and construction test islands
• Vincent Ruijters - design, digital images, lightdesign and construction test islands
• Jelle van der Ster - concept, design hardware, software and construction test islands
• Douwe de Witt - construction micro-electronics and construction test islands
• Marijke Vlaar - photography