agnieszka kurant - conversions 2
About
Fifth Class Designs worked with artist Agnieszka Kurant to create Conversions 2, an art piece that takes algorithmic sentiment analysis of tens of thousands of social media feeds tied to protest movements and outputs this as colorful patterns.
Fifth Class Designs designed, engineered, and built Conversions. The surface of Conversions is a copper sheet coated with multiple layers of liquid crystals. Heating elements attached to the back of the copper are powered by custom PCB driver boards that are fed the algorithmic data from a microcontroller. Liquid crystal work by Material Evolution Lab.
The frame was designed in CAD software and milled at our warehouse in Brooklyn. We designed and manufactured 25 custom PCB driver boards to power the liquid crystal display. We developed custom code to run the AI simulation, while maintaining the precise heating levels of the liquid crystal necessary to produce the correct image without damaging the crystals. Extra precautions were taken to insure that the piece was designed to meet electrical device standards and could run continuously without supervision, including individually fused power lines and protection against reverse polarity and inrush current.
