Tunnel vision

Yesterday I got the opportunity to go under the town hall to explore the tunnels. I'd asked one of the organisers of Light Night, so I could check them out before submitting my proposal, and he gallantly braved the ghost (yup, there's apparently a ghost, a murderer called Charlie Peace!) to show me round.

When Leeds Town Hall was built in 1858, there were 13 prison cells, offices for the police and accomodation for the warder built into the basement. New cells were later built under the front steps. Passages led from these cells to the courtroom, with locked gates keeping it secure.

The tunnels themselves were a lot bigger than I remembered from last year, the only time I've been down there. With all the lights on, they were quite similar to the corridors at work with high ceilings and archways:



However, as soon as you switched the lights off, they became the passages of imprisonment that they used to be, and you could quite imagine a ghost sweeping up and down the corridor:



I pulled out Blue Canary (the name the new prototype has acquired), and it lit up the tunnel a bit, and suddenly it was easy to see just how amazing 1000 cranes could look. I think they'll totally transform the space.

There were a lot of pipes and hooks and things that could easily support the cranes, and the ceilings (which I would say were about 10ft high) were plenty high enough that they can be strung over people's heads out of the way:



I'm completely convinced that it could all go ahead, and that if it does, it will look really really amazing. I'm also completely convinced that this is the right installation, in the right place, and I'm even more excited than I was before.

Now I have to do all the paperwork.

Why I love Light Night

I was asked today why I wanted to take part in Light Night, and why I evidently love it so much, particularly as I've only been once. Well... I could tell you about how it brings communities together, or it advocates the arts, or it promotes the individuality of Leeds, but for me, personally, it’s a little more poetic than that.

Do you remember when you were at school, and your hormones were raging and everything was either amazing or the end of the world? Remember when, in a particularly vulnerable moment, one of the popular kids spoke to you, a teacher took more than one minute to suss you out, or an older sibling’s friend was nice to you? That overwhelming, all-encompassing, head over heels, falling in love, they’re-the-only-one-who-understands-you feeling you got? That’s how I feel about Light Night.

I first visited Light Night in 2009, a mere two weeks after I moved to Leeds. I didn’t know Leeds and I didn’t know anyone in Leeds (apart from my husband), and I was feeling unsettled and like a fish out of water. I got lost nearly everyday, and my new job wasn't what I expected. I missed my friends from "back home" and I was scared I'd never fit in "up here".

I’d seen Light Night on the website before I even moved here and it sounded fun, so I grabbed a booklet and planned. I like planning. I highlighted everything I was interested in in one colour, and passed it to my husband for him to highlight with another. I marked out on a map where everything was, and worked up a timetable. There was even a spreadsheet in time used/enjoyment. We had strict routes to follow, and it was all drawn up into a handy “Light Night” pack that would fit in my pocket. Then on the actual night I wrapped up warm, donned my beret (it was an Art Event, after all), and dragged my husband out.

First we got lost. Then the performance we’d turned up for either weren’t there, or we’d turned up to the wrong place. Then “while we were there” it was decided (not by me, I had a schedule) to drop in on a couple of events. Then we were hungry, so detoured to a pizza shop.

We took in about 30-40 events that night, some because we stumbled upon them whilst trying to find somewhere else, and some because you just couldn’t miss them (like giant projections and a travelling theatre). I never got to see the “sea of bunnies” (it was something like a sea of bunnies, I can't remember exactly), but I made a lego animal instead. We lost all sense of direction, but we found half a dozen shortcuts to places we now visit regularly. We felt safe and comfortable in wandering around a strange city because wherever you went there was a Chinese dragon or a vintage tea party.

Much like that first love, where you start with high hopes and it rarely works out how you expect, Light Night wasn’t what I imagined at all. Rather than Gone With The Wind, I got High School Musical. But for that first night, because of the people involved, Leeds grabbed my hand and dragged me dancing. And just like the first love of your teenage years, it’s something I’ll never forget, and I hope never fades.

A picture tells a thousand words

I'm finding a difficulty with photographing the prototypes. I'm not the world's best photographer by any means, and even after spending hours trying to get it right, I'm still getting mixed results, as you can see:





It's mainly getting enough light that you can see the crane rather than just a glow of light, but without it being blurry or grainy. I vaguely remember ISO and stuff like that from my photography course, which is helping a little, but I'm sure the pictures could be better. This is why I discounted photography as a Light Night proposal!

And just to prove my non-photographer credentials, here's my "studio" - my wardrobe. See the clothes horse/air dryer thing? That's what I rest the camera on to keep it steady.



So can anyone suggest hints and tips, that don't involve shelling out thousands on new cameras and such?

Crane 2.0

Now I had the paper, LED and the (3v) battery, I could make a proper prototype, one that I could test for longevity, for useability...and mainly for problems.

I folded a crane from the printer paper, slid in the LED, and pushed the sticks through the top. This presented the first problem - the top of the crane is the weakest point, and I'm basically pushing holes in it. So I need to work on that.

Then I added the battery to the LED, and wrapped it up in insulation tape. This presented the second problem - the insulation tape is too sticky, and the adhesive was getting between the contact on the LED (the stick! I found out the proper name!) and the battery, which was making the light flicker. Annoying enough for one crane, but can you imagine a whole roomful, all flickering intermittently? So I swapped the insulation tape for sellotape, which worked much better, but was still a little flickery, so that's something else I need to work on.

However, if you ignore these problems, I have my new, all improved, prototype!



Overall though, the idea is pretty sound. It seems feasible and feedback so far has been pretty good. I'd like loads more feedback though, so I'm going to put the idea out there a bit more, and if you want to let people know about the blog, and leave comments, I'd be ever so grateful!

A meeting of minds

I've just got back from the Initial Planning Meeting for Light Night Leeds.

It was a bit unnerving, as there were around 40 people there, and most people seemed to have been involved with Light Night before, and a lot of people knew each other; so me on my own with my light up crane prototype (in my bag) felt a bit odd. The Arts and Regeneration Team (who organise the whole thing) went through a lot of stuff, mostly administrative stuff - such as how to apply and what Light Night is all about - and talked about previous years.

The main thing was that in order to control the size (to make sure that people can see as much as possible) and quality of Light Night, they're limiting the funded events to 30, and the overall events to a maximum of 90. Realistically I need funding to pay for materials, so I really need one of those 30 spots.

I still have a couple of questions, mainly about the venue arrangements, so I'm going to investigate those - the team were really open and kept saying we should ring or email if we're unsure on anything, and I've been in email contact with one guy in the team already, so I'm going to get those sorted, then I have to get the forms filled in to apply!

Light at the end of the tunnel

The realisation of how much it was going to cost to buy materials had got me down, and I was fed up of reading around trying to work out a way to understand circuitry to get the costs down. I was trying to explain it all to my husband, and he just wasn't "getting" what I was trying to do, so I went to the LED throwie site to show him an example.

LED throwies don't use 1.5v batteries. They use 3v batteries, meaning you'd only need one to make the LED light up.

I did know this, but I think I'd discounted it because I couldn't find anywhere in town that sold cheap 3v batteries, whereas I'd managed to pick up a humungous stash of 1.5v ones at Ye Olde Pounde Shoppe. I quickly went onto a few wholesale type battery websites and realised that just because they were around £3-£4 in the shops, didn't mean I couldn't get them cheap. In fact, I could get them cheaper than the AG12s I'd been pricing up, and I'd be using half as many!

So off I went to my local battery shop (it isn't really a high street battery shop, that would be odd. it sells other things as well. like pens.) ready to shell out the £4 I knew the 3v battery would cost. After all, it was for a prototype. You have to have prototypes, right? There were a few to choose from, and I picked one up, and walked to the counter, and the woman in front of me was asking loads of questions about different styles of attendance registers (the shop sells those too). I waited, and the shopkeeper went and got some catalogues, and they discussed colours. I waited, and she tried to explain what her register was currently like, because she hadn't thought to bring it in with her.

I'm not the most patient person in the world, and I was getting annoyed that the shopkeeper didn't think to say "I'll just leave you with the catalogue while I serve my next customer", so when she said she didn't know what she wanted, but had a vague idea, I nearly shouted at her. Then I thought, actually, maybe I should check which of these batteries they use for LED throwies, so I know I'm getting the most suitable one, which was pretty much the same as not bringing your register. So I popped the battery back on the shelf, and left. Then I thought I'd nip next door to Another Ye Olde Pounde Shoppe, to pick up supplies for a birthday party, and lo and behold I found a pack of 8 3v batteries for £2. Well, £1.99 actually (it wasn't actually a pound shop, it's just cheap).

Digging around in my bag whilst waiting for my bus home, I pulled out an LED (I always have LEDs and batteries in my pocket or bag nowadays. I'd be handy in a powercut) and checked the throwie website for the right battery (which luckily came in the pack, because I didn't actually check that), and I popped the two together, and...let there be light! It worked!

So now I'm back on track! It all seems feasible again!

Tomorrow is the initial planning meeting for Light Night, which is where I'll find out a lot more (hopefully) about how Light Night works and what I need to be considering in my planning. Then I can put together my proposal...

Positives and negatives

I've spent most of my time since the last post testing out batteries. Big ones, little ones, watch batteries and torch batteries; attempting to figure out circuits and safety systems, and how voltage and ampage works. I still can't get my head around creating "strings" of cranes, but I've discovered something: batteries last longer than you'd think.

I've been using rudimentary circuitry - I've taped the sticks of the LED (still not found out what the correct term for those are) to the batteries. The plus side of this is that it is easy, you can put a tab in (so you can make them up prior to needing them and only activate them when you pull the tab), and there's little danger of electrocuting myself, anyone else, or setting fire to the whole shebang.

I started a test using AG12 batteries (which are coin batteries, but still relatively small) on Monday, and as of Wednesday night, it is still going strong enough to light up the inside of my crane - in fact it is still as bright as it was when I first connected the batteries up:


The batteries are only 1.5v (roughly), whereas the LEDs are around 3v, so I need two batteries to each LED. Which means 2000 batteries in all. 2000 batteries. And who knew that batteries are so expensive?

I'm looking at two options now: figure out another way to do it, or figure out a way to get cheap batteries. Anyone reading this from Duracell?