The skins are made out of aluminium strips, which are cut flat with a CNC laser, and formed onto the skeleton to retrieve the correct surface geometry. Special care needed to be applied when calculating the flat outlines of the strips to ensure the successive folding onto the skeleton will create the correct shape.

‘Cloud’ has been realised into 2 main pieces, top and bottom, to enable us to conceal the various electronic parts, cables and computer needed for the control the dots. Over 300 different skin strips, each of them coded and with an unique position on the skeleton, were needed to create the supporting shape for the flip-dots to sit on.
Each skin strip is also pierced with all the necessary holes in order to affix the dots and pass the different cables needed for electrical supply.

At this stage, we also designed all the location for the electronic drivers, distribution boards and cable pass. ‘Cloud’ needs a main solid state controller, which acts as the brain of the system, two different electronic drivers (top and bottom - they act as distribution for the electric current), 134 smaller distribution boards and over 5,000 meters of cable.

In parallel, we needed to modify the flip-dots components to enable them to work in any positions. Usually, flip-dots are used to create vertical screens, and trying to make them work horizontally will invalidated their lifetime. We needed to modify the injection molds and integrate additional bearing to insure correct functioning in any positions.

We also worked on the control of the flip-dots. Usually, flip-dots displays are refreshed with a slow scan-line, which means they would have been no good to create fast and complex animations, where changes occurs all over the sculpture at any one point in time. To do this, we changed several important control parameters and rewrote firmwares on the drivers to increase the refresh speed. This stage was particularly successful and we can now flip all the dots on the sculpture in less than half a second, which is terrific to create the awesome animations we wanted to display. Part of this work has been carried out by Pharos Architectural Controls, a company who develops amazing electronic controllers, usually for lighting applications.

The manufacturing and assembly of ‘Cloud’ has been entrusted to Art fabricator Mike Smith Studio, one of the best and certainly most resourceful fabrication studio in this part of Europe.

While ‘Cloud’ was being assembled, we went on to create the animations. Since the shape is complex and the distribution of the dots is somehow atypical, we needed to create visualisation software to help us imagine what they would look like. The visualisation software has been programmed in-house in Processing, while the main control software was developed by the team at Pharos Controls.

While the ‘Cloud’ was ready on time and on budget, at the time of installation, the only way to bring it to its final destination was through... the air. ‘Cloud’ was then brought to its location suspended on the main roof beams of the terminal, flying across from east to west. Check the installation video. Many thanks to Alternative Access for carrying the work of the installation.

‘Cloud’ is now working and in place, ready to greet the first passengers of the new Heathrow terminal 5 on the 27th of March 2008.