World’s most expensive disco ball

What do you get when you combine modern art with the movie transformers? Well you get a multi million dollar disco ball called the cloud, because London doesn’t have enough clouds on it’s own….

Now airport travelers can make out more than obscure shapes with this stationary cloud as part of a nearly 120 million dollar budget used to create six lounge areas. Which still cost 30 million less than the reported budget of the movie transformers.

Disco Stu Approves.

The sculpture will be open to the public beginning on March 27th, 2008 when the new terminal opens at the airport located fifteen miles outside of London. This is the most impressive of six artworks to be installed throughout the terminal. The six pieces are being conceived by troika, el ultimo grito, christopher pearson and oona cully. ‘cloud’, the troika installation is ‘a five meter long digital sculpture whose surface is covered with 4638 flip-dots that can be individually addressed by a computer to animate the entire skin of the sculpture’. the result is a shimmering form which was meant to mark the transition between the terminal’s shopping area and the lounge. the video is a must-see. . .

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Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport

The finished product…

The project took 8 months in development, manufacturing and installation.

‘Cloud’ is built as 3 different physical layers: the first layer of flip-dots rests upon the cloud skin, itself supported by an internal sub-structure, its skeleton.

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

134 smaller distribution boards and over 5,000 meters of cable.

If just one of these tiles fails during re-entry the whole airport could be incinerated.

Do not drop the multi million dollar disco ball!

The final product alternating between shiny and black – oooh shiny.

In ying/yang or as some like to call it oreo mode.

All shiny – disco fever!