Our Project
We are designing an innovative art car for the Houston Art Car Parade that blends engineering with artistic expression. Our project is inspired by juxtaposing themes of engineering and technology in the science fiction subgenres of steampunk and cyberpunk. The project will incorporate visual, kinetic, and mechanical elements, enhanced by autonomous capabilities. Through this vehicle, we aim to showcase the intersection of art and technology, demonstrating the creative potential of engineering in motion through space and time. This project is an opportunity to engage the community and inspire curiosity about the future and past of design and automation in both art and engineering.
Our theme for our art car is Engineering Eras, an Art Car Through Time. We move from gear trains and pulley’s to circuit boards and LED displays to represent an evolution of technology through time. As the car moves through the parade, the audience will move through these different engineering histories, and styles, loosely based on steampunk and cyberpunk aesthetics.
Artistic Inspiration
To capture the aesthetics of the cyberpunk genre, we take inspiration from the work of Syd Mead, an artist who worked on concept art for several feature films, such as Blade Runner, TRON, and Elysium. Mead's futurist work is remains grounded in technological plausibility, which we hope to achieve in our own design. Some selected works from Syd Mead's Blade Runner concept art are shown below. The cyberpunk elements of our art car are emblematic of a new age of engineering in technology and multimedia.
Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction that incorporates retro futuristic technology and aesthetics inspired by, but not limited to, 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. To capture the aesthetics of the steampunk genre, we take inspiration from the Victorian-esc style of worlds imagined by authors like K.W. Jeter, Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. The steampunk elements of our art car are emblematic of the old age of engineering.
To begin our art car, we firstly needed a car to use. With a limited budget, we needed to figure out how we could acquire a vehicle for the parade at a low cost.
A Rice senior design team last year worked with the Housing & Dining (H&D) department at Rice University to convert an old gas-powered van into a fully electric delivery vehicle, which is aptly named the E-VAN.
This year, Rice AutoArts is partnering with Rice H&D to decorate the E-VAN for the Houston Art Car Parade. To achieve this, our team is engineering a frame that can easily attach to the vehicle to add our artistic elements to the van. After the parade is over, this frame will be completely disassembled, and the van will be returned to H&D.
The E-VAN
Prototyping
1:10 Scale Model
Using a 1:10 scale model of the E-VAN, we are able to quickly prototype and visualize various concepts for our design.
Side Panels
To provide a base structure for mounting different physical elements to our art car, we have designed wireframe-style side panels that will be mounted onto the sides of the E-VAN. These side panels come in two different aesthetics, which capture our steampunk and cyberpunk themes.
Front Frame
The front frame for the E-VAN is designed to hold a moving gear train featuring a copper-tubing finish. The gear train being at the front of the vehicle represents the start of the engineering eras, beginning with the steampunk style.
Graphics
For displaying animations on the LED panels, we are experimenting with various graphics and creative coding libraries, such as Blender, Processing, and openFrameworks.
LED panels
Using a Raspberry Pi, we are able to control chains of LED panels like the ones shown on the right. We plan to attach these panels to the sides of the E-VAN in a highly distributed configuration to emphasize the concept of multimedia in the cyberpunk aesthetic.
