Introducing the LiveSpark FirePixel. At just 8″ tall, this little guy produces up to four feet of fire and can be controlled from any standard light board. On stage, at festivals, arenas and ceremonies, up to 1000 Fire Pixels can be connected together for beautiful effects.

FirePixels are now available for rent or purchase.  Please contact us for pricing and usage details.

The LiveSpark iPad app is now available from the iTunes store for download and demoing. Of course, you’ll need the 25-foot-tall flaming fire sculpture to get the full effect, but our interface for controlling this art installation is unique and fun to try.

Search “LiveSpark Fire” in the iTunes App Store. Note: Requires iPad to run.

iPad app controls fire sculpture

The 12-pointed star adjusts each flame depending on where you touch. Touch the star’s points for individual flame control. Touch nearer the center to add more fire. Flame intensity gently blends as you move your finger around the star. The vertical diamond slider adjusts over flame height and can be used simultaneously with the star control. iPad Control panel allows music input to make the fire automatically dance to any music source.

Download the high-res version.

We’re pleased to present the LiveSpark Chandelier at this year’s Electric Daisy Carnival at the Los Angeles Coliseum.  It runs June 25-26 and our iPad controlled fire installation is located right across from the coliseum sign, operating from 9pm – 2am.  Tickets are available here: http://www.electricdaisycarnival.com.

Our latest creation, a collaboration between Brett Levine, Mike Thielvoldt, Erik Walker and Ian Baker, the LiveSpark Chandelier is coming to San Francisco’s Black and White Ball on May 22.  The Chandelier is over two stories tall and will hang outside on Grove Street in front of Davies Symphony Hall.

For more information about Black and White Ball, visit the Symphony’s website.  For press, please download this release and contact Brett Levine for more information and hi-res images.

With a few final tweaks to LiveSpark’s custom iPad application we’re ready to test it in the lab. Here’s a video of what our Flame Elements will be doing inside the Chandelier.

Some great coverage from the Bay Area’s Fox affiliate KTVU.  They came to the workshop for a behind-the-scenes look at the LiveSpark Chandelier, our new iPad application, and how we make our digitally controlled fire.

http://www.ktvu.com/video/23273394/

And there’s a slideshow with some nice stills:

http://www.ktvu.com/slideshow/entertainment/23273032/detail.html

I met with Savant Home Automation who make a very powerful and extensible home control system. And they even have a brand new interface for iPad. In essence, we have to create a configuration file in their Blueprint software and presto you can add a LiveSpark fire device to their interface.

Now they have a lot of buttons, pretty much echoing what you’d find on a remote control. But I think that’s not going far enough. To control a fire device, like the LiveSpark Chandelier, you probably don’t want a set of buttons or sliders. Even with multi-touch that would only let you control just a few flames at a time, and the patterns of fire probably wouldn’t be very pretty or interesting, just localized pulses.

In designing our iPad application, we started with the concept that no matter how you touch the interface, beautiful flame patterns should be the result. And of course, we want to leverage multi-touch. What we came up with is two simple controls, a 12-pointed star and an intensity slider.

Control the LiveSpark Chandelier with an iPad

When touching the circles at the tips of the star, and individual flame can be controlled. As the touch moves toward the center, more of the flames neighbors light and increase their intensity. In the middle of the star, all flames are lit, and their intensity can be adjusted simultaneously with slider.  There’s also a 3D model of the chandelier which shows the glowing flowers in red along with the star, and the real fire.  Of course this takes two paragraphs to explain, but all becomes pretty obvious after a few seconds in your hand.

Stay tuned for an exciting announcement about where you can try out the iPad interface and see the chandelier light up in perfect time to your gestures.

Now we have the capability to control LiveSpark Flame Elements, including all our installations such as fireplaces, fire pits, torches, and our new chandelier via iPhone or iPod Touch. Here’s a quick demo. The latency is a bit high here but we think we can get that down considerably. Next step is to build a fancy interface for a sweet remote control. I think we should offer a free iPod Touch (or maybe even an iPad) with each fire installation we sell.

The chandelier’s ten-petal flowers are fabricated from 3/16″ aluminum petals which are then high-temperature powder coated in a gloss white. They are equipped with mounting hardware that accommodates a vertical configuration Flame Element capable of 3 feet of fire, modulated at 30 frames per second.