A really beautiful and timely article by Jennifer Appenrodt in this month’s San Francisco 944 Magazine. LiveSpark is highlighted in the 944 Picks section. 944 divides their Picks into What’s New and Black Tie, and you can guess which one we got selected for.

944 is a great lifestyle magazine, loads of coverage about fashion, hotels, and living the good life, but no relation to the 80s Porsche. And it’s FREE! Pick one up around town at many cafes, restaurants and hotels in SF and 10 other cities across the US or check out their site: www.944.com.

One goal we stated early in the chandelier project was that we want each tube (grass blade) to have an extremely clean finish.  In competition with that goal was the constraint that the chandelier be portable, or at least shippable by normal freight.  This meant that in our fabrication we would need to split each grass blade into several sections.  But once a section of tube is split and rejoined there’s an unsightly seam that breaks the continuity of the piece.  So, here’s our solution to reducing the seams in stainless steel tube to nothing more than a hairline, invisible from more than a few feet away.

What makes a seam visible in the first place?  It’s the misalignment of the two tubes being joined, or irregularity of the joining faces.  The more irregular and non-coplanar the tube faces, the larger the gap between them and more visible the seam.  If the tube faces are extremely flat, smooth and coplanar, the seam between them will almost disappear.

Our solution comes in two parts, first we fabricate a tube facing tool with a pilot to align the blade with the end-of-tube axis.  Next we pull the pieces of tube together tightly using internal steel cabling.

As the test piece shows, the two seams are practically invisible, even though one is only a foot or so from the camera (the other is about six feet away).  It’s true that finish also comes into play.  If these tubes had a mirror finish, the imperfection at the joint would become a more visible irregularity in the finish, but since we’re using a radial sanded finish to the stainless steel, the seam blends into the finish grain and fools the eye.

Mindshare calls their monthly events in Los Angeles “enlightened debauchery”. They cull speakers from industry, academia, philanthropy, and they open minds with an open bar. Presentations are about 10 minutes and there are usually four per night.

I was invited to speak to this audience at their last event, so I packed up the LiveSpark portable fire case with four of our Flame Elements, headed down south, and showed off our latest and greatest music-reactive fire performance.

One thing I especially liked, and am seeing more of these days, is a live text message feed projected on to a large screen next to the presenter. During my presentation, I was aware of this chatter, but in a non-intrusive way, and could address questions during my talk. It gave me a good sense that the audience was with me.

LiveSpark fire demo in LA