Flight to Freedom

Flight to freedom

Enliven this kinetic sculpture by tweeting your words of encouragement to refugees with the hashtag #flighttofreedom. As you engage with the sculpture, we'll send you a personal story of a refugee's struggle to escape oppression. Our hope is that this project raises awareness of the global refugee crisis among people who may not be otherwise affected by it, and at the same time provides encouragement to those making the impossible decision to flee their home countries in search of better, albeit unknown, futures.

Background

The world is facing the largest Refugee crisis since World War II - UNICEF

According to the Refugee Council, statistics say there are around 60 million people who have been forcibly displaced from their homeland. If all these people were combined into a single nation, it would be the 24th largest country in the world.

In countries like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan and Somalia, millions of families have been forced to flee their homes due to persecution, conflict and poverty. These refugees, many of whom are children (some with parents and some without), are received with open arms in some countries and a closed door in others. They are too often caught in the middle of political negotiations and remain in a sort of stateless and homeless limbo. Not only this, threats like abuse and exploitation await women and undocumented individuals, even as they find homes in new places. 

We wanted to depict this entanglement refugees face as they leave behind homes and take flight to an unknown future. 

And as they do ...

Hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing from Syria take boats to cross the Mediterranean. 

A Syrian refugee from Aleppo holds his one month old daughter moments after arriving on a dinghy on the Greek island of Lesbos, September 3, 2015 - Reuters.

News of over-sized boats capsizing have flooded the media with stories of horror and shock. In a widely circulated tweet, MSF Sea organization assisting refugees crossing the Mediterranean said: 

"2016, the Mediterranean is a mass grave." 

- widely circulated Tweet by MSF Sea organization assisting refugees crossing the Mediterranean

Some made it to the shores of their new homes...
...many did not.

The photo that silenced the world:

The hashtag "#KiyiyaVuranInsanlik" ("Humanity washed ashore") made it to Twitter's top world trending topics after the image was widely shared. This picture became the symbol of the tragedy of refugees. 

"If this extraordinarily powerful image of a child washed up ashore doesn't change Europe's attitude towards Refugee crisis, then what will?" - The Independent.

There are more heart-wrenching stories than can be shared in this document. This one cannot go without mention. The story of a 5 year old innocent child wiping rubble and blood off his face talks of the horror of another Syrian city, Aleppo...

... to which a 6 year old American boy's heart-warming response showed the world what can be done. 

Our goal

We want to embrace Alex's generosity of spirit and encourage other people to do the same with little acts of social media engagement.

Concept

Our conceptualization of this project started with the idea of a bird in flight, but we didn’t have a good idea of what the installation would look like or how the movement would be achieved, so we started by sketching many possibilities:

Iterations

To design the kinetic sculpture, we went though several iterations of:

...the shape of the bird wings:

...the stability of the birds:

...structural robustness of the sculpture: 

...and the types of motion we could achieve:

...which culminated in this small-scale model of our vision:

With this model we were able to experiment with the overall visual impact different types of motion might have on the viewer:

As you can see in the above animation (which represents the birds flapping their wings in a "wave" pattern"), the effect of a "wave" of motion is not clearly conveyed. We discovered having them flap "in unison" to be much more visually impactful:

[gif of unison flapping]

After several battles with plummeting temperatures in Pittsburgh, the full-size version was finally installed on the actual site:

Location

The target audience for this sculpture is not specific, but includes anyone who could be willing to open their hearts like little Alex. Set along a pathway in front of an apartment building on Fifth Avenue in Pittsburgh, the sculpture is nestled into its residential environment and offers subtle passive interactions to the residents of the building as they enter or exit their homes, and to people walking on the sidewalk along 5th Ave. The gentle flapping of bird wings as well as the sign along the pathway we hope will invite passersby into a more intimate interaction with our installation. 

The location of the installation, although set in a semi-private area, is easily accessible from the sidewalk. A combination of plaques installed near the adjacent bus stop and near the installation serves to inform people about purpose of the sculpture and its interactions.

Design

The sculpture, designed to reside in an urban locale of Pittsburgh, tries to engage the passersby and residents of the area to communicate awareness about the on-going refugee crisis.

Gentle wing flapping movement of the birds passively invites the passersby. The plight of refugees as they struggle to move towards a better future is depicted in this slow flapping motion of birds as if they are struggling to take flight.

A plaque displays the intent of the sculpture and guides the viewers to engage actively by sending a tweet message to the refugees. Viewers can tweet their message of encouragement for the refugees and include the provided tag #flighttofreedom. 

Such active engagement is rewarded by increased momentum and speed of wing movement. Also, the person receives a story about refugee survival, as a gratitude for their encouragement and empathy. 

Motion

We used DC motors and a pulley system to control the motion of the birds. Each column of birds had a pulley at both ends, with a loop of fishing line going around them and attached to the body of the birds. There were 6 rows of fishing lines going through the wings of the birds, 2 on either side for each of the 3 rows to keep them constrained. Thus, with the clockwise and anti-clockwise motion of the motors connected to the pulley system, the bodies of the birds were pulled up and down while the wings pivoted at their midpoints, resulting in the desired flapping motion.

Circuit

To reverse the direction of the DC motors, we needed to be able to reverse the direction of the current in the motor. We used a H-bridge circuit for this purpose.

http://itp.nyu.edu/physcomp/labs/motors-and-transistors/dc-motor-control-using-an-h-bridge/

User and Data flow diagram

THANKS!