Fluorescent tube mechanical character display

Craft & Design Technology

Rob Seward’s Four Letter Words takes a unique approach to displaying text, using elegantly animated miniature fluorescent tubes –

The piece displays an algorithmically generated word sequence, derived from a word association database developed by the University of South Florida between 1976 and 1998. The algorithms take into account word meaning, rhyme, letter sequencing, and association.
[…]
While the piece was conceived with idea of displaying algorithmically generated lists, it was designed with flexibility and expandability in mind. The individual units can be connected ad-infinitum, and are theoretically capable of displaying any length of text. While Four Letter Words deals with a specific range of content, the technology can be easily expanded for future textual experiments.

Read more on the device’s development over at the project’s blog. [via SparkFun]

6 thoughts on “Fluorescent tube mechanical character display

  1. Simon says:

    Makes me think of the font the Predator uses.

    1. Collin Cunningham says:

      ha – good point! just needs to be in red

  2. Dustyn says:

    Looks great Rob. Happy to see you’re continuing this line of work.

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