So, weather-willing, for quite a few years now I’ve made a big pile of snow and carved a snow sculpture. This typically involves using a gas powered snow blower and shovels to pile up and pack most or all of the snow in my parent’s front yard into an enormous pile, leaving it for a few days to harden up, and then carving away chunks and pieces with a variety of (mostly garden) tools. A bit of spray paint may be added to finish it off.
I’d like to kick it up this year, and add some tech.
Here’s a significant assortment of the sculptures I’ve completed:
My process is pretty loose - I often start with a sketch, sometimes use are reference photo or make a scaled model. Very often wing it.
Working with snow is great: it’s cheap, fairly forgiving, and doesn’t require specialized equipment. It doesn’t last long, but something something appreciate fleeting moments / live in the present.
Here’s where you come in. Please post:
Ideas for adding tech to the build process (e.g. augmented reality to help guide carving?)
Ideas for adding light / motion to the end product (e.g. RGB leds?)
Ideas for adding some sort of interactivity (e.g. Wi-Fi or motion detection?)
Ideas for cool/topical sculptures that may/may not include or highlight the above
You need several days of cold temps (-5 or better) to get the outside humidity low enough…
You also need to run a air compressor flat out during the process…
Typically the temp is only good during the coldest part of the night (11PM till 5AM)…
Most I have made in a run is a pile about a foot high mebbe 12 foot in diameter…
It’s more like a pile of frost than snow…
And the gun sounds like a gas leak…
That mixed with running it during the night means you get to meet neighbours/police/gas utility workers…
You can bury outdoor LED christmas lights under the snow and it will shine through and glow the area. We did a fire breathing dragon, with glowing green scales. Also one year was glowing coach lamp posts, its a good effect. Depending on snow type figure on 6-8" as max depth.
lol that’s pretty fun. Yeah the makey makey works in snow. I guess the trick would be getting the user to connect to ground as well as the hot key. Would work with bare hands if forearms rested on some snow bar in front of keys. Might get melty. Must be some other solutions tho.
Didn’t get the chance to prep as much as I would have liked before the holiday, but that ended up being moot since the weather didn’t cooperate either.
Thankfully there was a decent dump of snow the day and evening before I was scheduled to leave. With some help from the family, managed to put this together, a snow frog slide:
