The ten teams who have qualified for the challenge are:
The Kilted Snow Weasels from Illinois
Team Sweden
Team Germany Black Forest
Team Korea
Team Japan
Team Argentina
Team Alaska
Team Yukon
Team NAFTA (North America Fine Talented Artists)
Whitehorse is preparing the snow blocks for the teams. One of those is reserved for us. As you can see the blocks are casted with wood then snow will be filled in and compacted by stamping. Normally this is done using the snow from the area. But this year mother nature is not providing enough so that snow cannons have to do the job.
Since we fear humidities we need to jack up everything in the controller box. Our friend 3d-printer is building some ABS custom supports. This is the opposite way of snow carving. Here we add material while we remove material in Canada 🙂
I am one of the rare people who still do not have a Facebook account. Please also check the following link to the public Facebook page of “Snowsculpting Team Germany-Black Forest“. There you will maybe see some more pictures and videos.
Thanks goes to Andy Enderlin who made this beautiful case. It is equipped with lots of electronic and a bluetooth transmitter to connect to “Be one”. The video below shows a test mode. The Sensor will be triggered by placing your hand on it.
Only a handful of days left before we start our trip. It will be a very long flight starting in ZĂĽrich to London. From London to Vancouver and then directly to Whitehorse. Beside the long flight we are still a bit nervous if we get all our stuff through customs. Some of the tools we need to carve “Be one” out of the big block of snow look for sure scary if scanned with X-Rays 🙂
Be one is the name of the snow sculpture you will see if you come and join us in the week of the 22nd of February in Whitehorse, Canada. We are proud to say that Team Germany was selected out of a huge number of teams to represent Germany in this years Whitehorse Snow Sculpting Challenge.
“Be one” means “Be one” and we promise to take this very serious. Over the next view days we will reveal more and more details about the sculpture and if we have good conditions and enough time “Be one” will be the worldwide first snow sculpture which interacts with the observer. “Be one” will respond to biometrics and you will have the unique opportunity to BE ONE with a piece of art. The interaction is at the moment more a “nice to have” since we are concentrating first on the sculpture as such. There are several variables like humidity and temperature which adds an incalculable risk of making the interaction happen. But we will do whatever we can to make it happen.
At the moment we are not able to show you how the sculpture will look like, even if we do have a model of it. But hey, we want to win the challenge so please bear with us – we will post pictures during the making of it.
However please feel free to comment on pictures and also wish us good luck. Especially since building a snow sculpture is a very complex process and the idea making it interactive adds a new level to it.
We hope that the cold and humidity will not put a spoke in our wheel and that people like what they will see.
Thanks for reading our Blog
Team Germany – Black Forest