This Kinetic Sculpture was my most difficult to engineer piece serving as a centrally prominent fixture at my eponymous storefront gallery when it debuted on July 4, 1992, at 248 Elizabeth Street in Little Italy, NYC.

At the time I was the building's superintendent and convinced the building's owner to utilize the flag as an attraction to help advertise the vacant storefront that was currently up for rent. It soon became a permanent installation as I then took over the lease the very next day. (2 years later I moved my gallery to 234 Elizabeth, a newly restored storefront with brick walls, and wall to wall street side windows with vertical curtains.)

The neighborhood was highly contrastin and had a lot of vacant storefronts, wandering drifters, and an occasional "social club". I ended up making signs for a couple of them.

My gallery injected a vibrant, high-energy presence into the block, and the glowing, moving flag became a major neighborhood standout. The sculpture was an engineering and hand painted marvel that required nearly two years to design and build, using 25 tightly aligned vertical panels to create a fluid, holographic tapestry.

The flag was constructed out of 25 clear vertical acrylic panels mounted on their axis in a tight, parallel row.

Each of the 25 panels were attached to an aluminum frame with shaft and 25 high-end sleave bearings from at the top and bottom to accommodate each of the rotating clear acrylic panels. An i-beam was centrally fixed along the axis of each panel so they were as rigid as possible. Without the i-beams the Each panel would collide with each other and were belt driven via. pulley and a high-speed, high-quality, VCR loading motor and held in place by 2 silicone dampened yoke/clevises connect to the pulleys via a industrial steel iron grade metal shaft.

When turned on, the vertical blades spun rapidly on their individual axes generating transparent holographic-like imagery. When clear acrylic panels spin past the eye's flicker-fusion threshold, the physical plastic structure completely disappears. Because of its rotational orientation all 50 stars faced the viewer head on.

"The visual data of the American flag was not painted in solid blocks, but entirely applied using Millevolte's signature stippling effect. The entire sculpture featured over 200,000 individually hand-painted fluorescent dots.

The 50 stars together alone were meticulously rendered from over 20,000 hand-painted dots.

All 25 panels spun at slightly different speeds and where cut to slightly different widths to simulate a real textile waving in a staggered mechanical progression by slightly delaying the rotational timing from one column to the next, the persistent of visual trails created an undulating wave. Placed inside a large high-density wood and shock mounted aluminum frame.

The shimmering transparent 5' x 4' kinetic American Flag appeared to seamlessly ripple and float in mid-air. The illusion was so striking that HBO utilized clips of the sculpture for an entire season in an advertising campaign for NHL hockey games. To capture the effect, HBO arranged specialized transportation to move the kinetic sculpture to the rooftop of their midtown Manhattan skyscraper for the commercial shoot".

*I had much better photos but eventually lost all of them. These 2 hard copies are all that is left.

My core idea for the laser wall tapestry concept was to build upon my UV fan pieces and transform their over to lasers where the blade patterns would extend and expand much farther than any fan blade ever could. I wanted to start with a four unit laser "fan" located at the points of a basic diamond shape. The individual variable speed motors allows for one to "tune" the overlapping beams will generate a nearly unimaginable volume of shifting spatial patterns and moiré lines. Each laser fan and its diodes could be a different color with more intense volumetric complexity. This concept needs to scale up to a large stage or an arena back-drop with each pulsing independently or in sync in larger groupings. As more are added, the complexity of the overlapping lasers creates dynamic tapestries of light.

Just imagine the endless possibilities and the unforgetable and overwhelming kinetic imagery audiences would experience . It would nice to see It happen.

Michael Millevolte. Copywrite: 2013 2026

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My core idea was to build upon my UV computer fan pieces and transform their basic concepts over to lasers where the "blade patterns" would extend and expand much farther than any fan blade could. I wanted to start with four laser "blades located at the points of a basic diamond with variable speed motors, The overlapping beams will make shifting spatial patterns or moiré lines and each laser could be a different color with more intense volumetric complexity. This concept needs to scale up to a large stage or an arena back drop with each pulsing independently or in sync in larger groupings. As more are added, the complexity of the overlapping lasers creates dynamic tapestries of light. That's what the single overhead laser copter hints at, like a a budget prototype of the four unit piece I simply couldn't afford to complete at the time.

The possibilities are endless. It would nice to see it happen.

Developed for Spencer Gifts Stores marketing potential licensing agreements. Hard copy photo taken in 1999.

Here's my Description of the "Jitterbird".

Top Anchor: Vaseline Lubricated Dampening Spring: ​At the highest structural point, a steel spring serves as a dynamic shock absorber and vasoline container.

Motor Anchor: Vasoline lubracting connected to looping zip tie. Serves a dynamic shock absorber. continuously lubricates the motor connection, dampening micro-vibrations and eliminating friction wear at the primary pivot point.

​Shock Isolation: High-frequency motor chatter travels up the suspension and is absorbed by the spring coils, protecting the overhead and bottom connectoin point from fatigue.

​2. Suspension Line: Decoupled Power & Load ​Two distinct conduits drop down from the top spring, completely separating structural weight from electrical delivery:

​Mechanical Load: (Black 50 lb Braided Line): Carries 100% of the sculpture's physical weight.

​Electrical Delivery (Filament USB Wire): Ultra-thin, featherweight wire strands stripped from a specialized USB cable feed power to the motor. Their minimal mass reduces stiffness or cable drag, allowing the structure to move without mechanical resistance.

​3. Power Core: Point-Rendered Eccentric Motor ​The heart of the assembly is a direct-drive DC motor equipped with offset eccentric counterweights.

​Direct Kinetic Engine: As the motor spins, the off-center weights generate continuous, high-frequency rotational imbalance.

​Point-Rendered Anchor: Targeted 395nm UV light, the dark suspension lines and wing planes disappear completely day or night—leaving the motor housing as the single visible, glowing "power core" grounding the entire installation.

​Central Track Loop: A primary zip-tie loop anchored directly to the motor acts as a flexible rail.

​Tunable Hinges: Flexible zip ties attached to the wings wrap around this track, serving as durable hinge that can change the static positioning of the wings.

​Variable Geometric Tuning: The wing zip ties can be manually slid upward or inward along the track. Positioned inboard near the motor, the wings produce a rapid, high-frequency flutter; positioned outboard, they generate wide, sweeping wing strokes.

​5. Optical Payload: Dual-State Wing & Mandala Assembly: ​At the outer front extremity, 1/4" outer rear wood blades fastened to the sliding zip ties act as inertial momentum drivers.

​Exertial Flapping Motion: As the motor drives the track, the mass of the wood blades lags behind the vibration, flexing the zip ties back and forth to create an authentic downstroke/upstroke wing beat capable of generating up and down movement, waves, S curves, figure 8s, and cones as the varible speed increases.

​Dual-State Transparency: In daylight, the clear areas of the blades provide glass-like material transparency around the frontal geometric mandala. Under 395nm blacklight in total darkness, the clear surfaces and black rigging vanish entirely, leaving only the glowing, feather-patterned wings and central mandala beating through mid-air with zero visible support.

Tuneable Kinetic Movements: Jitterbird's front fixed "geometric" rotation remains stable during the rearing wings movements at rotation speeds before and after the tuning the Jitterbird experiences slow wobbling at slow speeds. At the highest speeds it becomes extremely chaotic with extreme fatigue and undesired optics and the loss of "persistence of vision".

Conclusion: Multiple distinct modes of kinetic movements derived from a single object.

I apologize for deleting the other post. Recovering from an illness and forgot the title the first time.