The DemoUnits are designed to empower people - made with relatively cheap and widely available materials, and constructed in an easy way. So.. you can make your own DemoUnits - why not? A little focus, some fun, and a few materials are enough to create DemoUnits in any shape and size that you are looking for.
Idividuals, groups and organizations can use their right for freedom of speach specially in fairs and demonstrations to express their views to a large gathering or crowd with a tool to hold banners high up above the heads of crowd for all to see and to read. A limited means and budget should still be able to transmit their message to the public in an eye-catching and attractive way. The modular exhibit system should be free standing as well as light and sturdy enough to carry along in a demonstration. When disassembled it should take little space and be easy to carry and take along on a bicycle or public transport.
A manual will guide you to construct and set up towers and cubes. Cost will be little as bamboo sticks and thin steel wire is used, free to be cut out of a used car tire. Light, compact and easy to transport to the site of use or demonstration. A tower to carry along can easily have a height of 4 meters.
A modular display system is set up from bamboo sticks and metal cross wires identical in size to form towers and cubes. They interconnect in a free to choose way. Banners can be clipped to the bamboo stick, transparant plastic folders, containing graphics can be hooked onto these elements. Objects can be suspended within. For easy transport and storage the sticks and wires can be tied in a compact bundle, while the banners and folders can be roled around it.
DemoUnit sizes
The DemoUnits are not limited by size; make it the way it fits your purpose. But we tend to focus on 2 base-seizes; but the possibilities are endless.
DemoUnits mobile size
A demonstration should not only inform bystanders on the pavement. The far more numerous people watching TV should clearly see what it is about. However, most of the banners and signs that people carry along are not readable on a TV. Explaining to the viewers what the demonstration is about is amazingly left to the newsreader in the TV studio, who is not properly informed and certainly not engaged. Demonstrations are the last available democratic means for minority opinions to get public attention. Therefore the organizers of a demonstration should asure that banners with large size text are visible from a distance for the TV-camera's as well as for everybody else.
Size of the text is at least 25 cm high, to display words it needs a banner width of 2 meters to be hold at least 4 meters high over the heads of the demonstrators. This can be done with a light weight frame of bamboo sticks and steel wires.
To assemble this frame is easy to learn. Its modular setup invites to create different shapes and sizes. Materials, as needed, are cheap and easily available.
Participants have to learn to make the best use of the DemoUnits by carrying the structure with 3 or 4 people and making the structure rotate to show text attached to all sides of the structure to anyone in the public. Dancing and swaying movements of the banners further increase public attention.
DemoUnits exhibition size
NGO's with a limited means and budget should still be able to transmit their message to the public in an eye-catching and attractive way. A free standing modular exhibit system should compete in with those commercially available in ease of construction, flexibility of design and minimal weight and dimensions when strored.
A modular display system is set up from identical sticks and metal cross wires, forming towers and cubes. They interconnect in a free to choose way. Transparent folders containing graphics can be hooked onto these elements. Objects can be suspended within. For easy transport and storage It is compact when disassembled.
The way it is constructed is identical to the way DemoUnits camping size, only reduced to half of its size.
Construction
On this page you'll find a series of photo's and instruction to assemble the first unit of a DemoUnit suitable for demonstrating but also for Occupy-like Demonstrative Camping. As you will see, the lens of the camera was dusty and the light was not very optimal. One day we will make better pictures, clarifying better.
Beware! Sloppy work at this stage may result in the shamefull collapse of towers and constructions at the time of a demonstration that would otherwise be glorious effective. If you are not sure, make materials for one single prisma unit, overload it and see if or how it collapses.
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21 bamboo sticks and a bundle of cross wires - Steffen on the left holds the bundles of cross wires, Anna in the middle holds the bundle of 9 sticks for the first element of the DemoUnit, another Anna on the right, Clown Army Anna, holds more sticks for more DemoUnits to attach to the first one later.
Be amazed, but do your math, three sides for each unit, thus three still bundled sets of cross wires and three sets of only three sticks, while they form a square together on each side? Of course that's because the fourth stick is part of the next squire.
We are to make a tent-like structure. Start with laying out the floor of the tent, then realize that one of the sides of the tent can also be laid out, later to be folded up. So after the first 4 sticks in a square, add an second square to the first one. When folded up this first side, then what is missing to make the second side? Indeed, only two sticks! Count till 4: the first stick is already part of the bottom, then comes stick 2 and stick 3 that you put in place on the ground and against this bottom stick number 1. And stick number 4 is the stick that fold up with the other side. When you prepare for it now, you will see it happen in the next steps.
The cross wires also have a pattern of their own Understand the cross wires: what they do and how they are attached. What they do is to keep the 4 bamboos of each square together and they make sure the square remains a squire, there is no flexibility.
There are 4 cross wires for each square. Each cross wire hooks in into the bamboo at a corner and are tied together in the middle with a end of rope.
Clowns army Anna has taken out a set of 4 cross wires from the bundle, while making sure they do not get entangled.
Each cross wire has at its other end an eyelet to join them with an end of rope.
The rope is attached to the first eyelet, then woven through the other three
Weave in the first round. Check now that all the eyelets come together within only a few centimeters distance
Then weave a second round. Just loose weaving is ok for now, tightening comes only later.
Only fold, do not twist to prevent the square from falling apart. With two helpers it works best, with only one it can also be done.
The third helper picks up the loose sticks at the other side.
The third helper picks up the loose sticks at the other side.
!! Final joint done wrongly! Do not stick the hook in the VERTICAL stick. Dangerous, as it can slip out and the tower will collapse.!!
All three rope joints should be tightened as is shown in the next images.
Pull hard on the rope to join the cross wires without any play left. Space between the eyelets is equally divided.And make a stiff joint.
Securing the rope, tight, but easy to undo.
Check if lock is secure, check all three knots and once again, check if hooks are in correct position. Shake the DemoUnit to test its sturdiness. Correct when this loosens up the cross wires.