Intro & Burners   Valves   Control   Gas Supply Control Software and Hardware You "play" the fire grid through a special touchpad. It's like the trackpad on a portable computer except that it's pressure sensitive and it can handle multiple touchpoints at the same time. The touchpad's output is mapped onto the 8x8 grid of flamethrowers, so drawing a line on the pad from back left to front right will cause a line of flame to be drawn from back left to front right on the grid.   Control of the grid is through a custom developed software program. The program converts output from the pad to control signals for the grid modules, provides functions for trimming each element of the grid to the correct flame height using software, provides controls for lighting the grid safely, and also contains a sequencer which allows the creation of looping "fire sculptures" that can be recalled at will.   Each 8 burner module has a servo control card in it that takes commands from the computer program and adjusts the servo valves accordingly. Servos use regular timing pulses as positioning commands, and the control card takes over the task of creating these pulses for the servos. The computer just sends serial commands to the control card telling it which servo to move and the control card takes care of the rest.   The upshot of all this geekiness is direct human control over a primal force, where the physical nuances of your gestures are reflected in flame.