I have been playing around with a concept kinetic sculpture using four of my White Water modules to create a double cascade falling water environment. The starting point was an approximately 10 foot tall by 6 foot wide dark green wall. Here is where to concept stands right now.
Today David is introducing White Water, Avalanche, and Falling Water II, three sculptures based on a common module. This series allows you to combine modules to create larger, more complex sculptures customized for your own space. Extensive information on all three pieces plus other ideas are presented on the website today.
White Water
White Water is a single component sculpture which is a landmark design because of it's extended run time. David finally managed to cross the 24 hour time mark with this piece by simplifying the mechanism and modifying some construction techniques! (No perpetual motion yet!)
Falling Water II
But what if you have a larger space? Simple! Add a second White Water to it, rearrange them, and a larger, more complex sculpture emerges. Above is Falling Water II, similar to the original with its constantly shifting yet relaxing patterns and quiet clicking sounds but it is shippable. It is composed of two White Water modules arranged in a vertical orientation and would fill an 11-14' tall wall.
Avalanche
But explore further, rearrange those two modules into a different orientation and a third sculpture emerges. In Avalanche, shown above, two modules are positioned in a diamond motif to create a sculpture version that works well on a horizontal wall.
Possibilities are endless! What if three were put together? A visit to our
website will share with you animations of other compositions. What shape wall do you have?
Writing about my "Chime Carillon" kinetic sculpture has me thinking about kinetic sculpture sounds. My current favorite is the very large sculpture Falling Water that is in our living room. I like the motion of this sculpture but after living with it for a while I think I like the sound it makes even better than the motion. Each of the 5 wheels makes a soft clicking sound and because each wheel moves at a slightly different speed the pattern of clicks is constantly shifting. It's hard to describe, sort of like a babbling brook or a soft rain but without the "wet" feel.
In this video I placed the camera very close to the sculpture to try and record the soft sounds it makes. When listening to it keep in mind that in a silent room these sounds can barely be heard from 20 feet away.
I've spent the month of March building the first group of Fiesta kinetic sculptures. The final step before packing is testing. I set them all up on their respective mounting template backboards and let them run for a few days on a large wall at the back of my studio.
The first test of a new design production group is always a bit tense. These were very well behaved, in fact the big surprise is run time. These are all running in excess of 18 hours. My initial estimate based on the prototype was 12 hours.
I made the last production run of
Phoenix in January 2009. I introduced Phoenix in September of 2003 so it has had a very long and popular run. The patterning wheel is based on a much older piece of mine called Dragon that I discussed in a
previous post.
I shipped most of these last Phoenix sculptures to various galleries. If you would to see one in person please
contact me and we can determine if there is a gallery near you that has one. It's always a bit sad to retire a favorite old design. That's why I do my designs in strictly limited editions, to force myself to continue designing and exploring. In my next post I'll be discussing some interesting new designs,
Fiesta and
Quandary that I've just added to my recently
updated web site.