Object 1

I started by choosing my textile media for my first project. I chose a shimmery red yarn. I would describe its character as crazy, all over the place, and vivacious. I wanted to bring it to life by having it dance.

I thought I could make the movement generated by an inflatable transducer a little more sensitive by attaching springs to each of the pouches. I designed a three-part transducer that I imagined would look something like this:

Concept drawing for first project.

Once I made it, I realized the springs wouldn’t stand up on their own, they would just flop over. I connected them all at the center and made a big mass of red yarn. After a test inflate, I realized that shorter yarn would result in much less “dancing” than longer yarn.

The popsicle stick base provided some rigidity for the “stems” of the pouches. The Laptop and hand sanitizer are holding the popsicle sticks to the table

There was less movement than I expected and certainly less than I hoped for. I wonder if making longer pouches would generate more movement.

Object 2

I wanted to make something simpler for my second project. I was interested in adding levers to a little system, so I wondered if I could make a simple object that raised two flags in opposite directions.

If I were to remake this, I would make the pouches bigger. When they are so small, it’s hard to control movement and see anything happen. However, the tempo was quite fast for this object.

Object 3

I wanted to make a tower for object 3. I was interested in how this would work, because so far all of the mechanisms I made were just two sheets of plastic heat sealed together in different ways. At first, I thought of one continuous pouch that you would fold accordion-style and then connect together, but I figured this would cause some problems, as explained in the following image:

Instead, I decided to make a stack of donuts.

I was excited about the shape this would make, and imagined ribbon coming down from the different tiers of the tower, like a cake. I wanted to see each layer lift off the ground, one by one.

I was surprised by how much vertical height I was able to get with this technique. It was really fun to assemble too, alternating layers of inside-sealing and outside-sealing. I think there could be much more to explore with this one.