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:
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.
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.
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