But I need to learn a bit more about motion control in order to produce the incredibly smooth motion of the balls in the BMW exhibit. So I decided to build something from scratch, in an area I know reasonably well: algorithms and coding. I wanted to reproduce a version of this for myself, but - perhaps not surprisingly - I could not find any software packages that come close to simulating this with user-provided content. It tells the evolution of BMW engineering’s via a grid of balls, where each ball can move vertically via a string from the ceiling in order to “draw” the surface of profile of an object. Having wrapped up an embedded electronics project in this clock and coming across these amazing (but pricey) servo motors, I stumbled across this art installation in the Munich BMW Museum, made by ART+COM Studios of Germany. I’ll cover the first - a ceiling-mounted kinetic sculpture - here, and the second with next month’s post. This brings me to two recent kinetic sculpture projects that have been piquing my interest. It’s this exploration, and elements of the initial prototyping phase, that I enjoy most of all - it brings me back to some of the joy of Product Management in my earlier roles in the tech industry, the symbiosis of learning and building, bringing something novel to the world that fills a unique niche or solves a unique problem. And while the artistry of the table I ultimately purchased from Sisyphus Industries exceeded what I had in development, the exploration process took me in an unexpected direction. While I ultimately abandoned that project, it wasn’t before writing a few thousand lines of code. The first piece I recall being thoroughly mesmerized by was Bruce Shapiro’s “Sisyphus Table” prior to Bruce’s commercialization of this table, I embarked on a project to build my own version. I’ve been inspired by a number of kinetic sculptures over the years.
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