Whoa. That’s all we have to say about this art installation.

Oops, did we say art? Don’t let that three letter word scare you, because this project called Breaking Wave is nothing short of an absolutely incredible, fully mechanical, machine.

It’s kind of hard to tell in the picture, but there are 804 rusty spheres hanging from cables which make up the pixels of this display. Each of those cables could be attached to a servo for a very simple, digital-to-analog display — it’d be expensive, but you could display anything. But no, that’s not how this works. Instead of each of those cables is wrapped around a different size drum or roller, which are all connected to a large central hub motor driving a cam.

As the beastly hub-motor spins, the display morphs and changes shapes. It is all pre-programmed manually by varying the sizes of the rollers and the lengths of the cables, a mind numbing task of its own. What’s more, because it is three dimensional, you can only see the patterns if you’re standing in the right place at the right time.

Continue reading “Purely Mechanical Display Uses 804 Balls To Create A Kinetic Display” →