I designed this kinetic sculpture in 2013 for Art+Com in Berlin and came up with a system where individual discs are suspended by two cables instead of one — as was the case with sculptures such as Kinetic Rain. Using two cables enables controlled two-dimensional movement, significantly broadening the choreographic potential while providing added structural stability and security.
It has since materialised in four large-scale installations across three continents: in the Philippines (City of Dreams, 2014), Korea, Japan, Spain (RGB|CMY Kinetic, 2015), Mexico (Pendulum Casa V, 2015) and Singapore (Petalclouds, 2018).
Photographs © Art+Com.
The first video is one of the early (digital) prototypes I made back in 2013. It's a bit of a busy demo because I was aiming to show all the different possibilities in 30 seconds: abstract and figurative animations — plus everything in between. The scale is on the ambitious side (300 discs, which translates to a 30–50m long sculpture).
Perhaps counterintuitively, it all started with the figurative route (which — to my knowledge — was never implemented in real life). Indeed, I had been briefed to explore sculpture concepts for Chinese New Year. Thus, once I came up with the two-cable idea, I spent a considerable amount of time perfecting a way to turn animal shapes into paths that the discs would follow (hence why I originally called the project Polar Bear — in reference to polar coordinates).
Beyond the animation potential, one aspect I found exciting was that, over time, a viewer could get a sense of the overall shape, even if, at any given moment, the scarcity of discs wouldn't necessarily allow them to see it. The long-exposure renders were an early attempt to visualise this.
