Flutter In The Rain

flu t t er in t he r ain INSTALL ATION

Emily Nybo Ta l R i c e

Precedent St udie s While researching precedent studies we were drawn more to the designs that create sound rather than the design being produced from a sound. From this discovery, we formulated more ideas all with one intention in mind. The intention behind the design would be to create an array of the same sound. For the design chosen this will be accomplished through rotating objects of various materials and/or sizes.

These objects would act similarly to gears where they rotate and affect one another. The different materials and sizes may all work in unison yet have their own, individual characteristics.

Process The initial design of the gears included the parameter of having the same diameter throughout all of the gears, where only the center structure of the gears would change diameters. By adjusting the inner structure, it allowed the fins to become shorter or longer, therefore, changing the stiffness.

After many iterations of this design, we came to the conclusion that a better approach to producing the sound desired was to change the stiffness of the fins by the material itself.

M at eria l s The first exporation of materials brought us to the conclusion that the fins of the gears need to be thin enough to glide accross each other to produce sound. We attempted using thin acrylic (1/16th inch) and found that it is far too rigid for the gears to produce sound.Another material option we explored was wood. The wood gears had an elegance that we were looking for but it didn’t have the pleasant surprise of light refection that the acrylic gears had.

M at eria l s co n t.

The ongoing process of finding a pleasing aesthetic was honed down to using clear lamination sheets for fins and white PVC cupplers for the wheel structure. This white color makes the gears have an illuminated glow that is also apparent in the shiny transparent acrylic of the fins. We also found that to provide an elegance in the design, the gears needed to be much thinner than what the large cupplers had suggested.

To reinfo rce this transpare nt a e sth etic , a ste el f ram e is a pro pe r material choice as it allows the users to understand how the installation is built.

The final material choices include white pvc cupplers along with white acrylic cutouts to hold the wheel and fins. The fins are made of several layers of lamination sheets. The entire layout of course is placed upon a welded steel structure.

L ayout De sign The first iterations of a layout included many different sizes and layouts of gears placed on a square grid. We discovered that the first grid layouts did not include any forms hierarchy.

Without hierarchy, the users will not be able to understand where they can interact with the system of gears.

Several attempts at finding a layout that made sense were produced to find one that worked the way it was intended.

L ayout De sign cont.

After the initial attempt at a square grid, we started to explore a triangle layout. We soon found out that the gears layed out in this particular array would fail. The part that we learned about this layout is that the structure would perform well if we used steel rods.

L ayout De sign cont.

A further exploration into the layout included a spiral that would repeat itself across the wall. We found that this was not dynamic enough and needed a more monolithic approach to the design. Another iteration involved a central point that emanated in succession outward. This design included gears that don’t move in order to make them move linearly. When the gears move in this order, they don’ t fight and move in a rythmic pattern.

Final L ayout Our first goal in this design was to create a sense of plane accross the wall. this uniform wall however, is up into several modules that repeat giving the user a where they can interact with it. The corner gears are from turning to provide a linear motion to the others.

a single broken sense of stopped

Th e M o d e l This is a model of one of the modules that is repeated accross the wall system.

ball bearing

acrylic ring

pvc cuppler

outer acrylic rings

full assembly

A s s e m b ly These are the components and their construction.

spacer bushings

welded steel structure

lamination fins

17

Ball Bearings

42

Inner Acryilic Rings

21

One Inch Cupplers

42

Outer Acrylic Rings

252

Double Laminated Fins

17

Black Spacer Bushings

1

Nine Linear Feet of 1/4 Inch Steel Rod

Item List

Processing & Grasshopper