Heart Space

Once I started understanding the slightly irregular geometry of the Chestahedron, I grew fond of it. Two variations of it now decorate the Neurophysics Functional Movement Centre in Queensland, as well as being used to demonstrate complex processes.

Even without anything suspended from the top, the Chestahedron favours an upright position in relation to gravity. 'Chiming Heart' was sized to fit into a 50cm cube, made of non-elastic string and Tasmanian Oak. It has a Chinese Bell as attachment, introducing more moveable elements to a relative sturdy structure.

'Fiery Heart' needed to be more moveable, even the small weight of a bell (ca. one ounce) put too much stress on a similar structure with elastic strings. I decided to use non-elastic string for the lateral 'corners' to maintain the overall shape after distortion, and to make the non-elastic attachment point part of the tension network.

While I used whatever I could find as attachments so far, I needed now something of decent size, low weight and potentially bell-shaped. A small 6-strut tensegrity tetrahedron fits the bill perfectly, creating pleasing size relations. Some dashes of colour high light this centre, combining the shape for Fire with its colour red.

Meanwhile, 'Mottled Heart' gets taken over a by tomato, rosemary and mustard. The dodecahedron on the roof suffered a bit with the stormy weather lately, but 'Mottled Heart' shows only slight fading of the strings. I wonder whether its attachment will interfere with the mustard underneath, it won't take long before I find out.

Youtube

I decided to open a new account for all the tensegrity related videos I shot. As the user TouchThisTensegrity you can find slideshows, howtos and exploration of single objects on youtube. By and by, I will replace the videos in blogposts here with their new location.

It's also a good starting point to collect playlists of other tensegrity explorations. Hope you'll enjoy the new channel.

Scaling

I used up my supply of recycled struts from my geodesic dome, well, the larger length. Fuller claimed that the ratio of strut to string length remains constant independent of scale - so far, my scaling attempts had quite some errors in it.

As I was curious whether I can use eight centrally joined tendon trinities to build a six strut icosa without any support than my body and dexterity, and furniture nearby. The symmetry of this structure made it so much more elegant (at least conceptually) than most other tensegrity builds. I prepared eight corner joints with three tendons each, based on calculating the string:strut ration from a smaller and larger model.

I even got fancy and used two different colours for the tendons, I hope the different qualities of the string used won't create problems later on. After only one minor hick-up the model came together nicely, with the length I measured being precisely what I wanted according to my calculations. I can imagine that even a bit less tension would provide a stable (not disassembling) model.

The tetrahedron survived some wild storms and still hangs in its slightly hidden space, while three other outdoor installations have gone.

Octoids

I haven't been that busy during a week with building tensegrities ever, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I needed models I could transport without a car. It will be lots of fun to find out how practical my idea of transport will be tomorrow, unicycling with a backpack from which twenty or so tensegrity structures dangle....

Besides a set of octoids, octahedra in which colours enhance aspects of their structure, I build a number of colourful icosahedra. I hope I can source more of the material I used for the latest icosa builds, it saved me lots of work. Doing the computer related things, like preparing and uploading the slideshow turned out much less pleasurable. Nevertheless, all is prepared for an interesting market day tomorrow, including the update of the market datea for the first three month of 2012.

Welcome

Thanks for stepping by. It doesn't matter how you found this site, by chance, word of mouth or decoding the QR code on the label of one of my sculptures, I'm grateful for your curiosity. In due course, when this is no longer the only article here, you can find information around tensegrity structures, where to get them and maybe even how to make them.

I started building tensegrity sculptures around May 2009, and after some initial set backs I got pretty much hooked on creating more and more of them. One year later, I had my first appearance on the Rose Street Artist's Market in Fitzroy, where you can find me again on the 23rd May, and some more dates to be announced.

As a little teaser, have a look at the slideshow :)