Inspiration

I am drawn to physical forms, light, and delight. For example, I love the kinetic rain installation in the Singapore airport.

Or take the famous strandbeests work done by Theo Jansen:

Movement and light together create something delightful, surprising, even unsettling.

Or even this opening scene from the movie Fracture, showing a high end rolling ball sculpture.

For my final project, my original idea was to replicate this vortex assembly. I still need to break it down into components but I am concerned about the scope here. I reached out to the creator of this assembly (Ancient James) for permission and advice. Here is what he wrote back:

Here is how Ancient James constructed his:

And here is how I am considering breaking up the work:

I need to outline the following:

Rotor

  • Core: the central hub everything mounts to, carrying the computer and the display electronics as it turns.
  • Spars: two stiff rods that hold the screens out from the hub without flexing at speed.
  • Frames: printed brackets that grip the screens and lock them to the spars.
  • Panels: two fine-pitch LED screens mounted back to back, which sweep a circle and paint the image.
  • Counterweights: small lead weights you add until the assembly stops shaking.

Base

  • Structure: the fixed frame that holds everything else and keeps the axis vertical. Thinking about redesigning this to be wood.
  • Bearings: two bearings the hub rides on, one top and one bottom, setting how true it spins.
  • Drive: a motor turning a belt that spins the hub up to speed.
  • Power supply: converts wall power to low voltage for the whole machine.

Bridging them

  • Slip ring: brushes riding on rings that feed power to something that never stops turning.
  • Sync sensor: an optical sensor that notices each time the hub passes a fixed point, so the software knows which way it’s facing.

The brains

  • Driver: the program that keeps a 3D image in memory and fires the right LEDs at the right instant of rotation.
  • Slice map: a lookup table that says which part of the image belongs at which angle.
  • Panel offset: the two screens sit slightly off-center from each other so they fill in each other’s gaps.
  • Apps: games and demos that just write pictures into memory and never deal with the spinning.

Outside

  • Globe: a clear sphere that contains the rotor and diffuses the light.
  • Cowl: a shroud around the base of the rotor.
  • Dial: a small wireless controller with a knob and screen for speed and tuning.
  • Gamepad: a Bluetooth controller for whatever is running.

Use of AI: many of the concepts in this class are new to me. I used Claude to analyze the step files that the original creator of this vortex provided on his youtube channel. I also emailed him and asked for permission to recreate (approved!).

I expect to make many change to the design as the semester goes on, but in the meantime, I am using these break out diagrams (also Claude generated) as a starting point.