Inspired by the kinetic sculpture at the BMW Museum in Munich, I developed software to move individually suspended balls to outline a surface, and to shift elegantly and smoothly between different surfaces. Though I have yet to build it in real life - it would require both more real-world display space and a more cost than I'm willing to invest at present - I thought a basic demonstration of the capabilities might inspire others.
The four elements demo'd are:
0:00-0:15: Each ball moves from its prior position to the next desired position as quick as it can (so that balls needing to move a shorter distance arrive first)
0:16-0:22: All balls arrive at their final position in sync (so that balls needing to move a shorter distance travel more slowly)
0:23-0:40: All balls arrive at their final position in sync, but during that period of motion, all balls exhibit a random Brownian motion.
0:41-End: A simple "translation" of a static image across the "canvas"
All ball motion follows a smoothed S-curve motion profile, with a configurable maximum 3rd derivative of movement (i.e.: maximum velocity, acceleration, and delta acceleration). And the viewer perspective gradually rotates around the kinetic sculpture to gain an understanding of how a story told in this way needs to be sensical from multiple positions.
Read more about it on my blog at www.BranchingOutWood.com/blog.
