Tower of the Windings

Tower of the Windings, a wind-animated sculpture by James Mallos, makes its debut at World Maker Faire New York September 20 & 21, 2014. Initially conceived as a tower, this work-in-progress has evolved into an arch. The wind activated aspect is still experimental. The tensegrity structure is a tension ladder—a ladder-like arrangement of equal-length tendons pre-stressed by crossing diagonal syruts.

A new winchworm design will also debut at my "Make Your Own Windbot Muscle" exhibit at Maker Faire.This winchworm uses about 24" of a 160Q balloon as its body and about 8 grams of detergent-washed tie wire (a wire used to place concrete reinforcement) at each end of the balloon for front and back legs. There are two feet in back and one in front;

each foot is a safety loop of wire made using jeweler's round-nose pliers.

The two loops of Berkeley 1-lb test are tied using nails about 4" apart. The single loop (with knots at each end) is tied on nails about 2-1/2" apart.

What's Eating Alaska

District identification key for "What's Eating Alaska."

The image above is the key for identifying the congressional districts in my sculpture, "What's Eating Alaska," being exhibited June 16 - August 22, 2014 in the AAAS/WSG show, Gedankenexperiment.

Though the image has a size of several MB, you still won't be able to read the labels on the smaller congressional districts, for those go to the GigaPan.

Each circle has an area proportional to the land area of the congressional district it represents—it's what the map of the U.S. would like if you stirred the geography and allowed the smaller congressional districts to settle to the middle. The country's political polarization by population density is evident.

This Google Drive folder contains the Processing code and a text file with the congressional district data.

"What's Eating Alaska" on exhibit at the AAAS Gallery in Washington, DC.

Crumple

Crumple, an animated aluminum sculpture was my contribution to Washington's popular Nuit Blanche on the night of September 28-29, 2013. Crumple is composed of 128 identical hinged pieces. The sculpture changes shape with changes in the inflation of its internal membrane. Crumple is based on Di Francesco and Guitter's idea of a completely foldable surface—a triangulated surface that can fold into a single stack of triangles. With origami you make a flat portion of the plane and fold it into a shape, with a completely foldable surface you make a stack of triangles and unfold it into a triangulated curved surface.

"Brief Boom" at Strathmore

Brief Boom is a sculpture in sandstone and copper wire done in a new textile technique I call zip crochet. I have donated it to the Strathmore Drawing for Art, to be held later this month.

Immediate inspiration for Brief Boom is the fracking boom, but more generally, from watching the success of a species that "succeeds" only by rapidly consuming the ecosystems that sustain it.

Interaction

Interaction can be read as a bit of crochet or a Feynman diagram representing the absorption of a photon. It seems crochet and Feynman diagrams (classical diagrams that are meant to be probabilistically superimposed to represent quantum reality) obey the same mathematical rules. This work is on view in Mathematically Inclined from March 8 through May 5, 2013 at the Takoma Park Community Center in Takoma Park, MD.

Progression

This sculpture is on view in Mathematically Inclined at the Takoma Park Community Center from March 8 through May 5, 2013. This work is a figure-eight coil of galvanized steel wire in the process of being converted into a walking chain stitch.

Derivation

This sculpture is on view in Mathematically Inclined at the Takoma Park Community Center from March 8 through May 5, 2013. The round coil of wire at the top has been converted below into the type of figure-eight coil used in zip crochet.