Living Architecture Spring 2008 Columbia

For this prototype, the rod was changed to a larger aluminum tube that could accommodate sand inside of it. I attached a steel rod to give the whole thing more weight. This is documentation of the Basic stamp pulling on the rod in different ways as sand flows out of the bottom.

Some things that Greta and I talked about were what if there was a segment of colored sand layered within the tube. That would draw a kind of line within the white sand. Also it would bring entropic principles to the table (you can never separate out the colored sand again).

And when the sand is released the system changes because there is less weight. For instance, if I did not have the heavy steel rod attached, the whole system would stop when the sand was gone because without the weight of the sand, the aluminum is too light to engage the flexinol.

Finally, the question of how to refill/restart this system (which in this configuration lasts about 2 minutes but could be stretched out long with a more precise sand "nozzle" like an hourglass.) The refilling could take on the kind of "manual reset"/user interaction that we discussed with our earlier prototype, some how turning the hour glass. . .