Thursday 17 July 2014

Wave Machine ver. 3: FiberLab Symphony Orchestra

Ladies and gentlemen. Please allow me to present the FiberLab Symphony Orchestra, consisting of 1 perforated hardboard, 2 craft rings, 12 wooden trims, 288 wooden balls, 720 metal findings, and about 1500 feet of nylon string - all accompanied by the ravishingly beautiful String Quartet No. 2 by Alexander Borodin. 



Everything is connected, and just works because of a simple concept. Powered by hand with no help from motors and electricity, it almost dares to lean toward the hipster spectrum. But again, this piece of music was already cool in the 1880s. Anyway, here are some screen captures for you:



Thursday 10 July 2014

Wave Machine Ver. 2 - the Carousel / a Moveable Feast

And I keep plugging away at this Wave Machine thing. With its new look modelled after the Eiffel Tower Carousel, it now generates two kinds of waves when you move the top ring and flag pole individually. More interestingly, combining the two motions adds the two waves together and allows you to observe a physics phenomenon called wave interference. Observe what happens when two different waves propagate through each other.
The resulting wave becomes amplified or cancelled depending on how the original two interact with each other. The plan is to continually develop this "toy" and hopefully it will engage more girls in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields in the future. 

I've also been having a lot of fun learning Adobe After Effects from Youtube channels like ECAbrams and Mt. Mograph. Thank you, Evan and Matt, for making learning tutorials totally binge-watching worthy. 

Paper Exchange: Bowtie for a Story

I just had this idea, and I am sending it out into the vast world of the internet, expecting zero responses. But it goes like this: Tell me why you would like to have one of my paper bowties and I may just send one over to you! All I ask in return is that you send me a photo of it being worn (and permission to use the photo). For example:
Be creative! And please keep in mind that this is an effort for effort project. Email me at: justina @ fiberlab.ca (no spaces) And we will see what happens...