Another chapter in life is over. I just finished my degree in the Digital Media Class of Prof. Joachim Sauter after studying at Berlin University of the Arts for five years.

The picture shows the prototype.

An extensive project documentation will be produced during the next months. Stay tuned.

I’m planning to cover the metal wire construction with a soft white fabric, that has good extension properties. I found three materials which are currently in the competition. From left to right, gaining in opacity: women’s stockings, a body suit and swimming fabric. Lets see which one is going to make it.

After thinking about the first draft a bit longer, I realized that it needs another ring in order to create a nice threedimensional shape. So the top view is based on a hexagon now.
In this draft, the steel wires are unrolled to both sides. This should work better for the symmetric change.

After I stopped researching for small helicopters, I went back to my first idea of shapeshifting. Ball-like-shaped objects are supposed to be able to change their size in all three dimensions. I want to avoid the use of pneumatics, so i’m going about a mechanical construction.

The construction is a simple wireframe model of a ball, to be covered with a soft extensible cloth. This is the first attempt for the underlying mechanics.

I took this picture a few days ago from the window of my appartment in Berlin. It’s not a fake. These bird seems to be able to do quite fancy things. Have a close look or click the picture to open the highres version.
This is one image i had in mind when i fixed the theme of my degree: “The iconic potential of computative design”. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. Thought i’m not sure, if the birds are aware of that.