Zane Murray and I collaborated on a piece, called Transformium, that we submitted to the New School judging committee to hopefully be selected to participate in the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) happening here in New York City.
I was heavily influenced by the book, Interactive Architecture, by Michael Fox and Miles Kemp, so I jumped at the opportunity to work with Zane on this project.
For our piece, instead of rooms of static objects, our vision is a space that interacts with movements and actions, providing consistant feedback between the space and those who occupy it. For the actual piece we submitted, we looked to demonstrate how that space might operate.
Our project is a series of rods made out of titanium alloy that can be bent in many shapes or forms with the use of motors and a rolling cart mechanism. These rods can be flat when the room does not require any object of use. If a person needs a table or a chair, the rods would be pushed and pulled into the appropriate formation. Instead of stiff metal, the titanium rods are actually somewhat malleable and respond to pressure in a subtle way.
Zane and I met several times to brainstorm, do a series of sketches, and run a set of tests. Using an Arduino, 10 servo motors and wooden cars that ran along a set of guiding rails, we stepped through a series of formations, moving the rodds in different shapes and forms.
Here is a part of the time-lapse video documentation we did of the preparations:
This was such a rewarding project. This experience pushed me well beyond anything I had done before in terms of complexity and code-based interaction projects, and I truly hope we are selected so Zane and I can continue working on our piece to prepare it for the ICFF.