Glimpse is a patterning sculpture. The two large wheels rotate rapidly in opposite directions, slow down, stop, and reverse directions. The rapid rotation of the wheels visually melds them together for a brief illusion of a single wheel with an undulating rim and radiating spokes.
The rest of the sculpture is composed of the mechanism that powers and controls the patterning wheels. It also has a lot of motion. The "arms" move up and down pulling on woven nylon strings that run over pulleys on the patterning wheels and are then attached to spools on the small reversing wheel. The arms are in turn pushed by small brass pins located on the pin wheel pulley. This pulley is powered by a black drive belt and drive wheel assembly. The energy for the motion is stored in a Negator spring attached to the drive wheel. The power for the sculpture ultimately comes from whoever has the opportunity to wind the sculpture. A single winding will keep the piece in motion for about 1.5 hours.
Limited Edition of 150
Size: 25"h x 20"w x 6"d
Power Source: negator spring
Approximate Run Time: 1.5 hours©1996 David C. Roy
Animated gif-formatted drawings work well when using Netscape Navigator 3, Microsoft Explorer 3 or more recent versions of these browsers. The gif animation will repeat itself and play more rapidly when the page has finished loading. It takes 1-2 minutes for all the frames of the animation to load. This type of animation is very compact and works well over the Internet but it has it's limitations. The speed that the animation plays back at depends on the viewing application that you are using and the speed of your computer. In order to keep load times short I have only used enough frames to give a brief idea of the motion. This should only be considered a brief sketch of the motion.
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©2000 David C. Roy