Food for the Creative Kinetic Soul

It is definitely inspiring to spend time sharing stories with others that love kinetic sculpture.  This past weekend (Oct. 9-10, 2010) was my first open house in fifteen years and it was a rewarding and motivating experience on many levels. 

Since the Internet has become my main face to the world, I seldom get to meet the people that own my sculptures. This is a definite loss because having discourse with others about my work, about their work, about the creative world in general is truly inspiring. Saturday and Sunday I got to surround myself  with people and together discuss so many topics. Marji and I extend thanks to those who came from both near and far to spend a few hours sharing the joy of kinetic sculpture with us. It is food for the creative soul!

Below are a few photos from the event.

Marji and I had a wonderful time. I expect we will not wait another fifteen years for the next open studio.  Join us then.

Music and Motion

All are invited to an open house at the Wood That Works Studio and Gallery to experience first hand the mesmerizing and relaxing ambiance created by David's two new designs - Silver Symphony and Silver Song. The peaceful effect of these two designs is so calming that it has inspired David to open the studio for the first time in 15 years so others can enjoy the experience. The experience of being in a room filled with kinetic sculptures is well worth the trip!

By far the most complicated sculpture to emerge from David's design sabbatical is Silver Symphony (above).   It combines kinetic motion and the deep, beautiful sound of Woodstock Percussion Chimes of Apollo tubes tuned to an ancient Chinese pentatonic scale.  David has designed a mechanism that powers a subtle yet deeply satisfying random series of musical sequences.  The top portion of the sculpture is a visually fascinating celestial dance transferring the entertainment from audio to visual while regulating and randomizing the audio experience.

David designed Silver Symphony without regard to size or cost, he just followed a dream.  Realizing that dreams aren't very practical, but loving the sound and effect, David took what he had learned and started work on a smaller wall mounted version.  The result is Silver Song, a wall mounted kinetic chime using Woodstock Percussion Olympos Chime tubes that are tuned to an an ancient Greek pentatonic scale. It provides a similar relaxing ambiance to help the listener unwind and enjoy, but with a more practical space requirement!

This design borrows elements from Chime Carillon of 1988 and combines it with twenty years of added experience in improving and fine tuning the design, construction of the mechanism and control of the sound. There is extensive information about both designs at David's web site at www.woodthatworks.com.

Double Cascade • Multiplying Kinetic Sculptures

I recently combined four White Water sculptures together to create Double Cascade. This modular concept continues to grow! I have now created sculptures with one, two, three, and now four White Water modules.

Open House Soon:

Also - an advanced announcement.  Marji and I are planning an open house at my studio in Ashford, CT Columbus Day weekend 2010, Oct. 9th and 10th. Start planning a road trip to Connecticut to see the fall leaves and visit us. More new work will be on display!  Additional info will follow here on this blog or sign up for my mailing list.

Installation: Juxtapostition of Science & Art

David installed Willow Wind at Eastern Connecticut State University on April 21, 2010. The kinetic sculpture is displayed in the new science building and was acquired by the university based on faculty requests.  The juxtaposition of science and art continues to fascinate David.

For more information on Willow Wind be sure to check it out in the archive section of the website.

Sculpture screen savers

Free screen savers of my kinetic sculptures available here.

After many requests over the years I've finally found a way to create screen savers of my spring driven wood sculptures. Time and technology have come together to make it possible.

I've been building animations of my kinetic sculpture ideas in Adobe After Effects for many years because it works well with my drawing program of choice, Adobe Illustrator. The animations I made were too small to fill a screen and when I increased the size the animation files became huge. It wasn't a practical screen saver. Jump forward a few years. Video compression techniques have greatly improved giving smaller file sizes and most internet connections are faster so downloading isn't a problem.

The last piece of the puzzle was finding a way to turn the animations into actual screen savers that would run on any machine. A bit of internet research led me to a program called iScreensaver Designer. It takes the animation movies I create and converts them into screen savers that can work on Macs or Windows computers. The only catch is that the computer must have  Apple's Quicktime installed for the screen saver to play but that is also free and readily available.

Needless to say once I found that I had a whole screen to work with I had to play a little. It's great fun!

You can find my first screen savers at this link. I've decided to share them for free. Each screen saver is based on one of my actual sculptures and shows a brief approximation of how that sculpture moves. Keep in mind that the animation is fixed and doesn't vary over time like the motion in the "real" world. To see that you'll have to come and see the actual sculptures.

Enjoy!