Video

Concept

This is a wind sculpture with a moire effect. I design a moire effect that when two pieces are at the right angle, a whale tail shape would appear in its moire effect. I made one side of the sculpture driven by wind and another side driven by human beings. People could only see the whale moire effect at a rate of 2.5%. The miracle of life is even in a smaller percentage. People would try to rotate the sculpture to chase after the whale tail shape. But when people are too close to the sculpture, they would not see the whale clearly. The whale could only be seen at a distance when wind and gravity are fine. I want to use this sculpture to show the rareness of the appearance of a living creature.

Studying of Moire Effect

I studied a lot about the moire effect and especially the moire effect during rotation. Usually, moire effect would be much more evident when it is just moving the two layers. I figure out that the lines should look alike but slightly different at any degree of rotation.
I studied the radial pattern’s moire effect. It is interesting during movement but not so effective when it is during rotation.
Then I switch to another more circular pattern .
In order to make the moire effect happen, I need to make the lines intersect with the whale outline at an appropriate degree. 30 degrees to 60 degrees to the tangent line of the intersection point is the best. So I modeled several line patterns to fit this whale shape pattern to get the best result in its moire effect.
Also, to fabricate it into a whole piece of wood, I need to make the piece each line connected so it would not fall apart.

Installation and stories

I enjoyed a lot when I finally installed this installation in Zhongshan Park for 14 days. There are also random and funny stories everyday. I am so glad that people could run into art in this way.

I make the documentation of my whole working process and stories in park in the following link.

whole documentation