documentation

Research
Data
Visualization

I learnt that the movement of tides are constantly related to the moon phases. want to create a collective experience of individuals’ lifelong experience of moon observation. I started with collecting 100 photos taken by different people regarding moon observing and made a compilation book. I gathered the shutterspeed of their photos and made another one to present individual differences when taking photos of the full moon rise.

I collected over 100 images of moons from different people’s photo gallery and processed them based on their metadata

By analyzing the metadata of these moon photos I created an archive based on their shutterspeed, timestamp and file size.

I then made a compilation book based on the data visualized.

Prototype
Development

Based on the data collected and visualized, I started to think about the final form and I consider the circular pattern to be the essential part of the entire experience.

My original idea was to jot down the tidal movement in a form of sine wave by transforming rotary movents to sine waves using linear actuators but after seeing the photos and data visualized I shifted the focus to circular patterns.

Then I fabricated a container of it with a holder for the pen to see how it goes using cardboard and scrap wood. I used the caliper a lot to test the motors’ holes.

This is the prototype of my initial gut feeling of the piece approaching tidal movements. It visualize the movements based on the water stains drawn when drawing the circular patterns.

Idea
Finalization

But I think the materiality of drawing is too stiff and does not convey the ephemerality and eternality of tides perfectly. In order to perfectly portray such quality, I shifted focus to actually using water as the embodiment of such visualization

The initial idea was to cast the vibration from beneath the apparatus so people wouldn’t see the vibrating disc but only see the visuals. Yet in order to capture such thing, the surface would have to be super thin while the effects were barely visible. In order to capture maximum visuals, I had to switch to putting the disc directly into water

I then proceeded with adding more vibration discs using the multiplexer since they have the same I2C address.

I bought the hooks and wires which was used to hang oil paintings for my plates. By using calipers to test the distances, I started laser cutting my final plates for the water and the board and used heatgun to reshape it