Thousands of motorized copper droplets dance in computational unison through the atrium of Terminal 1.

“Kinetic Rain” Changi Airport Singapore

Kinetic Rain is an installation made from 1,216 aluminum raindrops, coated in gleaming CNC-milled copper. Each of the droplets is suspended from the ceiling by a thin steel rope, connected to a system of individual motors embedded in a drop ceiling. Hanging in a 30-foot-high atrium of Changi’s newly renovated Terminal 1, the copper bells rise and fall in sequences programmed by ART+COM’s computational designers. At certain moments, they converge into shapes—a parabolic arc, or even a sketch of a jet plane. At other moments, they fall through the atrium like actual raindrops. “We are in Singapore,” adds Ängeslevä in the making-of video, “in a way, it’s a tropical theme, in the form of rain.”

ART+COM used custom-developed software to choreograph the droplets into elegant patterns and volumes, which coalesce and dissolve over 15-minute intervals. Each droplet acts like a pixel, creating an extremely low-res 3-D screen (Core77 calls it “a mechanical hologram!”). The effect reminds us of another recent piece of public art—Jim Campbell’s 2010 light-bulb-as-pixel screen in Madison Square Park. In that installation, Campbell used advanced computational software to produce incredibly lo-fi 3-D drawings. Could a DIY version of these high-tech, low-res 3-D screens be far behind?

source :  http://tinyurl.com/h87tznd