Strobe Animated Sculptures

These sculptures are created using 3D printing and some serious patience. By adjusting the rotation when using the golden ratio found pinecones in nature and applying it to these art pieces you get the animation when you sync them with a strobe. This spiral animation effect that seems to continue forever truly blows my mind. I can literally watch these all day. Amazing.

Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/198150547

Mesmerizing? Yep. Curious? Yep. Want it? Duh. 

Blooms are 3D printed sculptures designed to animate when spun under a strobe light. Unlike a 3D zoetrope, which animates a sequence of small changes to objects, a bloom animates as a single self-contained sculpture. The bloom’s animation effect is achieved by progressive rotations of the golden ratio, phi (ϕ), the same ratio that nature employs to generate the spiral patterns we see in pinecones and sunflowers. The rotational speed and strobe rate of the bloom are synchronized so that one flash occurs every time the bloom turns 137.5º (the angular version of phi).* Each bloom’s particular form and behavior is determined by a unique parametric seed I call a phi-nome (/fī nōm/). -John Edmark John Edmark is an artist, designer, and inventor. He teaches at Stanford University. Website: www.JohnEdmark.com Instagram: @John.Edmark A talk about blooms and related work: https://www.exploratorium.edu/blogs/tangents/phyllotactic-spirals-art-john-edmark Purchase blooms: shapeways.com/shops/edmark Video by John Edmark ©2017 Creative Consultant: Terrence Tessaro McArdle Filming: Charlie Nordstrom Music: Bryan Barcinas Pier 9 Artist in Residence program: autodesk.com/air *For this video, rather than using a strobe, the camera was set to a very short shutter speed in order to freeze individual frames of the spinning sculpture.