Ben Storch
My work stems from a fascination with fluid, dynamic motion, whether witnessed in nature, human motion or computer-aided visualisations in the sciences. I believe that this is based on a deep-seated kinesthetic empathy with orbital and vortex-like motions, maybe similar to a dancer working with and balancing forces of spin and gravity.
This was originally inspired by Harmonograph drawings by Edward Lias,
called 'Cosmographs', which led to an attempt of materialising these
as sheet metal ribbons. This required a thorough understanding of the
process of 'anticlastic raising',
where negative, saddle-shaped curvatures are achieved by stretching
the peripheral areas of a sheet metal surface.
Strange attractor animation in Unity to the soundtrack ‘Aether’ by Jim and Jillian Graham (aka Levete, https://levete.bandcamp.com/album/aether)
During my research into anticlastic surfaces and the related mathematics in 2002, I also started to explore ‘strange attractors’ and did a rudimentary animation in MATLAB. Seventeen years later, advances in VR technology inspired me to make this fully immersive using the game engine Unity. The video shows a combination of Aizawa, Anishchenko–Astakhov, Halvorsen, Rucklidge and Sprott system iterations using an asset coded by N-body Physics, capable of rendering one hundred thousand spheres, and more, in real time.
Lissajous is part of a series of sculptures of various sizes inspired by Harmonograms drawn by computer scientist Edward Lias, which he called 'Cosmographs'. The repeating but slightly offset curves with successive pendulum revolutions suggested twisting three-dimensional ribbons, something I knew was possible to achieve in my chosen field of silversmithing. The form was visualised and planned in Rhino CAD software, and sheet metal was hammered into anticlastic curvatures using special hammers and saddle-shaped stakes, expanding on processes developed by Heikki Seppä and Michael Good. The form also follows the principle of a Möbius strip, something that is not the case with Harmonogram 'ribbons'.