WIND POWER
Artistic Exploration, Alternative Energy, Community Needs, Biomimetic Design
A toolkit for design professionals.
Seek Kinetic
While traveling in Sante Fe, New Mexico to study complexity, three biomimeticists came across an entire field of kinetic sculptures at the base of a hill of artists’ residences and galleries. These giant metal blooms spun in the heated air and inspired a look at the interactions of wind and life.
One of the three had discovered the art of Alexander Calder some years before and had been involved in the making of a kinetic sculpture that a handful of children could drive. Another had just recently discovered the silent flight of owls and was fascinated by their wings. The third had spent some time examining the ways seeds escaped their pods when heated to see whether inspiration for fire-fighting might be found there. The three stood at the entrance to the field in the valley of the hill and wondered whether a biomimicry seed pod to investigate and create art exploring wind and life might be of interest to others.
Seek out the various representations of human interaction with the wind, in the form of mobiles, wind turbines, gliders, parachutes, planes, kinetic sculptures, hovercrafts, and helicopters. Discover the sculptures of Sante Fe, the penny plane, and biomimetic robotic birds. Seek out the inspirations for the plane of the Wright Brothers, the 1906 Austrian maple seed glider, the work of Calder and that of DaVinci. Find inspirations you love and gather them to you.
Then seek more broadly to find further inspiration from the natural world. What is cushioned with atmosphere, sustained by air, or moved by the wind? Look at the water filtration performed by aerobic bacteria and the geometry of soap bubbles. Examine the thistle, the alpine swift, and barn swallow. Discover the owl, the flying squid, and the penguin’s use of supercavitation.
Seek inspiration.
In collaboration with the creative Brinn Pierce and exceptional industrial designer Tori Cunningham, an effort is underway for a self-driven, kinetic sculpture design challenge meant to help artists express their thinking about wind power and a set of specific community needs.
The kit allows users to unearth Cunningham's sequenced alcoves with my narratives and directives like these four paragraphs. Opening each new segment of the pod reveals exploration or prototyping supplies offered to metamorphize a studio space, shift an approach to a problem, or redefine an understanding of the challenge.
