Our project, “Growing Flower”, is an interactive art installation of a plant that grows (i.e. inflates) when it is poured with a stream of water. This symbolizes nature in the form of a living being that responds to and interacts with its environment when it is exposed to external stimuli. The resulting art work portrays how plants are more simular to other living beings than we, as a project team, initially thought.
The project was divided into 3 phases which is concepting phase, research phase, and finally the realization phase.
Concepting phase
The initial brainstorming process resulted in a total of 47 product ideas related to programmable inflatables. That is why we needed many voting and discussion sessions with the challenge owners. This phase resulted in one project concept to be worked out further: the ‘Growing Flower’.
Research phase
There are 2 types of research that was conducted during the research phase. The first one was research on applicable materials for the product. This research mostly consists of studying materials that was printable on-campus to see which fits best for the part of the project. There was also material research using Nitinol, which is a material that expands when exposed to certain amount of heat. But after further research, Nitinol would not seem to work on the ‘Growing Flower’ installation.
The second type of research is the techniques research, which are research on ways of how to control the movements of the flowers, such as:
- Origami Method
- 3D Printing Techniques
- Electromagnets
Realization phase
The results of the materials and techniques research were applied during the realization phase.
For the realization phase, the project team was divided into subteams to focus on different parts of the installation. Each subteam made their individual prototyping on the part to see what fits and what does not for mechanism for the final design of the installation. These were our subteams:
- Water Team. They focussed on the mechanism of inside the pot using water to control the movement of the tree
- Tree Team. They focused on the tree itself, including the petals and what type of movement they want it to do.
- Wigglers Team. They focused on the decorative section of the installation, small plants around the tree that wiggles at the same time when the tree is moving.
Video
Acknowledgement
The student team would like to express a “big thank you” to Tom Kortbeek and Roos Meerman (Fillip Studios, Pi Lab) and Isolde Hallensleben (Art & Tech course of TU/e).