Melting

- Click here for the videolink on YouTube -

Melting is a zoetrope with an animation of droplets on the surface of a giant humming top.

This zoetrope shows how order emerges from chaos with patterns and rhythms from nature. The animation on the humming top is created in your imagination by rotating the top and lighting it with strobes. The animation makes the top appear to melt and drops flow over the surface. By playing with the speed of the humming top, the animation slowly emerges from a chaos of movements and alternately different patterns and chaos become visible. The droplets on this zoetrope are 3D printed on the surface of the top. The pattern of the drops is based on phyllotactic spirals and the Fibonacci sequence, also known as nature's Golden Ratio. It is the mathematical sequence behind patterns in nature.

This installation invites you to wonder and imagine how this optic illusion is working. It shows how fascinating relations and structures in nature can be and how this can be depicted in a playful and seemingly simple way. It shows how imagination is related to optical illusions.

This installation invites you to wonder and imagine how this optic illusion is working. It shows how fascinating relations and structures in nature can be and how this can be depicted in a playful and seemingly simple way. It shows how imagination is related to optical illusions.

Zoetrope
A zoetrope is a historical animation. The images in the rotating drum provide an 2D-animation as you look through the slits in the drum. It is a repetitive, rotating and historical toy, like a humming top, hence the choice to make the new zoetrope on a humming top. This new zoetrope will have a 3D-anmation.
The spoke patterns on a spinning top appear to change direction as the speed decreases. By changing the number of spokes along the radius of a spinning top, the direction of rotation even appears to alternate with the radius. This effect is on the bottom of 'Melting'.
This can be seen in the a small demo using the following youtube-link:

- Click here for the videolink on YouTube -

Spiral-shapes from nature and Fibonacci array's
With the Fibonacci series you can describe structures and relationships of spiral shapes in nature, the so-called 'phyllotactic spirals', see the photo of the coneflower.
The coneflower is formed by spirals in two different directions. Each direction has a certain number of spirals, these numbers of spirals always have a certain relationship to each other, according to the so-called Fibonacci sequence.
These spiral structures are the basis of the 3D-zoetrope on the surface of the humming top.

Operation of the zoetrope
The new 3D-zoetrope is created by making a pattern with phyllotactic spirals, rotating them and illuminating them with a stroboscope. The number of spirals must be from the Fibonacci sequence and the rotation between two flashes of the strobe must be 137.5 degrees.

This way, the new image of the animation rotates exactly to the right place after each flash of the strobe. The 137.5 degrees is called the golden angle, the Fibonacci sequence consists of the following numbers: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 etc. (the new number is the sum of the last two).

Floating drops
The mathematical Fibonacci arrays and phyllotactic spirals are used as the basis for the patterns on the surface of the humming top. The patterns are made from droplets so that the surface appears to flow or melt. By varying the number of spirals, different patterns are created at different parts of the humming top and by stacking spirals, two different patterns are integrated, so that the drops flow over each other.

Melting


Zoetrope


Toy top


Coneflower


Pattern with phyllotactic spirals


Melting

Made possible by "de Commissie Cultuur & Kwaliteit Zwolle "