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Choreographed Metal Rain Would Make an Awesome 3D Display

By Rain Noe - July 9, 2012

in Object Culture

This is the most beautiful thing I've seen in a long time, and your must-see video of the day. Singapore's Changi Airport commissioned German "new media" firm ART+COM to design an art installation for their Departure Hall for Terminal 1. What they came up with is "Kinetic Rain," this gorgeous, CNC-controlled moving sculpture made from 608 copper-clad aluminum raindrops suspended from the ceiling:

Aside from the sheer artistic beauty of "Kinetic Rain," how cool would this thing be as a 3D display? It would admittedly be low-res, and you'd need to work out a way to increase the "pixel density," but when I saw that airplane I was like man—mechanical hologram!

Here's how it works:"Kinetic Rain" is composed of two parts, each consisting of 608 rain droplets made of lightweight aluminum covered with copper. Suspended from thin steel ropes above the two opposing escalators, each droplet is moved precisely and seemingly floating by a computer-controlled motor hidden in the halls ceiling. The entire installation spans a total area of more than 75 square meters and spreads over 7.3 meters in height.

"Kinetic Rain" follows a 15-minute, computationally designed choreography where the two parts move together in unison, sometimes mirroring, sometimes complementing, and sometimes responding to each other. In addition, several spot light sources mounted below the installation create a play of shadows on the terminal's ceiling as they illuminate the movement of the rain droplets.

Lastly, here's the making-of vid:

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Holland and Green

12 years ago

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Very interesting concept. Thanks for the video link Nick.
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LY

12 years ago

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This is even more gorgeous in real , complete with music and all. Gorgeous art installment. Yes, it did remind me of the BMW one that I saw online, but I can count myself lucky to seeing something similar in real !!
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Nick

12 years ago

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BMW has a similar installation that creates 3D outlines of their cars

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_xqOoUmWpI
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AJ

12 years ago

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Quite similar to the piece at the BMW museum
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Dan

12 years ago

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Wouldn't really work as a 3D display though, more like a 2.5D display since you cannot really have two "drops" occupying different heights but in the same X and Y position. So basically it would still only be one layer of drops, regardless of how that's configured.
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Thomas Mancuso

12 years ago

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Very cool work, reminds me of a piece at sfmoma, http://www.sfmoma.org/exhib_events/exhibitions/436
This also reminds me of the 'hologram' you suggest.
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