testing motion

so, trying to find a way to make the plants move led us to putting a motor against the trunk and branches of one ...

it's pretty sweet having some technical gurus fussing over my sculptural ideas, instead of it being me fiddling about in the studio by myself.

the motor was a bit noisy and not really generating any appropriate motion, just very low level vibration.

so we tried an actuator and that was pretty good. it created a better twitching motion that looked quite organic, like muscle twitches. but it was a bit clicky and a basically just pokes the plant. so we've got to resolve that with some adaptations, but it's promising for sure.

one of the limitations though, with the actuators, is that they are quite expensive. the one we were using with testing is about $80 and if i was to have a garden of say 20 plants ... that's pretty pricy. we'll keep working through the options, including memory wire (which isn't due in until wednesday).