Deep Sea Bloom is an interactive kinetic artwork which mimics the living shapes of a coral flowering. The project senses the proximity of a participant and comes to life. The closest flower head awakens with light, and shyly withdraws itself into the safety of its burrow.

References

Deep sea bloom is inspired by the organic form of coral, which retracts or expands in response to changes in its surroundings.

References for materiality and mechanics:

(Jouin, 2018)                                                                                               (Curran, 2016)

Exploded Axonometric of One Unit

Set-up

INPUT | OUTPUT

The INPUT – human interaction – is sensed by a kinect in the centre of the board, which detects the vertical distance between the user point and the device. The depth read by the kinect activates an OUTPUT of both the fibre optic lights changing colour and the stepper motor rotating to move the mechanism up or down, subsequently opening and closing the flower.

Next steps

We imagine the application of this project in the future as an emersive experience to simulate corals artificially, when climate change inevitably extinguishes all natural coral types.

Deep Sea Bloom is a project of IaaC, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia developed at Master in Advanced Architecture, in 2019 by:
Students: Ankita Bob, Anton Koshelev, Jose Isidro, Megan Smylie & Sara Costa
Faculty: Angel Munoz & Cristian Rizzuti.