Twirling lights

After making the mirror ripples exhibit, this was another mirror-mechanical exhibit that I thought would be fun to make. In contrast to the controlled wavelike motion of the previous prototype, I tried to make this one whimsical and focused more on the mechanism of movement itself. I had shards of mirrors glued onto the cams and wheels, and the crank was turned it would cause the wheels to turn in an elaborate and slightly random way, thus projecting random shimmers and flickers onto a tilted screen behind it. I really liked how the flickers somehow resembled an underwater scene, and it was really fun to watch what angles of the mirrors would produce the flashiest results.

The ideal interaction would be that people would look at the light patterns, and then observe the wild movements the wheels would make that would generate these reflections.

Sebastian pointed out that it might be more interesting if it were more  the gears were changeable, and though I'm still not very sure about how I'd make that work, it's something that I'd like to look into. It's definitely something that this prototype would benefit from, since at this stage it is still somewhat lacking in interactive elements.