How do you turn 8,000 nails into a sculptural representation of the wind? Well, one way is to follow what student and interaction designer Charles Aweida has done in an experiment that involves an industrial robot, a foam board, computer simulations, and lots of nails. In an explanatory entitled video called An Exploration in Art + Robotics, Representing Wind Through Digital Fabrication and the Tangible he shows how he's able to transform a simulated 3D model into actuality.
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The robot arm is the bridge between the complexity of the 3D model and the physical sculpture, able to place the nails and replicate the model with incredible accurary, tilting the nails at just the right angle to show the effect of the wind.Aweida explains on his website: "The data-art is based on vector fields stemming from wind data with the goal of representing wind through digital fabrication and the tangible." He notes that this "robot nail art" is a work in progress, so will be interesting to see what the end result is going to be.
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