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Ombak:  Interactive Sculpture  

Part of cyber physical system program at Imperial College London

team
Carmen Danae Azor, Sean Cheng

“Ombak” in Indonesian, meaning “Wave” is a real-time gesture-controlled kinetic sculpture inspired by the nature and movement of physical and sonic waves, powered by machine learning. Two arrays of 20 hand-cut Lebanese cedar wood planks are connected by a nylon thread that passes through their center, and the array of planks is installed by hanging from the ceiling.




The design was first inspired by Greek artist Yiannis Kranidiotis who created a moving installation based on solar wind data. From there, we adapted the idea and changed the input to real-time machine learning to make the installation move by hand gesture as the project back then required us to do a machine-based input.
       
The user interacts with the system by hand-gesture movement that are recorded via a webcam to “Handpose OSC” which turns the video images into OSC messages. The Arduino board receives OSC messages and connects to a motor shield and 4 servo motors that are attached to the nylon threads at the base of the sculpture. The bottom plank receives the 180-degree rotation motion from the servo motor which is attached to the nylon thread creating a natural movement that slides upwards.

Watch the complete video of the program herE ↗


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