All the big sculptures energise their sites and collectively energise the whole city. It is because they are great art, and because of the technology embedded in them. The artists are testing new materials, or stretching familiar materials in new ways, especially with kinetic sculptures.
PACIFIC GRASS
The first Meridian wind sculpture required 1,600 rods each up to six meters high that were flexible enough to bend freely in the wind, yet stiff enough to return to upright when still. The rods also needed the design of a sturdy system of fixing them to the ground.
A national search found a Gisborne firm able to make a high spec carbon-fibre-resin rod ideal for the job.
ZEPHYROMETER
The second was the huge spike Zephyrometer. The artist submitted this at 13 meters, we suggested that he double that but it ended up at 33 meters. Phil Price constructed the whole pole himself, making a tapering wooden frame and applying a smooth fibreglass finish.
The joints on which the spike pivots are high precision engineering, enabling it to move in any direction as the wind dictates.
TOWER OF LIGHT
The third contains a device allowing the wind to determine the number of neon rings that light up at any time. The rotation speed of the spinning flanges at the top drive the device.
In light winds, only the bottom rings alight; the number increases with wind strength; all nine rings alight in a gale.
URBAN FOREST
Urban Forest defies physics by making cubes on spindles spin in the wind. The problem had been resolved before, overseas, by asymmetrically concaving the surfaces of the cube, but the artist wished to keep the surfaces flat.
Our solution developed in a Hutt Valley engineering shop was to perforate sections of the cubes’ surface. The differential wind impact on the perforated and solid parts of each face causes the spin.
AKAU TANGI
We had works that bent, pivoted, made light and spun, so #5 should make sound. Eminent sound artist Phil Dadson created Akau Tangi, the sighing sound of the wind.
Ten poles march out of Evans Bay, the cones at the top containing fabulous engineering. They spin, they change direction, they light up, and they make a harmonious keening sound.
LISTENING AND VIEWING DEVICE
This work in the Botanic Garden tested the artist with the construction of the giant copper tubing funnel, which ended up requiring the biggest twin-rotor helicopter in the country to bring it in.
The artwork features a gyroscopic-type balance on the top of the poles, enabling the funnel to be pushed or move in the wind.
PROTOPLASM
Protoplasm has sophisticated joints and bearings between the green discs permitting the four pieces to move separately or all together, but never in unison, and to be disturbed by the slightest wind.
Viewers often do not believe it is simply wind driven, with no other mechanism involved.
WATER WHIRLER
Len Lye’s Water Whirler is the most technologically sophisticated work we have ever commissioned, unmatched anywhere. It took five years of R&D before it was ready for installation.
The springs enable it rock in every direction, while the motors pump water up the pole and out the nozzles and rotate the pole to make fabulous patterns of spray. It is all choreographed electronically.
Our static sculptures test technology too – for example
SKYBLUES
SkyBlues had two profound challenges that took years to resolve. One was to make the seven tapering, 11 meter high stainless steel poles: no factory in New Zealand could do these to specification and the only solution was to segment them.
The other was to make the 21 three-dimensional neon squiggles, which our best neon benders could not do from drawings. The artist had to shape steel strips first.
SPINNING TOP
This work stretched the capability of a Palmerston North stainless steel fabricator highly skilled at manufacturing milk tankers, especially the hieroglyphic shapes impressed on the disc. But they got it right second time.
Please enjoy them all as art and as energisers.
