Hi crook-ga,
The kind of kinetic sculpture that converts steady fluid flow into
unsteady flow is beautiful to watch, and the underlying physical
principles are of great interest to scientists in a number of fields.
The sculpture in the grounds of the Royal Brompton Hospital in
Kensington, London, was made in copper by Philip Kilner, who works in
the Magnetic Resonance Imaging unit at the hospital. There's a picture
of the sculpture, and a link to a three-megabyte animated image of it,
at the top-right of the following page:
Flowforms (Philip Kilner)
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~gzy/heart/flowforms/flowforms.htm
In this, as in all flowforms, a continuous stream of fluid enters a
specially-shaped chamber which induces asymmetric and rhythmic
recirculation.
Philip Kilner has used magnetic resonance imaging to research
flowforms in bloodflow through the heart, and also produced the cover
picture for the issue of Nature that described his work:
Imaging cardiac blood flow
http://www.nature.com/nature/cover/cover000413.html
The flowform principle was discovered by John Wilkes at Emerson
College in 1970. The story of the discovery and development of these
sculptures is told at the Virbela Flowforms home page, which includes
an animated flowform image:
http://www.anth.org.uk/virbelaflowforms/
John Wilkes approaches flowforms according to Steiner-based
anthroposophical principles, which you may or may not find
approachable, according to your background. His Virbela Institute
holds summer courses on topics such as "Metamorphosis and Rhythms in
Water" which includes experimentation, demonstrations and discussions
of flowform behavior.
http://www.emerson.org.uk/summer.htm#metamorphosis
A good place to start researching fluid mechanics as it can be applied
to sculptures is with the conference proceedings of Language of Water,
a four day International Science-Art Conference that was held in Bath,
UK in April 2001.
The conference program, and details of contributors (including their
professional contact addresses) can be obtained from the conference
site:
http://www.languageofwater.com/ (click on "programme" and
"contributors")
If you are interested in researching flowforms through geometric
ratios and molecular structure, there is much research to be done.
David Levermore of the University of Arizona warns:
"The endeavor to understand how fluid dynamical equations can be
derived from kinetic theory goes back to the founding works of Maxwell
and Boltzmann. Most of these derivations are well understood at
several formal levels by now, and yet their full mathematical
justifications are still missing."
http://www.math.uchicago.edu/~ryzhik/camp_fall00.html
Don't expect to find many scientific articles indexed under
"flowforms" or "kinetic sculpture". Instead, look for terms such as
"chaos", "turbulence" and "fluid dynamics".
There's a wealth of material available. Here are some directory
listings that will get you started. Look within these directory
listings for terms such as "fluid":
Google Directory: Science -> Math -> Chaos and Fractals -> Chaos
http://directory.google.com/Top/Science/Math/Chaos_and_Fractals/Chaos/
Google Directory: Science -> Physics -> Fluid Mechanics and Dynamics
http://directory.google.com/Top/Science/Physics/Fluid_Mechanics_and_Dynamics//
A graphical image of chaotic fluid movement
http://www.oberlin.edu/~atacha/atrollover1.html
There are many makers of commercial flowform kinetic sculptures,
including Flowforms Pacific, an association of artists and scientists,
http://flowforms.co.nz/
whose site includes background information on flowforms and links to
flowform makers in other countries.
Additional links:
Curriculum Vitae for John Wilkes and details of Flow Design Research
Group
http://www.anth.org.uk/virbelaflowforms/people.htm#A%20John%20Wilkes
Greenmarque Design's gallery of flowform kinetic sculptures
http://homepages.poptel.org.uk/greenmarque/flowforms/
Greenmarque Design's flowform link page
http://users.bluecarrots.com/laurence/page6.html
David Levermore's CV and refereed journal articles
http://www.math.umd.edu/~lvrmr/Vitae/Levermore.shtml
David Levermore's timeline and history of kinetic theory
http://www.math.umd.edu/~lvrmr/History/index.shtml
Google searches used:
sculpture "brompton hospital"
://www.google.com/search?q=sculpture+%22brompton+hospital%22
"kinetic" periodic fluid
://www.google.com/search?q=kinetic+periodic+fluid
periodic "steady flow" fluid convert OR conversion OR converted
://www.google.com/search?q=periodic+%22steady+flow%22+fluid+convert+OR+conversion+OR+converted
"stokes and acoustic limits" levermore
://www.google.com/search?q=%22stokes+and+acoustic+limits%22+levermore
flowform OR flowforms
://www.google.com/search?q=flowform+OR+flowforms
virbela
://www.google.com/search?q=virbela
chaos fluid
://www.google.com/search?q=chaos+fluid
Regards,
eiffel-ga |
