Wallflower Project

Wallflower is a wall sculpture which will have eight articulated arms with three joints each.
It will use an advanced version of Octofungi's brain which will greatly improve the responsiveness and the behavior of the piece.
Also, Wallflower will have a more sophisticated sensory system which will increase the resolution of its environmental perception.

As is name indicate this is a wall sculpture wich respond to it's environment ambient light and sound as well as more direct interactions.
The chalenge is that eventhough the memory shape aloy are quite remarquable materials they do have some serious draw back.
First they consume lots of power in short they are very ineficient and limits the level of power autonomy that the piece can have.
Second they are quite frangile in some respect if they are strain more than 3 persent they start to show structural degradation that shorten their life.
Also temperature can cause damage if not properly control to the wire and or the structure around. And
Finaly Time response seems to be limited to about one second for contraction and relaxation at best.

I have been experimenting now for quite some time with EAPs (electroactive polymers) that show promising results but which have also still some significant problems including a short life time at this stage the material is very sensitive to environmental polution and UV light and start to degrade rapidly. also micro fractures are forming while they are being used and cause total failure after a few thousand contractions. Many companies and research centers feversly working to improve their reliability. I at this stage I still have to convince my self that such material could be use on a sculpture that need to functions for long period of time with out excessive maintenace. But that may change in the near future.

In effect I have been exploring many avenues for project like Wallflower and others to find ways to make their motion closer to living creature and further away from robotic machines. Many products in develoment seem promessing like the SMAs, EAPs, Nanotube fibers, etc. Some of them are alraidy comecialy available eventhough often at some prohibitively expensive prices.

The Wallflower project is currently in developent and should be around 3 feet in diameter for the small version and 5 feet for the large one.

Like many of my sculptures to reduce the uge cost of developement comes in series.

| Octofungi | Octofungi Overall | Lumabloom | Robo-Ant | AEther Sphere |
| Spherical Display | Lili-Pods | Airius | Cello | Wallflower | Terra-Jaw | Trila | Living Jewelry |
| Sculptues | Living Sculpture Page | The Home Page |

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