One of the most curious moments in my artistic process is when I switch from thinking about the piece in terms of the clean CAD work and begin to deal with the messy, real world materials that are really going to make it up.

I once saw an interview with Frank Ghery where he said that he always plans his buildings using diffrent scales and materials so as to never become too attached to any one model because they have no real relationship to what you are actually going to get.

For example, in the CAD drawings of the The Neuron Chamber, the hemispheric caps are smooth and clean. But the object that is be this part is far from being smooth and clean.

Here are a photo of the original steel sphere that we are going to use to get the hemispheres:

Here it s cut in half and a detail shot of the funky, flange on the end. We are going to leave all this stuff on (not the stickers) and incorporate it into the sculpture. The idea is to really make this look as technical and functional as possible.

On a separate note we’ve really begun to push the axon/arc/spiker-puller apparatus. It’s totally jankey and ugly but hey we are still in the prototyping stage here. Here you can see that we’ve run the ball chain though two bent lengths of copper tubing with a slot in them (in these photos on one tube has a slot). The ball chain has a stainless steel nail welded onto it that rides in the slot. We’ve also gotten motor and button attached to the chain sprocket.

The idea is that the motor (via the sprocket) turns the ball chain and pulls the nail though the curve defined by the copper tube. The action on this is quite smooth as the balls have minimal surface contact with the tube and the copper is good an slippery. The nail will connect and then pull the arc along the curve.

It works very well for something some quickly make and give me great confidence that when we really dial it in it’s going to work like a charm.

I really liked the way the ball looked as they moved thought the copper tube — it made me think of blood cells moving though capillarities or vesicles of neurotransmitter traveling down the axon.

I know it’s a bit dull but here are is one set of the angle iron that define the pentagon chamber.

I should be picking up the first round of waterjet cut parts today and we’ll be assembling the core chamber this weekend. So stay tuned!