Like much of our work, Gravity’s Rainbow, is an exploration of how we can foreground and make apparent what are typically invisible forces within the world. In this case, gravity is used as a real-time form and pattern generator. Gravity as a driver of the suspended artwork also seemed contextually apt for the Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art. The Zaha Hadid designed building deals with gravity and lightness through a series of precariously floating concrete volumes. These volumes are stacked above an open public space that makes them appear to be floating. The heaviness of the materials used heightens a visitor’s sense of the stability of architecture and the spaces we occupy. Our installation hangs from these floating boxes into the public space below. While the forms and material are very different, the installation is meant to work with the architecture to amplify the sense of gravity. 

The installation is made of two clusters of hanging laser cut paper strips on either side of the elevator core that are mapped with custom color gradients. The inner ring of each cell moves slowly up and down with a computer-controlled winch. As the ring of each set of paper strips moves, the strips are constantly changing their parabolic shape as they adjust to gravity. In that sense gravity is solving the overall suspended form in real time, while the gradient of each cluster of strips is revealed as the winches move the clusters up and down. Each cluster is made of simple radial

array of catenary curves to create a soft billowing form that contrasts the hard angular nature of the building. The subtle movement of the form and animating patterns is meant to introduce a new character into the space that appears to be strangely alive and breathing as it responds to the animated but stable nature of the architecture. 

While Gravity’s Rainbow is inspired by Antonio Guadi’s chain models and the bubble experiments of Frei Otto used to calculate and design their respective otherworldly architecture, it is less of a model, but a kind of live experiment. In their case, material along with gravity were used to calculate naturally organic shapes through a process of “form-finding.” In our case we are using both material experiments and custom software to create a suspended artwork that is constantly finding its ideal form. In that sense we see the artwork as something that is constantly negotiating with gravity and is emblematic of the constant state of flux we exist in. While simple on their own, the parabolic form and color of each cable has a role to play in creating a much more complex spatial symphony of color and form.