The Kinetic Sculpture for the BMW Museum (Mechatronical Installation)

For Francis Bacon, accidents were a crucial element in his art. Anything you can make, you make by accident, he said and started to intentionally throw paint onto the canvas when he felt a composition got stuck. How the new form is eked out from the “mess” or how from an undefined mass a final form can emerge, and more generally, how a shape develops into what it will be finally, is at the heart of the ever fascinating process of form-finding. In design, this process is concerned with the search for an appropriate form fit to fulfil the demands of our times. The Kinetic Sculpture for the BMW Museum illustrates the form-finding process in design by translating it metaphorically into an installation. This installation consists of 714 metal spheres hanging from thin steel wires attached to individually controlled stepper motors, and which at first seem to be ruled by accident only. Elegantly and flexibly they move uncoordinatedly up and down through a space covering 6 sqm, before these movements evolve through several concrete and at times planar shapes to enact profiles of historic and current BMW automobiles – just to dissolve again the next instant. The process of form-finding is thus presented with a visually fascinating approach, conveying at the same time how the “open” and “playful” informs a quality of unmistakable elegance and sportiness.