Building Sculpture System 5

From Polydron prototypes and a CNC router at Fab Lab Iceland to a night installation on the Eldfell lava field, and a second build at the Newcastle Maker Faire.

The first question was: what shape should it be?

At Fab Lab Iceland on Heimaey we spread Polydron pieces across a table (small plastic triangles that hinge together the same way the full-scale system does) and asked the children and young people who would be building the sculpture to design it. Each piece is a loose triangle; its edges carry a ring of connector discs that interleave with those of its neighbours, locked by a single metal rod. The geometry is open: the form only emerges from what closes up.

Polydron pieces on a table at Fab Lab Iceland, used to design the sculpture form
Diagram: connector disc positions (top left), piece shape (top right), two pieces interlocked (bottom)
Edmund Harriss holding a freshly cut piece in front of the Fab Lab Iceland sign

Once a form was agreed, the CNC router took over. Fab Lab Iceland’s ShopBot cut the twenty pieces from sheets of birch plywood, routing the curved outlines and drilling the precise holes for the connector discs in a single pass. The sawdust settled across the lab floor as the shapes emerged.

All twenty pieces laid out on the CNC bed after routing, the full vocabulary of the system
CNC router cutting the curved body of a piece from plywood at Fab Lab Iceland
Close-up: a connector disc held in position on the lava, metal rod threaded through both pieces

After cutting came sanding and painting. We primed each piece white, which turned out to matter: against the black lava field of Eldfell, the white sculpture is visible from a long way off.

Painting and priming a piece, the connector disc recesses visible in the hinge positions
Three people finishing the pieces before heading to the lava field, Heimaey
Two figures scouting the Eldfell lava field, the site where the sculpture will be installed

We carried the pieces out to the lava field in the late afternoon. Eldfell erupted in 1973, burying a third of Heimaey under new rock; the ground we stood on was thirty-six years old. We laid the pieces flat, connected the first joints, and let the form find itself, adding pieces at the open edges, threading the metal rods through the interleaved discs, adjusting angles by feel. The mathematical condition is that the surface closes: that the last piece fits back against the first. You can sense when the angles are running wrong before you can calculate it.

First pieces laid out on the black lava field at Eldfell, Heimaey, assembly beginning
Assembling pieces on the lava field, kneeling with drill and toolbox, the black lava behind
Two pieces being linked on the lava field, showing the tab-and-disc joint that allows each piece to pivot

By the time the sculpture was finished it was dark. The white form glowed against the lava as if lit from inside.

Sculpture System 5 rising from the lava field at dusk, the white form beginning to take shape in the dark
Sculpture System 5 complete on the Eldfell lava field at night, the white form luminous against total darkness
The completed sculpture tiny against the vast slope of the Eldfell lava field at night

It stayed on the lava field through the Icelandic year. Through the long summer: low sun, the basalt cliffs of Heimaey behind, the North Atlantic beyond. Through the winter, when snow filled the connector discs and turned the whole piece into a white drift. In May 2010 the Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted on the mainland, and the sculpture was photographed at sunset with the ash cloud rising across the water behind it. A commenter noted that the shape of the plume echoed the form of the sculpture: mathematics and geology briefly rhyming.

Sculpture System 5 with the dramatic coastal cliffs of Vestmannaeyjar behind, summer 2009
Sculpture System 5 at sunset with the Eyjafjallajökull eruption cloud rising pink across the water, May 2010
Sculpture System 5 snow-packed on the lava field, the outer islands of Vestmannaeyjar behind, December 2009

The second build was at the Newcastle Maker Faire in March 2010. We painted the pieces in a garage in the days before, then drove them north and assembled the sculpture live over two days on the Faire floor, with visitors watching and sometimes helping to thread the rods and close the final joints. At the end of the weekend it was loaded onto a van and shipped to the JamJar collective in Leeds.

Painting the pieces in the garage before transport to Newcastle
People assembling Sculpture System 5 live at the Newcastle Maker Faire, March 2010
Sculpture System 5 fully assembled at the Newcastle Maker Faire

Sources

The original blog posts documenting the project as it happened:

The Fab Lab Iceland wiki page for the project: Sculpture System No. 5.