Magna-mation (the puns will never end)

Joe and I came to a standstill. With three weeks remaining, neither of us thought we could achieve the kind of grandiose magnetic installation we were hoping for, but we found a solution that was perhaps better than our original idea.

Pressed for time, I needed to think of something that wouldn’t take over four weeks, was modular, adaptable to any space, could be perceived as both art and education, could be displayed in many formats, and was dynamic in some way.

I thought of multi-format educational paper animation.

Joe and I agreed an animated book (available in print form at its completion) would be a great route to explore. We would create ten or more short, simple and educational animations that could be presented still or in movie format, as either education or art.

Thinking further, I came up with the idea to use magnets as invisible puppet strings; thematically underlining the concepts we wanted to explain. This would also mean our original idea wouldn’t go to waste, since we spent so much time prototyping our original idea.

This is my basic proof-of-concept magnet-animation of an oxygen atom, and how I developed it from our previous compass wall idea.