Inspiration

One definition of labyrinth is a winding path with no branches, so if you keep walking in one direction, you cover the whole path and end up back where you started.

I like this aesthetic, and think it would be nice as an object designed for touching.

Previous work

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"Wave Form Collapse" seeded random labyrinth, 2018.

"Folding powers of 2" labyrinth, pen plotting, 2021.

Stickers made during fab Week 03.

More Sierpiński curve projects: snow walking, wall lamp, web animation, 3D print.

2D wooden labyrinth, 2018.

Sketch for a 3D wooden labyrinth.

Simulation

Blender geometry nodes

Ropes simulated in Blender. I have a Blender journal that documents that simulation.

With this simulation, I can grow irregular paths around any shape, with various paramters like center of gravity.

3D embed, union of simulated ropes and base icosahedron.

I've printed 3 versions of the same simulation result: ropes only, union with icosahedron, and difference (carving into the polyhedron). There is a pleasing contrast between the regular polyhedron and organic ropes.

Web

I ported the Blender geometry nodes rope simulation to the web, with help from Claude 3.7. I structured the prompt as a readme file, but it took a bunch of iteration to reach parity with the Blender version. I lost Blender's fancy rendering, but gained live parameter tweaking and more direct manpulation and interactive possibility.

Interaction

Idea for a game-like interaction, where a character, represented by one LED of the string, walks along the path, all around the sphere. You have to turn the ball to keep them on top.

Maybe the bottom hemisphere stays blue and sloshes around a bit, to represent water.

Large scale prototype

I bought an addressable LED "rope" with USB power, animation controller, and silicone and nylon diffuser.

By wrapping it around a ball, we could start to get a sense of how it would feel to hold an animating light orb. But I needed a better structure to attach the rope.

Everybody should have a stack of cardboard hexagons handy. This is actually the third life of these hexagons. They started as offcuts of a laser cutting jig, then became prototype game pieces, then became apriltag tokens for Folk Computer.

Cardboard soccer ball ready, a.k.a. truncated icosahedron.

With some zip ties to attach the LED rope. Getting a feel for the form, imagining a mag sensor driving the light motion.

Circuit design

Documented in week 10's post.

Future iterations ꩜

Mirror image prints, to trace with fingers in each hand.

3D modeling: learn how to split shape to be printed as triangles flat on the bed.

CNC carving: translate that design to be carvable.

Electronics: make it possible to insert LED rope, design animations that fit the form.

Open questions

• What is the interaction?
• If I end up with an unconventional display, what will it show?
• Could it be the base of the "calm timer" idea?
• Can I keep the tactile inspiration while adding electronic interactivity, or are those exclusive?