Kinetic Sculpture for the City of Port Coquitlam 

By: Elaine, Maliyah, Emma, Petra, and Maia

Our idea is to make a kinetic sculpture that moves when you crank the handle. It will be an interactive sculpture placed in a playground with children to build teamwork skills with one another. We designed Indigenous animals to represent Port Coquitlam and its history as well as the cycle of life. We created it to show how each animal is viewed in Indigenous stories and their importance.

 

The Process in Photos:

 

Significance of Each Animal in Indigenous Stories:

Starting from the bottom of the sculpture to the top. Sea, land, and sky are the three aspects we are representing.

Overall we didn’t use many digital tools for our project but we did use one new tool to edit our video. We didn’t want to use the green screen so we used Photo booth which is a digital tool that Mr. Barazzuol showed us how to use. This digital tool was used to remove the background from our video of our Kinetic Sculpture project so that we could place it in a video of the playground that our sculpture would go in. This tool was useful as we didn’t need to go through the trouble with using the green screen as we could just quickly edit out the background with a website. Some familiar digital tools that we used was Capcut. We used Capcut to layer our videos so that it looked like our sculpture project was in the park. Some other familiar digital tools we also used a citation machine and we went to google when we needed help researching for our project. Overall, our group explored multiple digital tools and they helped us to complete our project and helped us expand our knowledge with technology.

• What were the struggles you faced when you were building your sculpture, and how did you fix them?

As we were building our structure we had to decide what materials we would need and how we would design it to avoid obstacles. We built our gears inside the base of the box but as we tested it out, the sticks we used were not sturdy enough and they did not allow for a smooth spin. We came up with an idea to cut pencil crayons to a shorter length and use those instead of popsicle sticks. We made this change and our project was able to spin much smoother and with less effort. Another struggle we faced was as we added on more layers and decorations, the top of the box started sinking in which made it harder to spin. To fix this, we first tried inputting long sticks inside the box to support the top from bending inwards. This did not work as well as we thought as it was blocking the gears inside from working properly. We then realized the spinning tier part was tipping sideways, so we shifted it slightly to the side it was tipping which successfully fixed the issue of it tipping over and it made the spinning more smooth. If we were to input this creation as a permanent part of the city, we would use much more sturdier and reliable materials such as wood for the box which would eliminate it’s weaknesses and it’s struggle to spin. Overall, our group fixed the obstacles to the best of our ability and we were able to overcome the challenged while creating our project. 

• How did you verify and cite the information you found?

I verified and cited the information I found by using a citation machine and relying on Google Scholar. I found resources that were not suspicious or written by unknown people. During my research, I would check where my cite got this information from and pondered over whether it was suspicious or not. The citation machine I used is a reliable source.

• How did the process of completing this challenge go? What could you have done better?