Ferro Experiment – Final

Ferro Experiment

This three part work is a study of pattern using magnets and ferromagnetic materials, including video, physical/motion, and physical/static portions. Each portion exhibits a unique experience of the patterns and shapes created by the ferromagnetic material’s interaction with the magnetic field and its surround medium.

Physical/Static

These objects are each made of ferromagnetic particles and a suspending medium.

Types of Particles: Steel Wool #0000, Steel dust from 150 sandpaper, Steel dust from and iron file. Suspending Mediums: Silicone Sealant, Hot Glue, Super Glue, Paraffin Wax.

Physical/Motion

This contraption exhibits the intriguing behavior of steel dust gathering into lines and flipping over end-on-end. It is counter intuitive behavior since these steel lines have no visible source of the forces acting upon them, just the magnetic field.

Video

This video portrays more particles acting under the influence of a magnetic field.

Types of Particles: Steel Wool #0, Steel Wool #0000, Steel dust from 150 sandpaper, Steel dust from and iron file. Suspending Mediums: Canola Oil, Vegetable Oil, Mineral Oil, Air.

Music by James Storey

Acknowledgements

Thanks for your help: Phil Galanter, R.J. Pena, Brian Smith, James Storey, Jim Murphy

Thanks to Tiffany Sanchez, Sarah Spofford for the super magnets. Thanks to Cameron Coker for the light box.

Making Ferro Objects Round 3

Here I am back at it with new materials. This time I got some superglue, epoxy, and paraffin wax to try. I also picked up an iron file from my dad when I was at home. It is much courser than the sand paper and creates much larger dust particles. They actually look pretty sparkly.

The superglue actually worked really well. Although it’s a bit dangerous to have magnets suddenly adjusting the trajectory of your hand while open superglue is nearby. Anyway… the superglue effectively froze the particles in place. The formations of particles from the sandpaper and from the iron file look very different, but they are both very interesting.

Since the superglue ended up working really well, I decided to skip the epoxy for now. Enough of the very permanent glues for today.

The ended up being very unruly. I used tealight tins as my wax heating container by holding it above a lit tealight with a wrench. This wouldn’t have been a problem, but the wrench was magnetic so in order to pour the wax out effectively, I would often get too close and everything would smash together. Very frustrating. But with the wax you can scrap up the smashed one, with the iron particles in it and melt it down again. Having the particles in the melting wax tin worked well (though better with the iron file particles than the sandpaper particles). The particles would line up and hop out of the tin, covered in just the wax that sticks.

I wish the wax had been a little more transparent, but oh well. Perhaps another time.

I think I will put all my objects on a light table. I really liked Chiang Leng’s memory project for 622. She made all these little resin blocks and put them on a light box. it looked really cool. It also reminds me of them being like specimens or slides for an experiment.

Pretty!

Super glue and epoxy. I didnt end up using the epoxy though.

Paraffin wax block from hobby lobby

Tealights! for melting and just using the metal cup.

First Success

Yeah… so this happened

A lot. Like four times.

Destruction

The bounty!

Video Progress

So editing… SO OVERWHELMING. But I keep trying! What I have so far is just a bunch of clips of the interesting bits. There is actually a lot of footage (at least by my standards), so it’s a lot to remember all of it. This will be a good step for narrowing down the footage for the final video. I’m trying to keep the documentary tips in mind as I look over everything.

James Storey kindly agreed to write music for my piece. A work-in-progress version of the music is in the videos so I can get a feel for what works. I really like how the music is turning out.

VIDEOS