LIONS MANE
I have watched Cyanea capillata on one held breath, close enough to see it work. It moves by opening and closing — one muscle that is also the whole body — pushing water away so the water will carry it. Rather than fight the current, it uses it. The pulse is its grammar: contract, release, drift.
I wanted to build something that runs on the same rhythm.
The work is a kinetic sculpture. A spine of bare stainless steel carries the load; silicone stretches over it as skin, translucent and slow to spring back. A stepper motor and microcontroller drive the pulse — not to imitate the animal but to keep its rhythm running in a made body. I’m interested in the point where a machine stops copying a creature and starts moving in its tense. Here the made and the living aren’t opposites to reconcile. They share a pulse. One was just taught it later.
