Vertical balancing in mobiles

  • Posted on: 12 October 2012
  • By: ashok
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Recently I made a mobile whose design incorporated the very difficult art of vertical balancing.

Afterwards I reached different conclusions. First, vertical balance has no value for an average viewer. Even when it is pointed out, he does not appreciate it. So 3 out of 7 nodes of my mobile were not adding any value to the average viewer.

The balance four were just not moving relative to each other. but were rotating in a plane. Very boring movement with no re-carving of space.

Also one half of the space is blank all the time. At a small level, frozen motion is boring. Live action is needed.

Hence a new design is need where there is no vertical balance; all the nodes play their role and the space is repeatedly carved in a different manner.

I first created a experimental mobile. This I called Version 1.

Imagine there are red nodes and blue nodes. The blue nodes are additional nodes of smaller but similar shape to red nodes, but perhaps of contrasting colors.

I was not happy with Version 1 as the blue nodes were too far spaced.

Without touching the red nodes, I made another version called Version 2.

Here the blue nodes are closer in a spiral and their placement is such the space between the blue and red nodes gets repeated carved in different ways.

I am much happier with this mobile. All the time something catches your eye.