For this sculpture, I originally wanted to just create a simple maze game. I was focused on FUNCTION over form, but somehow it ended up looking pretty neat. The original idea was to have the maze which was made up of some white molding pieces I found and then have the viewer be able to roll the ball through it and solve it. I wanted the maze to be difficult so I printed out a large scale replica of some maze I found online and tried to re-build it. This proved harder than I thought, and so I proceeded to Make a grid of 1x1 inch squares and freehand the whole maze. It was very fun to put together, and as I glued to pieces down, I learned to be more patient and detailed with my work. After the maze was completed, I added a pivoting system to it so the user could successful roll the ball on both the Y and X axis.
After this, I decided maybe I was done. There was a side-idea of having a magnetic glove which would control the ball from a distance, allowing the user to solve the maze with their hand. This would have been magical, but the physics didn't quite work out.
After scrapping that idea, I played around with some more thoughts until realizing this whole maze should be in a ball, which you can then rotate on all axis to solve the maze. I made a steel frame with some flat strips of 2 inch steel and then curved them into the desired shape. After this I welded it together and added a weight on the bottom to ensure stability. Although a bit wobbly, everything worked out in the end and people loved playing with it and solving the maze.
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