Artists Sachiko Kodama and Yasushi Miyajima make these cool kinetic sculptures where a liquid filled with nanoscale ferromagnetic particles shapeshifts around a little iron tower in response to their shifting a magnetic field around. The piece is named "
Morpho Towers — Two Standing Spirals" (2006-2007). Here's the [a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me5Zzm2TXh4"]Link[/a] to the YouTube video, and a [span style="text-decoration: underline;"]l[/span][a href="http://www.kodama.hc.uec.ac.jp/spiral/"]ink[/a] to the Morpho Towers project page.
The video is pretty cool stuff.
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This technique uses one electromagnet, and its iron core is extended and sculpted. The ferrofluid covers the sculpted surface of a three-dimensional iron shape that was made on an electronic NC lathe. The movement of the spikes in the fluid is controlled dynamically on the surface by adjusting the power of the electromagnet. The shape of the iron body is designed as helical so that the fluid can move to the top of the helical tower when the magnetic field is strong enough."
