In the beginning of 2015 Nuca Studio was invited to participate in InstalArt / Obiect / 003 exhibition. Our design, called “Investigation in a Salad Bowl”, was an exercise in representation, generative process and playfulness. Having a salad bowl design by Marcel Klamer as the starting point in our project we realized a low tech mechanism that replicated the way Marcel’s bowl position itself towards the user through rotation (the bowl received for this feature the Produkt des Jahres 1988 award in Germany). A second mechanism was added as a representation of the actual use of the bowl, a simulation of an abstract salad making. The exhibition visitors could interact with the object and create their own “graphic salads”.
The installation is made from CNC cut 18 mm thick poplar plywood, standard equipment fittings, permanent markers and paper. The actual project consisted only in files that contained the cutting contours and drill positions for each individual piece and assembling instructions. The pieces ware verified by a 3d virtual assemble, no test models ware realized, the final result was a (somehow risky) materialization of a mathematical exercise.
The visitors could opt for any combination of the four trajectories the mechanism deployed through rotation by inserting markers of colours by choice into the designated slots. A lateral split permitted the insertion of the paper between the rotation mechanism and the fixed base of the installation. Five revolutions of the larger wheel generated eight full rotations of the smaller wheel returning all markers to the start point. With no visible, explicit instructions visitors used the wooden mechanism in most unexpected ways realizing hundreds of unique, abstract “graphic salads”.