The objective of Alice Strunkmann-Meister's master thesis was to replicate nature's spectacle of waves in an installation. She implemented it masterfully not least thanks to motors from FAULHABER.

Throughout the centuries, scientists and artists alike have observed nature and gained important knowledge from it. Natural sciences derive laws from these findings. The resulting knowledge has brought about many technological innovations: from robots that communicate with each other with collective intelligence similar to the animal world, through fabrics with characteristics based on the world of plants, to computer-generated graphics that replicate natural phenomena.

In her master thesis EX UNDA (Latin: out of the wave), Alice Strunkmann-Meister examined the natural phenomenon of the wave during the winter semester 2016/17 as part of the study programme "Interactive Media Systems" at the University of Applied Sciences in Augsburg. In an installation for her master thesis, she suspended several glass bowls filled with water from the ceiling over a space of five meters. These bowls are then moved five meters up and down in order to simulate the movement of a water surface. Lights above the bowls make the interference patterns on the water surface visible. Diverse, crystal-like light reflections appear on the floor.

The bowls are moved by means of motors that are mounted to the ceiling. The glass bowls – suspended from wire rope – move up and down due to the rotational movement of the cable winch that is affixed to each motor. "This installation requires a motor with continuous rotation in both directions. Viable speed and position accuracy were other performance characteristics that were important to me," explained Alice Strunkmann-Meister. She ended up using DC-motors from FAULHABER for her final installation. "These are brushless motors with planetary gearheads and integrated control." To control the motors, she is using the FAULHABER Motion Manager, which is a control software that was developed specifically for FAULHABER motors.

Alice Strunkmann-Meister was top of her class at the Augsburg University of Applied Sciences and was awarded the Bavarian Culture Prize 2018 for her master thesis.

Back