Trans(Plant)
Commissioned by New Generation Arts for their festival in Birmingham, Summer 2008

animation by Gideon Corby

(Trans)Plant is a 20ft self-assembling sculpture based on the structure of cow parsley. By increasing the scale of this everyday plant it is given an unexpected emphasis and becomes surprisingly grandiose. The jointed sculpture is made from aluminium tubes.

Activated once or twice each day the plant’s branching structures rise up from a collapsed state, snapping into a recognisable organic structure.  (Trans)Plant ‘performs’ by assembling itself into a large three dimensional form and then collapsing.

At the touch of a button the art piece starts to move again, its branches slowly collapse and droop and the sculpture closes itself securely into its container for the night.

A central telescoping unit from Serapid pushes the plant's main stem upwards. Linear actuators make the branches open and close.

In keeping with many of Prophet’s art works, (Trans)Plant is being made via discussion with a scientist,  in this case, Professor Julian Vincent, an international expert in the analysis of natural structures and their application to engineering.

The design has been developed with Phil Cash, who produced the engineering drawings and solutions to making the plant function, with input from the manufacturer Alain Antoinette.

The playful movement of the sculpture is based on the experience of using push button collapsible animals (where pressing the base causes the jointed animal model to flop down and releasing the base makes it re-form).

The first model was made from drinking straws and
taken to a meeting with Julian Vincent and Phil
Cash to explain the kind of movement and the
tubular look of the intended artwork.

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