Thread by @philletourneau

I’m thrilled to finally introduce you to Motusphera. A kinetic chandelier I designed and built.

100 stainless steel mirrored spheres suspended by nigh-invisible filament. Each sphere can be positioned with high-precision stepper motors to within 0.5mm

The base is clad in mirrored stainless steel with no visible screws or fixtures, and measures only 3½ inches thin.

The continuous square line of seamlessly diffused light is RGB+CW+WW LED, at a stunning 95+ CRI.

Motusphera is the culmination of 4 years of thinking and prototyping. It has over 1,700 individual parts.

I have to thank @bradcerasani, @rickfillion, @debreuil and my dad for their hours upon hours of advice and help. 🙏🏻

The video and music are by the immeasurably talented art collective, @tundradawn.

Also shout out to Dan Berry & @dlpasco who helped me learn enough Swift to build a nifty app to control Motusphera.

I’ll be slowly sharing the story and behind-the-scenes of this invention, here on Twitter and eventually on the website. You can also follow @motusphera

Watch the video with headphones on!

Okay, I’m dying to share some fun details, here’s the first one.

Patterns are fed from a @figmadesign document. Motusphera queries the Figma API directly for an image, then translates it into a heightmap!

This makes experimentation a BREEZE.

I built a simulator in @threejs_org and the film crew used it to plan out the shoot. Uses the same @figmadesign document to read in patterns!

Some of the custom PCB’s that live inside the unit.

The whole chandelier really does fit inside the ~3.8in thick base, nothing above the ceiling.

I’m really proud of the custom pivoting aluminum stand I designed to hold @motusphera while I worked on it.

I can rotate the entire unit from one side to another, or straight up!

If you’ve made it this far into the thread, and because several people are asking, I am producing a limited number of units for sale.

There’s a contact button on motusphera.com with the deposit and timeframe details.

More fun build details still to come!