A kinetic gear art sculpture, designed to illustrate mechanical motion principles at trade shows, made in collaboration between SDP/SI and artist, Andrea Davide, a New York based artist who specializes in creating unique kinetic and static metal sculptures.

Commissioned as a tradeshow callout by a large manufacturer of gears, drives and motors, this gear art sculpture elevates form and function to art through its design. Gears in precise linkage rotate, plane upon plane, as chains drive their containment discs and, illumined by a central tower of light, the sculpture is patient, busy, performing its unknown tasks as it moves smoothly through space and time. Designed and arranged by Andrea Davide and manufactured by Stock Drive Products – Sterling Instruments, this first piece in a new series of Davide’s motorized works directs our thoughts to the manufacturer whose high engineering skills enables its complex multi-planar motion but in a larger sense, to the phenomenal impact that precision engineering has on our lives today, in aspects both seen and unseen.

Its multi-dimensioned action is driven by an AC gearmotor inside of a large rectangular base, which rotates the smaller circular plate on top. Chains pulled by sprocket attach to the 19” diameter discs via friction, producing rotation on a vertical plane. Anodized gears rotate while held in place between polymer discs similar to Davide’s signature RoundTimer sculptures. LED lights set into the central vertical shaft blink and reflect out in all directions, drawing the viewer in and holding their attention.

Davide moves beyond her earlier series of manually moved kinetic sculptures as seen in her mobile “RoundTimers”, with this new work now possessing autonomous motion but with its function still obscure and mysterious.  Colored gears turn, mesh, overlap, rotate at different speeds, appearing to serve important but unknown functions.  The precision and care that SPD/SI brings to all of its products makes this smooth, effortless, focused but obscure motion possible. Belts and gears, motors and controllers now produce motion of larger and smaller elements, again with apparent function but one cloaked and obscure.

The company, in conjunction with New York artist, Andrea Davide, attracted considerable attention and favorable comment at the recent West Pack Show in Anaheim, CA, Feb 12-14, 2013. The SDP/SI sculpture reflects Ms. Davide’s long term interest in and fascination with time, its measurement and its passage, is a colorful enigmatic kinetic mechanism fabricated largely from custom designed elements designs based entirely upon Davide’s concepts, drawings and body of work thus far.