THE MODEL

In order to explore the self assembly process, I constructed an experimental platform attempting to study the basic aspects, conditions and behaviours of a self organizing system. The Model consists of floating tiles in a water tank (since the components in the structure need to be mobile, the self assembly process usually takes place in fluid environments), using capillary interaction and magnetic fields as binding forces. The material used for the tiles is balsa wood and they were developed in two different sizes (1cm x 1cm and 2cm x 2cm), the coloured tiles used for the magnetic forces experiments have a pair of magnets each with all red tiles having the north pole of the magnets on the top and the black ones on the bottom, this makes tiles with the same colour repell each other and attract with those of the opposite colour. In both cases I acted as actuator sometimes slightly pushing the tiles around when the system achieves equilibrium and other times by just shaking the water tank trying to avoid direct manipulation of the model as much as possible.