Sketches That Move, Data That Speaks | July 31, 2025
This Week’s Highlight
This week’s tutorial is inspired by Solstice – a kinetic clock by Matt Gilbert of Animaro Design. The original clock expands and contracts throughout the day using clever linkages, translating time into graceful motion.
I loved how it felt equal parts engineering and poetry, and it sparked a sketch of my own. In my version, I reimagined the motion in code: petals rotate, scale, and reset with time, but the logic isn’t bound by mechanics. That’s the joy of creative math: you can mirror the real world, or invent a rhythm that just feels right.
What Inspires Me
This week’s sketch brought me back to my mechanical engineering days, specifically the crank-slider mechanism behind the Solstice clock. Simple parts creating elegant motion. That led me to Reuben Margolin’s Confluence, a massive kinetic sculpture where pulleys and strings create flowing waveforms across a building wall.
Reuben calls it a “meditation” and a “mathematical expression” – a blend of art, math, and engineering. It reminded me why I love creative coding: starting with something real, then reshaping it into movement that’s not just mechanical, but expressive.
Data Mini Challenge
As July comes to a close and we wrap up two full months of SPARK, I’ve been thinking about how time moves differently when you’re creating regularly, even in small ways.
Through lots of trial and error, we’ve started to find a groove: one shaped by experiments, shared sketches, and the quiet momentum of a community learning together. Now we’re stepping into a fresh theme: Data Playground – an invitation to explore how everyday moments can become material for creative sketches.
If you’ve been curious from the sidelines, I’ll be introducing a Data Mini Challenge in next week’s newsletter. Think of it as a SPARK sampler you can try for yourself. Keep an eye out 👀
Until next week!
Patt