Permanent kinetic sculpture · Austria, 2021
MORPH TE
A machine that appears alive.
Light, movement and sound become a single living body.
MORPH TE turns 486 moving hexagonal cells into one monumental presence. Its surface expands, contracts and ripples as light travels across its skin—precise mechanical choreography that feels less like automation and more like breath.
Created by Augmentl Studio and MindBuffer as mentl.Lab, the work explores our deepening relationship with machines. It asks what happens when technology stops behaving like a tool and begins to suggest instinct, character and life.
Berlin preview
Experience the full choreography of light, motion and sound.
Official film
MORPH TE in its permanent home at ZEITRÄUM.
Built from first principles.
Every visible gesture begins deep inside a structure of steel, hand-shaped copper, folded aluminium, precision carbon fibre and custom electronics. Each cell is simple on its own. Across the sphere, those cells become waves, pulses, breaths and moments of apparent intention.
“The breath in the lungs. The heart in the chest. The ghost in the machine.”
A many-armed conductor.
MindBuffer developed the creative software and sound design that bind movement, illumination and music into one instrument. Mathematical fields, natural-system simulations and biologically inspired behaviours are translated into precise instructions for a distributed network of motors, lights and computers.
The kinetic super-sculpture
Deutsche Welle visits MORPH TE and the artists behind it.
Presented at SIGGRAPH 2021.
At the world’s leading conference for computer graphics and interactive techniques, the team unpacked the years of hardware, firmware, software and sound design behind MORPH TE.
Created for ZEITRÄUM, curated by André Heller.
Burg Taggenbrunn, Austria.
- Nicholas Perillo · Augmentl Studio
- Original concept, industrial design, electronics engineering and fabrication
- Joshua Batty · MindBuffer
- Creative development, software development and sound design
- Mitchell Nordine · MindBuffer
- Creative development, firmware, software development and sound design