Guesstimate: How Many Moving, Wooden Balls On Strings?

Can you guess how many wooden balls on strings comprise the new sculpture, Breaking Wave, in the lobby of Biogen-Idec, a biotech company in Cambridge, MA?
 
According to Wired, Hypersonic, a creative engineering studio in Brooklyn, and Plebian Design were commission to create an installation for Biogen-Idec’s office. Together, they constructed a chaotic, dangling mess of spheres that amazingly align into perfect representations of a Fibonacci spiral and a circular labyrinth every 80 seconds, but only when seen from the exact right position. 
 
The installation reflects Biogen-Idec’s need to consider various perspectives in order to create medicines for people with neurodegenerative diseases and autoimmune disorders: “What they have is a massive amount of data that they have to look at in the right way in order to make something from it,” Hypersonic’s Bill Washabaugh tells Wired.
 
The complex project required much math and science, and Washabaugh and Jeff Lieberman of Plebian Design also used software to map the precise movements and coordinates of the moving spheres. In total, the installation is comprised of 1,000 moving parts: one motor, 36 rolling tracks, and, who guessed it? 804 wooden balls. Talk about a lot of balls in the air.
 
Check out the video of Breaking Wave below.
 
 
For the full article, visit Wired.