Schattengewächs begins like any other grow-it-yourself plant kit but the payoff isn’t a real plant, rather it’s a light – shaped like flowers, trees and even insects. Adore the play between real and artificial. There’s no power switch. It automatically “grows” thanks to a photosensor and the whole thing runs on four coin cell batteries. The pot is made of clay and all the inner bits are molded from biological plastic. By the way, Maximilian Winkel is an awesome name. I will say it all day today.
Anyone who's been to a Bay Area Maker Faire likely remembers seeing the cool persistence of vision (POV) displays by Dan Goldwater/MonkeyLectric. This visual effect is achieved by conventionally spinning bike wheels that have lights along their spokes. The lights are controlled in a such a way that the afterimage they create in motion is retained on the retina and a persistent image is visible. Now imagine not only spinning the wheel on its center horizontal axis, but spinning it on a vertical axis and controlling the lights to produce interesting POV effects in that plane as well. The result is a 3D spherical POV display. In this Instructable, Dan shows you how he created this 3D spherical display rig and a control box that allows the display to be fully interactive (to exhibit at events like Maker Faire and Siggraph).