art · 2020
Chameleon
KAIST ID506 Media Interaction Design (Prof. Woohun Lee)
A material exploration of polarizing film: a transparent, shape-changing physical interface that produces a color-changing effect through the polarization and refraction of polarizing and OPP film.
Polarizing and OPP films on acrylic gears, rotated by a servo motor · 2020
Chameleon came out of a material exploration in KAIST ID506 Media Interaction Design (Prof. Woohun Lee), built around polarizing film.
Polarizing film is popular with makers for its almost magical trick — transparent sheets that turn a view black as they rotate. Earlier works drew striking visual impact from it, but mostly stopped at two stacked layers; adding an in-between layer such as OPP (oriented polypropylene) film produces a color-changing effect, yet those pieces tend to stay static and decorative.
Chameleon pushes the material further: a transparent, shape-changing interface that produces color through the polarization and refraction of polarizing and OPP film. Treating the films’ limited color range and varied shapes as the basis for control, I built a layered gear mechanism — a module that can be repeated and recombined into many different graphics.
