As today is Thanksgiving, we at Tribute, Inc. want to extend our thanks and heartfelt appreciation to our customers. It's been a tough year for all and we want to express how much we value our partnership and friendship with you. And since everyone should be home feasting today, we thought we’d post something fun.

For a different take on motion control, take a look into The Art of Motion Control - Bruce Shapiro’s interesting artwork produced by utilizing motion control equipment. He has permanent exhibits in the Science Museum of Minnesota, the Science Center in Cedar Rapids, Science Center of Iowa in Des Moines, and the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto, Canada.

His piece, Pipedream III is a high resolution embolograph (bubble raster) he created for the Ontario Science Centre, Toronto, Canada. It was installed in June, 2006. Like his earlier Pipedream pieces, Pipedream III utilizes a series of computer controlled pneumatic solenoids to inject small bubbles which slowly float up the tube, serving as pixels.

During the spring of 1998, as part of Shapiro’s collaboration with Jean-Pierre Hebert called "Ho," the idea for sand plotting emerged from their numerous experiments with motion control. Watching the sand paths being slowly and methodically created, only to be erased and redone, Shapiro was reminded of the myth of Sisyphus, a man condemned to forever roll a boulder up a hill only to find the next day that it had rolled back to the start.

Shapiro went on to create a series of Sisyphus machines. Sisyphus II now works continuously in the Science Museum of Minnesota's Learning Technology Center. Recent work has enabled children to create designs (using Microworlds software) and then save them as paths for Sisyphus to plot.

Sisyphus III was installed at Technorama, The Swiss Science Center, near Zurich, in Sept. 2003. It is 10 feet in diameter and weighs about 1,000 lbs. Check out his website to see how develops and creates these amalgamations of art and science.