Every Hummingbird is the Center of the Universe

2018

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If you’re a hummingbird, being the center of the universe solves a lot of problems. The windy world of trees and flowers may be in constant motion, but it’s always conveniently pivoting around you, fixed there at the center.

 

Watching a hummingbird will convince you of this truth. The wind may be moving everything in the scene, but the hummingbird can remain magically motionless in space, fixed in its personal spatial coordinates.

This sculpture salutes the hummingbird by suggesting that it uses a spherical coordinate system. The hummingbird greedily occupies the coordinate origin; everything else in world around it is located by a series of radii and pairs of angles with respect to it. This assumption clearly matches any hummingbird’s general attitude.

 

In this piece, rotating parts support the green Jasper hummingbird. All rotation axes have their origins at our bird’s center, so rotating parts attached to the axles keep a fixed distance from the sculpture’s center point.

 

As a result, the hummingbird stays in a fixed spot despite complex motion around it. The sculpture’s math works if, as a physics professor would say: “First, we assume a spherical hummingbird…”