Ann Hamilton Swings | Stuart Art Collection

The Stuart Art Collection at UCSD is dedicated to enriching the UCSD Campus through a variety of unique site-specific works created by leading artists of the world.

Internationally acclaimed artist Ann Hamilton has proposed a new, two part installation that will merge language and culture with physical movement. The language portion of the installation will be a long pedestrian walkway that will have dynamic poem ingrained onto the floor. The physical movement aspect will be a series of swings that people will be able to interact with.

The recommended swing design consists of 3/8" braided stainless steel cables attached using a stiff threaded rod to a 3'10" x 9" x 1.5" eucalyptus seat. All components of the swing are weather resistant and have minimal moving parts. Through rigorous testing, it was concluded that only swings of length 46 ft and longer should be installed. 

This swing design meets all the functional requirements for swing lengths 46 ft and longer, and only within a specific set of user scenarios. If there are no more than 2 adults or 1 adult and 2 children sitting on the seat and they are self pumping or being pushed gently, the swing will not reach a maximum height greater than 8 ft, untwist by itself, and have the dynamics of a regular playground swing. Outside of these scenarios, the swinging height cannot be guaranteed to remain under the recommended height and be considered safe. 

The 47.5 ft swing prototype was able to meet all the functional requirements defined within a specific set of user scenarios. It was unable to reach maximum swing amplitudes greater than 8 ft for both seated and standing pumping, as well as multiple people pushing the swing statically and dynamically.

The velocity measurements from an accelerometer taped to the middle of the seat showed that the swing behaved consistently with theoretical predictions from MATLAB and Working Model 2D. Seen in Figure _ below, the predictions for the standing pumping amplitude gain closely followed the experimental results. However, surpassing the safety height of 8 ft by performing standing pumping was both predicted and experimentally determined to be possible on swings shorter than 46 ft.