Team Stomatopd's Sea Slug Go!

Sea Slug Go!

Here are some pictures from Team Stomatopod's adventure in the 37th Annual Great Arcata to Ferndale World Championship Kinetic Sculpture Race.

Team Stomatopod is mostly made up of biologists at Humboldt State University. Our mascot, and future kinetic sculpture, is the Stomatopod, a truly amazing marine shrimp. The Stomatopod is capable of the fastest known movement of any living thing and also has really cool eyes. The Stomatopod inspired earlier generations of biologists at HSU so much that they formed the American Stomatopod Society (usually referred to by its acronym) and published a truly amazing, hand-lettered, inspiring Organic Journal called The Stomatopod.

Our Sculpture's name was SEA SLUG GO! and was inspired by various nudibranchs - also very amazing marine creatures.

Here is a high tech CAD drawing of the sculpture used by the artists (primarily Mark Wilson and Patty Siering, aided by John Reiss and Carla Hayes) to guide the building of the actual sculpture.

Construction:

Basically we made a frame of thin PVC, then hotglued cardboard to frame. We then coated the base with paper-mache and paint and finished by gluing lots of rhinestones on top with liberal applications of glitter

in progress

getting closer

Almost there

Race morning at the Kinetic Sculpture Lab, with Patty and her team’s Pussy Cat. Patty was on June Moxen's very very fun and friendly team

The Race!

at the start, Arcata town square

The hardest part of the race was pedaling the miles of sand. Here, Sea Slug Go! zips (yeah right) up the first sand dune, followed by Duane Flatmo (and several Rural Burl Mural Bureau - ers) in Extreme Makeover.