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Usually I like working in my shop,

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but when it's raining and the driveway outside turns into a river,

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then I just love it.

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And I'll cut some wood and drill some holes and watch the water,

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and maybe I'll have to walk around and look for washers.

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You have no idea how much time I spend.

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This is the "Double Raindrop."

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Of all my sculptures, it's the most talkative.

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It adds together the interference pattern

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from two raindrops that land near each other.

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Instead of expanding circles, they're expanding hexagons.

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All the sculptures move by mechanical means.

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Do you see how there's three peaks to the yellow sine wave?

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Right here I'm adding a sine wave with four peaks and turning it on.

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Eight hundred two-liter soda bottles --

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oh yea.

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(Laughter)

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Four hundred aluminum cans.

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Tule is a reed that's native to California,

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and the best thing about working with it is that it smells just delicious.

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A single drop of rain

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increasing amplitude.

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The spiral eddy that trails a paddle on a rafting trip.

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This adds together four different waves.

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And here I'm going to pull out the double wavelengths

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and increase the single.

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The mechanism that drives it has nine motors

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and about 3,000 pulleys.

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Four hundred and forty-five strings in a three-dimensional weave.

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Transferred to a larger scale --

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actually a lot larger, with a lot of help --

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14,064 bicycle reflectors --

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a 20-day install.

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"Connected" is a collaboration

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with choreographer Gideon Obarzanek.

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Strings attached to dancers.

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This is very early rehearsal footage,

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but the finished work's on tour

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and is actually coming through L.A. in a couple weeks.

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A pair of helices and 40 wooden slats.

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Take your finger and draw this line.

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Summer, fall, winter, spring,

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noon, dusk, dark, dawn.

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Have you ever seen those stratus clouds

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that go in parallel stripes across the sky?

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Did you know that's a continuous sheet of cloud

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that's dipping in and out of the condensation layer?

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What if every seemingly isolated object

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was actually just where the continuous wave of that object

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poked through into our world?

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The Earth is neither flat nor round.

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It's wavy.

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It sounds good, but I'll bet you know in your gut that it's not the whole truth,

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and I'll tell you why.

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I have a two-year-old daughter who's the best thing ever.

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And I'm just going to come out and say it:

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My daughter is not a wave.

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And you might say, "Surely, Rueben, if you took even just the slightest step back,

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the cycles of hunger and eating,

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waking and sleeping, laughing and crying

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would emerge as pattern."

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But I would say, "If I did that,

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too much would be lost."

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This tension between the need to look deeper

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and the beauty and immediacy of the world,

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where if you even try to look deeper you've already missed what you're looking for,

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this tension is what makes the sculptures move.

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And for me, the path between these two extremes

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takes the shape of a wave.

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Let me show you one more.

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Thank you very much. Thanks.

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(Applause)

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Thanks.

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(Applause)

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June Cohen: Looking at each of your sculptures,

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they evoke so many different images.

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Some of them are like the wind and some are like waves,

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and sometimes they look alive and sometimes they seem like math.

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Is there an actual inspiration behind each one?

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Are you thinking of something physical or somthing tangible as you design it?

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RM: Well some of them definitely have a direct observation --

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like literally two raindrops falling,

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and just watching that pattern is so stunning.

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And then just trying to figure out how to make that using stuff.

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I like working with my hands.

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There's nothing better than cutting a piece of wood

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and trying to make it move.

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JC: And does it ever change?

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Do you think you're designing one thing,

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and then when it's produced it looks like something else?

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RM: The "Double Raindrop" I worked on for nine months,

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and when I finally turned it on,

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I actually hated it.

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The very moment I turned it on, I hated it.

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It was like a really deep-down gut reaction, and I wanted to throw it out.

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And I happened to have a friend who was over,

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and he said, "Why don't you just wait."

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And I waited, and the next day I liked it a bit better,

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the next day I liked it a bit better, and now I really love it.

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And so I guess, one, the gut reactions a little bit wrong sometimes,

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and two, it does not look like as expected.

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JC: The relationship evolves over time.

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Well thank you so much. That was a gorgeous treat for us.

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RM: Thanks. (JC: Thank you, Reuben.)

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(Applause)