Messages in Motion

Messages in Motion is a mechanical installation that teaches the Caesar cipher through a simple physical system. The cylinder has three stages: input, shift, and output. In the input stage, a button is pressed to release a ball, with each button mapped to a letter. In the shift stage, the lower ring of the cylinder is rotated to select the cipher shift. This rotation changes the path inside the cylinder. In the output stage, the ball drops into a new container labeled with its encoded letter.

The project turns the abstract rule “shift every letter by a fixed amount” into motion, gravity, and gates. Seeing the ball rerouted by the selected rotation makes the cause-and-effect clear. The mechanism shows that encryption is not magic. It is a repeatable transformation controlled by one parameter, the shift. By linking letters to paths and rotations, the installation explains both how the cipher works and why it produces predictable results.

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