Tokyo based Sachiko Kodama is a physicist and artist who uses raw materials to make her art pieces.  This particular one she discovered almost on accident.  It uses black oil, ceramics and a teflon-coated spike.  There are no moving parts, rather all of the movement and designs are created with an electro-magnet housed inside the piece, and a voltage regulator controlled by hand controls.  This piece could probably be even more interesting if, instead of hand controls, a simple arduino board could be used to control the electro-magnet and create certain designs for certain time periods, and then switching the amount of voltage or simply turning it off and on to create an interactive experience.