A community based research project, which cumulates in an interactive sculptural installation. "The Tipping Point Machine", is sited for the Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts in 2006 and is expected to travel thereafter. For this project, the complex relationships between body, health, self, and community are examined from a combined anthropological and artistic perspective. Health care narratives have been collected from artists living in the Boston South End neighborhood. The focus is on the small events (tipping points) in the lives of these artists that have changed their understanding of self, health and body and art making. From this research, an interactive robotic sculpture is being designed which reflects on seven of these individual narratives.