Friday 23 May 2014

Assembling and testing final pieces

Over the past week I have been assembling and tweaking the finished pieces and I have to say I am mostly pleased with how they have turned out, there were one or two minor miscalculations but on the wole I think I nailed it.

I started off with this one and it was a really simple job that I actually overthought so once I stopped that and simplified it it was all smooth sailing, or should I say it ran like a well oiled machine! well... I say well oiled... I say machine...


So all I need to do is attach the broom head, varnish the cogs and strengthen the copper pins and set everything firmly in place and we're away. I call it 7 days and it's a sort of comment on the nature of work, spinning our wheels for 7 days pushing dust around and wondering what we are achieving at the end of it... the gears all turn but the device has no actual purpose other than to turn. So there's that.

apologies for the crap video. Anyway, earth shatteringly profound meaning aside, it is a fun piece that people can play with and hopefully it makes someone smile, someone other than me anyway.


Next... the drawing machines.
"Octo-Sketch" was the one that gave us trouble on the laser cutter, for some reason the machine was not down with drawing straight lines.. its own protest against man's inhumanity to man I suppose but I guess that's fair. after a few tries it was stopping time so I went back to the workshop.

laser doing its own thing
After cutting most of the straight pieces on the bandsaw and edging them up on the circular sander I glued each one together and then varnised the lot. A process that in total took a couple of days with the pieces of the other device as well so not too bad.






the original maquette I made for the octosketch device










I cut down the dowels with a knife so they'd fit and I really like the handmade look, it looks better than fluted dowels.


 The final piece with just a few of the arms attached, I am pretty happy with this one, except I accidentally misjudged the centre hole on the long arm parts and it is not perfectly centred which BUGS me but it does not affect the functionality and there is nothing I can do about it now so.. that's the deal there.


















And finally the elliptical cog drawing device is nearing completion, I just need to figure the rivet arm attachments so they don't catch when it is turning and it will be done. That's this next week of activity. so I made a base for it and used thick copper wire to hold the gears in place, I am really excited about getting this one running smoothly and testing it out.

     just a bit of work left.


laying it out for a first look
centering





finished bases for both devices

Wednesday 14 May 2014

Further adventures in mark making

As this project has led me to experiment with mark making and drawing machines I played around briefly with a hexagonal shaped thing after the fashion of a spirograph... the idea will work it just needs refinement, and a proper design which I may or may not get to for this... we shall see what time brings. a bit of fun noe the less and an excuse to play with hexagons, my favourite shape.
the wire was to hold the pencil in placeas I turned the small hexagon.
 I think it needs solid various sized inner hexagons with holes at various points, like a spirograph and teeth on the outside of them and the inside of the large one.

Saturday 10 May 2014

coming together

I got started cutting all the parts for the final pieces the other day

The laser cutter is brilliant, it does have a mind of its own though and starts cutting wherever it likes, I thought that was pretty funny really.

I used 2 sheets of 3mm laserable plywood from Fred Aldous. Each gear is 2 pieces

So I got all the pieces and have now glued them together so each finished gear is 6mm. 





Lovely stacks of freshly cut gears, I did the design so it would look a little handmade but it does still fit and turn properly.  Now to configure and build the final piece and get on with the next one, the drawing machine.






I made the upright a few days later so that is ready to be put into its base and then get it all tidied up, need to make the little man who will rotate around the outside... and figure out how to do that...

I just measured the centre spaces between the cogs, set up a configuration then drew it centre to centre then widened it
carefully cut it all out on the band saw, not too badly i reckon.
sanded down, painted black and ready to go.





Thursday 8 May 2014

with four weeks to go

A weird week, could not get a grip on things this week and felt like chucking it in more than once but I am sure that is not all that unusual. So Wednesday I was feeling a bit listless and just kind of messed around without really trying to go anywhere serious...I love the organic feel of corrugated cardboard and have been wanting to make something with it for ages so i messed around with some bits and pieces... did some prints and started a colage thing


 I'm not sure where, if anywhere I will go with this yet but it was nice to do.

Then I wanted to further experiment with the drawing device and though maybe a pendulum would work so I made this ( with the help of Kieron of course)  and wanted to tie balloons to it and, you know..see where it went but I didn't go too far with it... still, there's plenty of time for that!

I also made these little doodads,

just to experiment with the action of drawing with something slightly unusual, I was particularly delighted by this piece
http://rustybreak.tumblr.com/post/30466438290/sean-mackaoui
and so used some old pencils to create my versions, test versions.. I will do some nicer ones with coloured pencils where I put specific colours together, groups of say, reds and oranges and yellows.. then one with the blues and greens, that sort of thing.


Friday 2 May 2014

serendipity

No, not the restaurant where, incidentally, I used to work... a story for another day but the phenomenon.... I swear, during this project I have had many serendipitous moments, well... I will "invent" something or "come up" with an idea only to subsequently discover that it has already been thought of... this is a rather odd thing... yes, I know, we do not live in a vaccuum but really... this latest one is one of the kinetic sculptures I have planned for the FMP and it is essentially a skewiff tower of 7 cogs that are moved by a handle, has a shovel on the bottom as a sort of nod to Duchamp and really just symbolises the futility of so much of our energy expenditure, we are going around in circles etc.... so... then I discover Jean Tinguley fairly recently and today, having finally some time to do a bit of reading and go off on tangets I come across this piece of his
which alomst exactly mirrors the piece I have been working on.. down to the number of cogs, 7.. one for each day of the week...well what can you do!

Other work and experiments

Going along with the theme of low tech machinery and gadgetry, back to the original idea of viewing imagery; I wanted to find a way of showing either a video or slideshow in a low tech way.. so I came across this incredibly simple but functional idea. So I made one and it works, it was an exciting moment.







I just chucked in a paperclip and a bit of blue tac to hold the phone in place and it works a treat.
 So I am thinking of ways to incorporate this into the final presentation...

Also I have been doing a few prints, nothing earth shattering but fun nonetheless.



More experiments with mark making devices

So while I am developing some drawing machines and devices that one must actively participate with I thought hey.... what if I could design something that does not rely on this but only achieves its goal through air displacement? I experimented with suspending various drawing materials from the rafter thingy over my desk
Charcoal, pencil and graphite


What I found here was that the charcoal left a better line, graphite moved better as it was heavier and the pencil just did not join in at all.
Then I tried compressed coloured charcoal and tying weights to the charcoals, putting little flaggy things on the strings to catch the air and all sorts of serious science like that.
I guess the area my desk is does not catch enough air so not much happened.
I just moved the stick back and forth to get marks and see what level of movement was required.... I got this lovely drawing!
aforementioned lovely drawing
 I then thought I had better move the whole thing to a more breezy location so I came up with a contraption and started hanging more drawing things from it.... now at this point the people around me most assuredly questioned my sanity... once again! Oh how I laughed.




 Now, with nothing to catch the air and no real air movement to speak of not a great deal occured here.... I wracked my brains for a full minute and a half and came up with the GENIUS idea of attaching some balloons to the set up... again the sanity questioning occured, again I laughed...
Yes, serious art in progress here. Well... the idea was sound enough but these particular balloons are very dense therefore not really moving around as much as I would have liked. I resolved to buy lighter ones and do this over again the next day.

Lighter ones the next day.




This worked a lot better and more marks were made on the paper. I then moved it by the back door to avail myself of the gale force winds and had a great success!! Once it started raining I thought it would be fun to use watercolour pencils and see what happens there, just need a spray bottle and a fan.....

If you could just see this in motion, ( I will do a video) balloons and charcoals flapping about...you would laugh also.



So this is where I am with this ongoing experiment, lets see what next week brings eh!!