Drawing machines in action!

Today was the day to do final tweaks and then put the machines to use... I am very pleased with the results, after a few little issues with the setting and gears moving ( still need to cap them off in the centre) I had them working and got some good results. I particularly like the varied output from the different configurations of the arms and using multiple pens at once.
1 First off the blocks was the machine formerly known as DM1... now known as Drawing Deck, partly because it kind of reminds me of a dj deck amd because it was partly inspired by the turntable drawing devices that have been kicking about..

The first tests were a success

  

 


I couldn't be much happier with this one to be honest, it is just what I was after.

Next, well, first techinically as I put this out first thing this morning and invited people to get in there and have a go with the camera pencils... people seemed eager and had fun doing it which was the entire point.. it created some lovely outcomes and people did a variety of different marks, this is an experiment I would like to replicate and scale up somehow. I do think that isolating each piece with a set of colours is the way forward.

Finally we have the Octo-sketch... in my opinion the weaker of the three but that may just mean that I need to rethink the concept, or the fact that I messed up the design a bit in that the centre holes in the long arms are not centred... but that's all in the past now... it does have an interesting dynamic and I am looking forward to seeing if it will indeed work with more than one person, it is not reliant on that so it can just be added to and can drag the other bits around... well, see for yourself...

Apologies for the rubbish video, I was holding it with one hand and trying to work the device and keep it from shifting...

 

It is basically a drunken compass... maybe that is what I should have named it!! Well, that's what I got up to today.

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.

What I have been working on, drawing machines

Well, it has been a while since my last post and update, too long.... but I have been working on a load of stuf, I have been drawn to (pardon the pun) and experimenting with drawing machines. One direction I wanted to take was to to strip the process back to as basic a function as possibleand see what could be achieved with minimal external influence.

I have designed and created a piece I call "Octo-Sketch" (patent pending btw)

and have made up and tested a model of it, it is a load of fun and something I am working on developing further. The idea here is to have multiple participants interacting with the machine all at once. The quality of output is not important, what matters here is how the different participants interact and what sort of interplay comes of it.

I plan to produce it from clear perspex on the laser cutter and present it packaged as a game in a board game box. I wanted to have some fun with this project and this is a good way, I think.

back to work

Between half term, being ill and working I have taken a little break and to be honest it is a good thing, I was worried about getting too obsessed and perhaps a bit overloaded which can happen to me, so a concious step back at this point was necessary. Today I will mostly spend reviewing what I have so far, tidying up some ideas and continuing on a fun new line of reseach into drawing machines. I found a fun video of a turntable spirograph and thought about how fun a drawing machine could be so this is my research and testing for today. It makes sense for this project to be about making images and not just viewing them, I suppose it is the natural progression of the idea.  What I found so far  
Happy to back into it and excited for what I may create. Stay tuned for more contraptions!

.. later that same day....

So I think I would like to definitely use non circular gears for this, oval ones which have variable phasing so all pens move at at different speeds, this could yield some interesting results and these gifs I found ( courtesy of http://stirlingengineforum )  show  how a mechanism could come out looking

I wonder which shapes will work better, although that said they would all work perfectly well just yield different results.
I hope to get at least one working cardboard maquette finished tomorrow, with arms and pencils.
I think this is a much better idea tha a contraption that does not do a great deal of anything, as fun as that would be.. does it really fit the ideas I am working with, I wonder.

Contraption number 2

 So the maquette for my second contraption came out today, this is a 4 cog version ( no point making all 7 or 8, the idea works and besides, it nearly killed my still recovering shoulder), the final will be a freestanding situation,

possibly with6 maybe 7x 20 inch cogs, these are 10 and will be an offset skewiff type thing with the centre cog driven by a handle resembling bike pedals. I thought about mounting it on a shovel or broom or something but that won't work so it would have to be a purpose built "wobbly stick" thing with a broom or shovel head on the bottom.. for a bit of fun.I'm thinking the top one should be the image viewer with the acetates and a projection light but I am not sure, I think really these contraptions should stay as they are.. a bit of purposeless, harmless pedal powered fun.

I like it, I am feeling more confident about the project in general and looking forward to putting these contraptions together as well as working on the others I want to do. I have looked at people like Arthur Ganson's contraptions and some Rube Goldberg machines for inspiration, well I say that but I have already been making these and then came across this stuff, great to make and I hope, fun in an exhibition setting.

contraption number 1

Today I was able to get a first maquette done so am now more easily able to plan out my gadgets and contraptions, these hopefully will be done on the laser cutter with wood and painted. I'd like to make it look a little funky so the cogs are like rotary phone dials and you intuitively go up and start dialling it.. now I am still undecided as to whether or not it will serve a purpose, I think this one I think will not though. It is a combo of inspirations from Metropollis and Duchamp's Disks Bearing Spirals, I want the whimsical side, the piece for the sake of it, if it makes you smile it has worked. I enjoy watching the cogs go round and am really looking forward to building the real deals. I also feel a lot better about the brief in general, less stuck, floating and wandering, more focused so full steam ahead eh...there is  plenty of design work to go but at least the ideas will work, stay tuned for more mad machinery and weird artwork!

progress... of sorts

I have been having a bit more trouble with this that I thought I would, trying to nail down what I am actually trying to achieve has been a bit tough but I have made inroads.. In honesty it is about engagement, a fun way to have people engage with the image viewing process rather than pasively walking by a load of pictures on a wall so I am currently back to the cog and machinery idea, I would like to build a picture frame that is cog driven but the cogs themselves are frames for the images on transparancies, if that makes sense... I am starting a maquette.

So the idea here is that I want there to be a series of cogs and each of the four semi circle segments will contain the images and a light will be mounted onto the corner of the frame and will project images onto the wall as the viewer turns the handle, a very basic way of participating. Sort of a tweak on the viewmaster idea. I will have to see if it works in tests and hopefully i will be able to make it up on the laser cutter for the final piece.
This is just one of the pieces I want to have.





So today I saw this wonderful contraption at MMU Art School and I remember when they were making the cogs on the open day I went to, brilliant to see it built.

Here's what it is all about.
Gives me more food for though on the sorts of devices that I can possibly build.

I would love to have the time to put together something along these lines...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stwhXgoJfAk

I think it is a way off for me yet though, certainly in terms of the engineering aspect but wow, fascinating work.
April 7th