Saturday, July 31, 2010






Maya and I constructed a 5 by 3 foot wooden box that would make the black and white checker board pattern on the front move in and out of the box. We projected an image onto the box of a person in a deep but almost restless state of sleep. The image consists solely of a female's face; frantically moving her eyes back in forth as if she was dreaming. The gears would pushed the gears in and out of the box disrupting the image.
Even though the motor wasn't image working and couldn't distort the image how it was intended to, the film was still moving creating it's own distortion. The idea behind this motorized automata was the fact that we are thinking and imagining every minute of our day, but the cycle is always being disrupted.

The machine, though was unable to function to its original intention, found a new meaning to its creators and viewers. The motor spun at a consistent rate, the room filled with it's constant sound of struggle and friction. The image in the from moved and almost seemed brought to life by the motor though there was no real connection between them. The dowel continuously splintered as the motor struggled to spin it. This shows not only the illusion and abstraction of how a motor can interact with your piece (is it actually the one responsible for the movement), but also the fact that maybe the beauty is placed on the motors failure to bring results and in this case, distorting the image on the frontal portion of our autonoma.