Kinetic Sculptures

Cardboard Automata

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.

Final Automaton

Au-to-ma-ta

so here's my final project in the time class.

I was inspired by my boyfriend. We were snowboarding one day when he said to me, "I wish I could do a flip on my board." So I thought to myself and I came up with this project. Depicted on the canvas are two photographs that I took of him snowboarding. I then attached the canvas to the motor, which is mounted on a board on a box. The canvas then spins in a clockwise motion, making the pictures "flip".

Kinetic Piece

For our kinetic structure, Garrett and I created a grass-growing machine. The final result did not go as well as planned. However, other touches were added that we originally had not counted on. For example, at the center of our structure there is an egg-shaped gear. Upon completing the structure, we realized how the shape helped to symbolize rebirth/growth, which was the exact theme of our project, being the reproduction of grass.

Kinetics

Grace Brown and I had a ball with our kinetic project. Focusing on a satirical view of religion, we created a talking Jesus portrait.
We knew we wanted to do something that might make people laugh or feel uncomfortable; I wanted the audience to walk away affected emotionally. Many sketches and meetings with Michelle later, Grace and I headed to Lowe's and bought the necessary supplies. Using plywood as our backing we printed out on photo paper and collaged a traditional Jesus portrait using hot glue to adhere. For the frame we cut down moulding and nailed to into the plywood. We chose to lacquer the pieces of moulding gold for a more Renaissance/Gothic feel-- easily stereotyped as a more Baroque aesthetic, the gold exalts the subject matter, who here happens to be Jesus.
As far as the mechanics went, we cut out a strip from the plywood backing right there Jesus's mouth would be. This served as a track for the dowel that attached to the mouth shaped cut-out we used as the kinetic part of this project. A sanded, oblong piece of plywood was connected to the motor. A vertical dowel (placed to run along the oblong gear) connected to the horizontal one, which caused the mouth to move.
Placed on a table that was draped with white, two church candles flanked the portrait. It ended up being three feet wide by three and a half feet tall. Its size and the presentation made it appear to be on an altar. Darwinism playing in the background provided the comic.. or rather sacrilegious.. aspect we were going for.

Big picture: Jesus sitting on an altar, speaking Darwinism to his beloved congregation.

The collage gave a more modern feel to the portrait-- it wasn't perfectly aligned, and the image was slightly pixellated. This is what we wanted. Printed from technology and rearranged for the twentieth century, a religion after such a long history undergoes slight changes, cracks, falls apart, despite the gold frame and the period style in which it is presented. Where it looks almost perfect and old, juxtaposed with this is the crystal clear voice of Darwinism coming straight from the savior's mouth. The fight between science and religion is an old one.





The video is an informal record of our success at getting the kinetic part of our project to work. It was really exciting at the time, though I wish later we had documented the whole project better. That was something I certainly learned from the Time class experience.