Final project

Concept

What will it do?

Well, from the beginning of this program, I’m obsessed with kinetic art and perpetual movement structures. I decided to create a structure that generates shapes and patterns from different specific combinations of mechanisms. In other words, that creates stories.

In this case, as it had to include some specific dimensions and considering the rules that are proposed to us for our final project, I chose to make a very controlled structure. I had to include input and output electronics that I designed myself. This is with this structure will be strongly inspired by those two movements but won’t be intrinsically related to them.

My goal here is to explore for the first time the creation of stories and movements using mechanical structure and electronics controls. There’s gonna be two parts in this project:

1. A rotary structure on the left side in 3 layers. The first and last ones will be controlled by a potentiometer that’ll regulate their speed. The centered one will be pushed to rotate by the right side mechanism.

2. A pantograph that generates eclipses will be used to the centered part of the left side move at another paste than the two other just knocking on it. It’ll be controlled with another potentiometer so it can generate a different speed.

There’s going to be two buttons (potentiometers) on it so the piece will be interactive. Even if it’s on a small scale, it’ll generate different stories of cross movements depending on the difference speed combination.

That project would be the first phase of my understanding of creating mechanical pieces of art and will be useful to create more complex ones in the future.

Who has done what beforehand?

There’s a lot of artists that explored these two artistic movements and I’d say that they are all very impressive. Being able to create those structure need a lot of planning and is a very challenging conceptual and design exercise.

To see from who I took the most of my inspiration, look at the links that I put on the left side part of this web page.

First sketch and first model

To be able to make a "Bill of material" and also to be able to figure the work and processes needed for that project, I needed to see on a smaller scale what was going to be the project. So, I obviously made a sketch, and also a small model.

What's next

So, from there, I feel that I'm able to continue on the next questions and pursuit in the development of the project. In the Notes section, you'll find all the details on the "bill of materials", technics and processes needed to make it work. Also, you'll find a calendar too. Moreover, in the Process section, you'll find the complete documentation on the making of the project and finally in the last section Final result you'll find the one pager presentation and the video of it working.