Bens work:
In todays class me and Josh decided to improve on my Spinning Fan by creating a cage around it to stop the paint from going everywhere and making my machine more accessible and enjoyable to use. This was an improvement from my first prototype as I was completely covered in paint after the first 2 attempts at my machine, but now it is more friendly and you can stay clean. I also made a wooden plank that replicated the frame sitting on the fan that allows people to attach their own piece of paper to the board and create their own art on my machine during our interactive presentation. (Both Examples Shown Below)
I then ran through an example piece to see if it was successful and I believe it went well and is ready to add into our presentation on Thursday.
Joshs work:
The first two weeks back in studio were an introduction to art machines. The term art machine covers a very wide variety of things depending on your definition of a ‘machine’. For the purpose of the brief an art machine was somewhat defined, as the interaction of an artist and some object or contraption.
Our group did a few individual experiments to get ideas. I wrote down a few ideas but decided to go with building trebuchets, a siege weapon from the medieval era. I wanted to do this because trebuchets are cool, but also using a war machine as a method to create art was an interesting juxtaposition.
I then got to work designing my trebuchet. I started with a drawing to map out the shape, size and features. After that, I took my design down to the 3d labs to create a file so I could lasercut my trebuchet.
This was the first lasercut of the plan. It was a test to see how it worked and what I needed to change/fix.
After adding some parts to the plan and tweaking others, they were scaled up and lasercut again.
The finished trebuchets.
How I set them up to use in our group space. I made some sponge balls so that you could soak them in paint and fling them at paper or a canvas.