In today’s recitation, we made a Drawing machine and it’s the most complex one we’ve made so far and is also the first time for us to involve a 12v power supply to our work.
Materials:
- 1 * 42STH33-0404AC stepper motor
- 1 * L293D ic chip (H-bridge)
- 1 * power jack
- 1 * 12 VDC power supply
- 1 * Arduino kit and its contents
- 2 * Laser-cut short arms
- 2 * Laser-cut long arms
- 1* Laser-cut motor holder
- 2 * 3D printed motor coupling
- 5 * Paper Fasteners
- 1 * Pen that fits the laser-cut mechanisms
- 1 * Paper sheet
We first connected the motor and the Arduino with the H-bridge according the diagram. Then we used the 10k potentiometer to read the analog input and control rotation with it. Finally, after finishing building the frame and connecting all the parts of the drawing machine, we managed to have our great drawing machine below!
But it kept vibrating and made it hard to draw a smooth line. So we added the map() function into it and it became much better.
And the following is our “Masterpiece”!
Question 1: What kind of machines would you be interested in building? Add a reflection about the use of actuators, the digital manipulation of art, and the creative process to your blog post.
I’m quite interested in the kind of machines that can blend human body movement to visual arts and audio arts. It can give out sound according to the user’s movement, so to play a certain piece of music, the user will have to not only remember the melody each movement refers to but also do the certain movement at the correct beat.
Question 2: Choose an art installation mentioned in the reading ART + Science NOW, Stephen Wilson (Kinetics chapter). Post your thoughts about it and make a comparison with the work you did during this recitation. How do you think that the artist selected those specific actuators for his project?
The piece of Daniel Rozin, Mechanical Mirrors: Wooden Mirror, 1999-2008 really caught my eyes. It is about demonstrating pixels value with wooden blocks of different darkness, which can be seen as a great attempt to combine the electronic with fabrication. However, what we did in the recitation was about turning the physical movement of users into movements of the “hands ” of the machine.
The reason why the artist chose the certain actuators is to realize the movement of the blocks and to transform the digital information into a more “original ” image.