Exercise:
This week we made drawing machines, composed of two stepper motors controlled by H-bridges and mechanical arms attached to them. The arms hold and move a pen to draw on a sheet of paper. The circuit is quite complicated at the first eye, but it is actually very reader-friendly because of the carefully chosen colors of wires.
After I finished connecting wires according to the diagram, I tested whether the stepper motor functioned well, only to find it vibrating but not spinning. I double checked the wires but found no problem. However, with the help of a fellow I figured out that the H-bridge was loosen. The motor worked perfectly after fixing the connection problem.
Then I added a potentiometer into the circuit. I realized that I was not really familiar to how to connect a potentiometer, and spent some time browsing class notes. When I finished the circuit, I was able to control the stepper motor with the potentiometer:
Then me and my partner connected the mechanical arms and attached them to our two stepper motors. Though the holes on the arms were a little to big to hold the pen tight, which resulted in shaky lines when actually drawing, the machines worked well.
Questions
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 would be interested in building machines that do repetitive works but also reveal something new in that repetitive pattern just like this drawing machine we made this week. I have not imagined before that these lines and curves can create beautiful images through replication.
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?
Waves made by Daniel Palacios Jimenez has caught my eyes. It is composed of elastic ropes waved by motors into visual shapes. I link the design opinion of Waves to our drawing machine, because they both use replication of single curve/line to create patterns. However, Waves is more emotionally infectious to me because it transform two-dimensioned lines into three-dimensioned shapes.