Showing posts with label machine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label machine. Show all posts

Final BFA presentation



 
 

BFA 2012-Research + Experimentation

Research links for harmonograph construction:

http://www.xyhd.tv/2008/11/how-to/metal-work-and-simple-machines/how-to-make-a-harmonograph-or-spirograph/

http://www.karlsims.com/harmonograph/index.html



Maquettes and sketches towards the realization of final development:





The final construction will be a harmonograph that will feature 2 pendulums that will move in a perpendicular motion. The maquette I constructed could not handle the weight of a pen; therefore, could not be used to to see if the mechanism worked. However, the basic structure will be similar to the maquette. Specific materials and mechanism are do be discussed and established.

 
 

Seminar reading + research

Charles and Ray Eames: The Information Machine

Blake and the Artistic Machine: An Essay in Decorum and Technology

 
 

BFA 2012 Artist Statement_version1


Derrick Alston ‘12_Graphic Design
Title TBD


Ideals of efficiency and productivity have increased the development and utilization of the machine in Twenty-first century America. The machine, defined as an apparatus applying mechanical power to perform a particular task, has been established as a way of creating solutions at a more rapid rate than can be accomplished by people alone. This mechanistic process of labor has increased the level at which humans can create, manufacture and distribute products and information. However, the proficiency of this apparatus has replaced much of the need for human production, and has eliminated the creativity and craftsmanship that come from the humanistic creation process. By utilizing technology to create a more effective means of production, man has also erased the need for physical human production. The relationship of these entities has created a society that is dominated by a reliance on the machine, but also the need for human ingenuity and innovation. My piece investigates the connection of these two entities and the forms that can result from their separate creation methodologies.
The machine has found its way into the field of graphic design and influences every aspect of human creation, which is an idea that will be communicated to all that observe and utilize my work. The mechanistic methodology of image creation is represented through the presentation of a harmonograph, a mechanical apparatus that employs pendulums to create a geometric image. Upon utilizing the harmonograph the user initiates image creation through the use of a designed apparatus. The user has no control over the image that is created by the machine, but the speed, efficiency and ease of production are represented through production. Through the use of metal, wood and industrialized materials my work reinforces the cold, lifeless creation that takes place in the assembly line of mechanized America.
The relationship of mechanistic and humanistic production is further examined by juxtaposing the harmonograph apparatus with a more human method of production. The presentation of a platform that allows the viewer to create an image free from restrictions, communicates the difference of opposing creation methodologies. When given the opportunity to produce an image through common, humanistic means, how does the participant respond? This process allows the viewer to have much more control over the final image, but may not necessarily have the same amount of speed or efficient production that would be found in the harmograph methodology. The relationship of mechanistic and humanistic production is investigated, but this process also brings to mind the idea of efficiency and how it relates to the creation of art. The participants experience parallels that are often drawn between the processes of fine and applied arts. In conclusion, the mechanistic nature of society and the effectual results on the production methods of mankind are examined through my representation of creation methodologies of both entities.


Derrick Alston

 
 

BFA Spring 2012-Proposal Methodology1

Machine/Technology + Humanity

ma·chine/məˈSHēn
An apparatus using or applying mechanical power to perform a particular task.

tech·nol·o·gy/tekˈnäləjē/
1. The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, esp. in industry: "computer  technology"; "recycling technologies" 
2.  Machinery and equipment developed from such scientific knowledge.

Man’s relationship to the machine. Man’s reliance on the machine. What control/lack of control does machine have?


Reliance on technology. How could we live without technology?

Noun_Hierarchy
Verb_Systematize
Adjective_Intransigent
Noun_Apparatus
Verb_Facsimiled
Adjective_Mechanistic
In late 1927 and early 1928, Sheeler spent six weeks documenting the Ford Motor Company's automobile plant in River Rouge, Michigan, as part of the promotional campaign for the release of the Model A Ford. Sheeler's thirty-two photographs of the Ford plant depict its acres of gleaming, massive machinery, rather than the human process of labor. They celebrate the company's—and, by association, America's—ideals of power and productivity, although there is also a strangely forbidding atmosphere to the unpopulated scenes. Some of the photographs would serve as sources for later works in other media, he wrote, "I had come to feel that a picture could have incorporated in it the structural design implied in abstraction and be presented in a wholly realistic manner."
-Murphy, Jessica. "Charles Sheeler (1883–1965)". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/shee/hd_shee.htm (November 2009)

"At the dawn of the twentieth century Henry Adams proclaimed that the machine was as central to our modern American culture as the Virgin was to medieval culture. Charles Sheeler (1886-1965) was one of the most noted American artists to embrace the iconography of the machine. But was he high priest or heretic in the religion of mass production and technology that dominated his era? In paintings, drawings, and photographs depicting New York skyscapers, Henry Ford's automobile factories, and machine-dominated interiors, Sheeler produced images of extraordinary aesthetic power that confirmed America's technological and industrial prestige in vivid detail."

 Charles Sheeler and the cult of the machine  By Karen Lucic


 

The Architecture Machine
Toward a More Human Environment
Nicholas Negroponte

The use of computers to aid the architectural designer and urban planner is already beyond the experimental stage and part of the workaday routine of many professionals. There are, for example, machines that transform two-dimensional drawings into three-dimensional perspective displays and others that check myriad aspects of a design against specifications and tolerance requirements. The Architecture Machine looks several machine generations ahead of these to a future in which genuine man-machine dialogue is achieved, when man and machine will act together on something closer to equal terms toward a common goal, each contributing his-its own characteristic faculty.

The ideal result would be a final design so seamless and well integrated that it is not possible to tell which partner contributed what, and so creative and innovative, yet contingency-proof, that neither an unaided designer nor the most elaborate computer system could have produced it without the help of the other. Negroponte looks forward to man-machine relationships so personal that each can (politely) interrupt the routine work of the other with a fresh inspiration or a nudging reminder of higher priorities; so personal indeed that the response pattern of a machine to one designer would be significantly different from its dealings with a designer of another temperament or of another culture.

Some of the proposals put forth here have already been realized in a system called URBAN5, developed at M.I.T. and IBM by the author and his colleagues. A full account of this system is given. Beyond this, the more radical and adventuresome of the man-machine interactive attributes envisioned by Negroponte are now being created with the coming of more designers (men) trained in the newer technologies and more sophisticated configurations (machines)—and the exploratory interaction of the two.

The author has consulted the full literature on systems theory philosophy and has probed deeply into the underlying issues of man-machine relationships and artificial intelligence. It is perhaps not so surprising that an architect rather than a computationist should have provided us with one of the most provocative proposals for humanizing this relationship—architects have always been charged with infusing cold and neutral material with true human dimension and meaning. And although the author's illustrative examples are taken from architecture and planning, the book is equally pertinent to those in other areas in which computer-aided design processes are being pressed into active service. The fact that no specialized knowledge of computers is required will also facilitate the spread of the book's message: "The concern is to avoid dehumanizing a process whose aim is definitely humanization."


The Theory of Machine Design in the Second Industrial Age Tim Putnum 

Welcome to the Machine! The Representation of Technology in "Zeitopern" Frank Mehring

The installation, called "Flight Assembled Architecture", was conceived and built by teams led by my colleagues Fabio Gramazio & Matthias Kohler as well as Raffaello D'Andrea at the ETH Zurich. It illustrates a radically new way of thinking about materializing architecture: Use a multitude of mobile flying agents working in parallel and acting together as a scalable production means. As you can see in the video, the quadrocopters are programmed to interact, lift, transport and assemble small modules in order to erect a building.

 
 

SP_001.0-I

Alston

Noun_Apparatus
Verb_Facsimiled
Adjective_Mechanistic

The investigation of that which constitutes apparatus. A development of system, order, process, assembly, purpose, and function will build upon the defining premises of structure. Discovery of an entity which is mechanistic in nature because the nature of that entity has been previously established. Apparatus as structure and control. The aesthetic, development, and maintenance of that which is considered to be a tool but also what is found necessary for existence. Further examination of creation that is facsimiled to repeat the production of efficiency.