Art Machines Journal

The ancestor of every action is a thought. -R.W. Emerson
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Anamorphosis. From Kaspar Schott, Magia universalis naturæ et artis. Würzburg, 1657
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
-Albert Einstein
I think intelligence cannot develop
without content. Making new
connections depends on knowing
enough about something in the
first place to be able to think of
other things to do, of other
questions to ask, which demand
the more complex connections in
order to make sense of it all. The
more ideas a person already has
at his disposal, the more new
ideas occur, and the more he can
coordinate to build up still more
complicated schemes.
-Eleanor Duckworth,
“The Having of Wonderful Ideas”
and Other Essays on Teaching
and Learning
Questions focus our thinking. -Charles Connolly
www.cabaret.co.uk
In a certain sense every experience should do something to prepare a person for later experiences of a
deeper and more expansive quality. That is the very meaning of growth, continuity, reconstruction of
experience. -John Dewey
Cloud (detail)
by Arthur Ganson
www.arthurganson.com
We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning
the answer itself. -Lloyd Alexander
E
T
A
E
CR
CONSTRUCT
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are
located in the same individual. -Arthur Koestler
Constructionism is both a theory of
learning and a strategy for education. It
builds on the "constructivist" theories of
Jean Piaget, asserting that knowledge is
not simply transmitted from teacher to
student, but actively constructed by the
mind of the learner. Children don't get
ideas; they make ideas. Moreover,
constructionism suggests that learners
are particularly likely to make new ideas
when they are actively engaged in
making some type of external artifact
(be it a robot, a poem, a sand castle, or
a computer program) which they can
reflect upon and share with others. Thus,
constructionism involves two intertwined
types of construction: the construction of
knowledge in the context of building
personally meaningful artifacts.
- Yasmin B. Kafai and Mitchel Resnick
Introduction, Constructionism in Practice, 1996
www.makezine.com
Things are not difficult to make. What is difficult is putting ourselves
in a state of mind to make them. -Constantin Brancusi
Tim Hunkin www.RudimentsOfWisdom.com
Creativity is about play and a kind of willingness to go with your intuition. It's crucial
to an artist. If you know where you are going and what you are going to do, why do it?
-Frank Gehry
Singing mechanical rooster. From Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia universalis. Rome, 1650.
The "silly question" is the first intimation of some totally new
development. -Alfred North Whitehead
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Jiminy cricket
PICO cricket
Giant Painting Machine
by Douglas Repetto
music.columbia.edu/~douglas
A PIE Activity is:
• A playful and inventive approach to learning
• An opportunity to use a variety of tools and materials
• Reflexive and iterative
• Collaborative in nature
• Somewhere between hi-tech and lo-tech
• Time consuming and sometimes challenging
• A mixture of science, art, and technology
• Using digital technology as just one of a number of tools and materials
• A way to learn science, art, and design process skills
• Rich in experimental variables
• Diverse in solutions to a shared theme or challenge
• New uses for everyday objects
• A way of taking an idea from imagination to realization
• Personally meaningful
• Based on real, inspiring things in the world
• When the big idea is the individual's idea
•
•
Creators are hard-driving, focused...independent risk takers... A willingness to toil and to
tolerate frustration and persist in the face of failure is crucial.
-Ellen Winner
A short film from 1961, in which
Alexander Calder and his wife
present Calder’s Circus, made up
of tiny acrobats and animals.
The circus is housed at the
Whitney Museum in New York.
Fluency
what does it mean to be fluent with a cricket?
with a hot glue gun?.... with a cable tie?....
or with ideas?....
Creativity is the ability to see relationships where none exist. -Thomas Disch
Tabula scalata (staircase picture)
From Jean Blanchin, La perspective curieuse, Paris, 1663.
The voyage of discovery lies not in finding new landscapes,
but in having new eyes. —Marcel Proust
The visitor is led into a darkened room. Through a window high in the wall behind him falls a narrow shaft of sunlight. The mirror reflects the light onto an octagonal wheel,
with paintings of animal heads set on human shoulders. As a result of the revolution of the wheel the visitor sees his own image undergo one metamorphosis after another
in the mirror. The aim of the deigner of the device, the Jesuit Athanassiua Kircher (1602-1680) was tp conjure up with these transformations as many symbols and
metaphors as possible for the observer; the optical reflections, he hoped, would move the observer to spiritual reflections, he hoped would move the observer to spiritual
reflections of his own nature. In his own words: “I myself have such a machine, which sends everyone into great raptures when they look into the mirror and instead of
their normalcountenance discrcern how the visage of a wolf now that of a dog or some other animal.” -Athanasius Kircher, De Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, Rome, 1646
From Douwe Draaisma, Metaphors of Memory: A History of Ideas About the Mind. Cambridge, 2000.
Underlying this book is the
premise that children and
teachers need to be actively
engaged in the learning
process. As designers of
their learning, dynamic
collaboration between
adult and child produces
thoughtful curriculum.
-Susan Dunn & Rob Larson
Design Technology : Children’s
Engineering
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- reassure yourself that
getting stuck is part of
the process
- look at what other
people are doing
-take a walk
Insect Flight Machine - Étienne-Jules Marey
In 1869 Marey constructed a very delicate machine to
demonstrate the flight of an insect and the figure-8 shape
it produced during its movement. His artificial insect, with a
body formed by a drum containing compressed air, could
move up, down, and even diagonally.
The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.
-Julia Cameron
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple,
that’s creative. –Charles Mingus
HARVEY ALLISON 1916 (#1,207,464)
RENT-A-DOG
by Tim Hunkin
www.timhunkin.com
Cabaret Mechanical
Movement contains a lot of
theory but it’s also packed
with practical tips and ideas
for making your own
automata, moving toys or
mechanical sculpture.
To understand is to invent. -Jean Piaget
FIG. 12. FACSIMILE OF DESIGN FOR PENDULUM CLOCK
Drawn by Vincenzio Galilei from his father’s dictation.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious—it is
the source of all true art and science. -Albert Einstein
Made of pine, hemlock, latex, urethane, copper, canvas and
music wire. Inspired by a 19th-century simulation of heart
function by Etienne Jules Marey, this interactive replication
of the heart requires at least two people to complete the
experience.
Etiology of Innocence
by Bernie Lubell
blubell.home.att.net
The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than
to provide ready-made knowledge. -Seymour Papert
ong K
l
e
inder
f
i
garten
L
http://llk.media.mit.edu
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
-Plato
high
challenges
Anxiety
ow
l
F
al
im
pt
O
Boredom
low
skills
high
by: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Phenakistoscope
Discovery is the ability to be puzzled by simple things.
-Noam Chomsky
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b
mi
stakes
You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know
absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing - that's what
counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.
-Richard Feynman
JOHANN BESSLER,
DESIGN FOR A PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE,
1715.
Exploring, like doing basic research, is often fruitless. Nothing comes of it. But also like basic research,
as distinct from applied or directed research, exploring enables one to divert attention from preconceived
paths to pursue some intriguing lead: a fragrance, a sight or smell, an interesting street or cave, an open
meadow encountered suddenly in the woods or a patch of flowers that leads one off the trail, or even a hole
in the ground! Often it is precisely as a result of aimless exploration that one does become intensely
directed and preoccupied. -Frank Oppenheimer
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Wooden Screw
by Norman Tuck
www.normantuck.com
Sphygmograph (1860) - Etienne Jules Marey
Marey devised the first portable sphygmograph which
recorded the pulse transmitted by a pen, one end of
which was connected to a pad that rested on the pulse.
A strip of paper that was blackened in the smoke from a
piece of burning camphor is supported in a carriage
which was moved by a clockwork mechanism past the
pen. The length of the pen amplified the movement of
the pulse.
uff
Sensing strange st a surface
ross
• a bug crawling ac
g
• a raindrop fallin
• ripples in water
ows
• something that gr
g
• someone laughin
• hair being cut
•
•
•
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.
-Albert Einstein
W
O
L
L
FO
NTS
TANGE
Phonoharp
by Walter Kitundu
www.kitundu.com
based on terminology developed by John Maeda at the MIT Media Lab
LEONARDO
DA
VINCI
Eggbot
by Bruce Shapiro
www.taomc.com
The art and science of asking questions is the source of all
knowledge. -Adolf Berle
I think our interaction has been single-pathed. You’re in a forest, you walk carefully along the path, and
you reach the chest of doubloons on the other side and solve the problem. And that is the way we, I too,
teach physics. But the kids that try it get lost at each turning of the path. The trouble is that they think
there is only one safe path, that they have to stick to it as close as they can, and they’re afraid to go off
into the deep woods. I think that the only way to teach path-finding is too make them get lost many times, to
make all the false starts, to try out all the alternatives. Of course, you can’t learn many paths that way,
but you can learn a way of going down a path. Then, if someone gives you another start, you might be able to
find a way for yourself. Hopefully some other time. -Phillip Morrison, American Journal of Physics 1964
Barry’s List of Art Machines
Mark Making Exhibits
Shadow Box 17W
Sun Painting 16C
Recollections 14E
Discernability 11C
Mercator Your Face 10W
Spinning Patterns and Spinning Blackboard 8E
Heat Camera 6C
Thermal Impressions 6C
Rift Zone and Aeolean Landscape 5C
Fading Motion 4M
Drawing Board 5M
Note: Numbers with capital letters represent general museum location.
The number is on the museum wall.
W=west, C=center, E=east, and M=mezzanine
Other Possibilities
Eye Tracking 14W
Seismograph 9E
Vibrating Sand 9E
Imaging Station 7M
Playful and Inventive Art Machine Films
Do-Nothing Machine (1957, edited 1991, 2 min)
by Charles and Ray Eames
Available at www.pyramidmedia.com
Eames Office footage of the Do-Nothing Machine documents the solar-powered toy commissioned by Alcoa to showcase a playful and unexpected use of aluminum.
100 watts, 120 volts (1977, 9 min)
by Carson Davidson
This film may be difficult to find.
The film follows with lyrical rhythm the automated manufacture of light bulbs, accompanied by Bach's Third Brandenburg Concerto.
Light Play: Black-White-Grey (1930, 5 min)
by László Moholy-Nagy
Available to rent or purchase on 16mm film from MOMA, NYC, thru their film and media collection, www.moma.org
In 1930 artist and Bauhaus teacher Moholy-Nagy completed his kinetic sculpture, the Light Space Modulator. Made of prisms, disks, screens, gratings, mirrors, and
shiny balls, the rotating machine reflected and refracted beams of projected light, altering the viewer’s perceptions of space and creating a living painting in the gallery.
Moholy made this short film as a document of the Modulator’s operation, and as a study of the sensitivity of moving picture film to the luminescence of light and shadow.
Calder’s Circus (1961, 19min)
by Carlos Vilardebo
Available at www.roland-collection.com
Alexander Calder's fascination with the circus began in his mid-twenties, when he published illustrations in a New York journal of Barnum and Bailey's Circus, for which
he held a year's pass. It was in Paris in 1927 that he created the miniature circus celebrated in this film - tiny wire performers, ingeniously articulated to walk tightropes,
dance, lift weights, and engage in acrobatics in the ring. Artists would gather in Calder's studio to see the circus in operation. It was, as critic James Johnson Sweeney
noted, ”a laboratory in which some of the most original features of his later work were to be developed.“
Glas (1958, 10 min)
by Bert Haanstra
This film may be difficult to find.
A lyrical study of the art of glassblowing as rhythmical play, the film shows the craftsmanship of the glassblower who, with one deft movement, turns a lump of molten
glass into a household object or a work of art is in sharp contrast with the uniform and mechanical way in which items are formed in a commercial glass factory. Winner
of the 1959 Oscar for short subjects.
Breaking it Up at the Museum (1960, 8 min)
by D.A. Pennebaker
Available at www.phfilms.com
A record of the Spring 1960 event in which Homage to New York, a kinetic machine built by the artist Jean Tinguely, destroyed itself in the Sculpture
Garden of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Playful and Inventive Art Machine Films (cont.)
Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go, 1986-87, 30 min)
by Peter Fischli and David Weiss
Available at www.amazon.com
In a series of Rube Goldberg-like chain reactions, household objects such as sugar cubes, styrofoam cups, a tea kettle, and wooden blocks follow a seemingly
haphazard path of successive actions and reactions involving rolling, melting, dripping, steaming, and toppling to create a series of dramatic tension-filled temporary
crises and resolutions.
Wild Wheels (1992, 64 min)
by Harrod Blank
Available at www.artcars.com
Traveling across the country in his own wildly decorated VW Bug, filmmaker Harrod Blank discovers a memorable cast of real-life characters who are obsessed with
transforming their cars into mobile works of art.
The Secret Life of Machines (1988 - 1993)
by Tim Hunkin
Available at www.timhunkin.com
This British TV series produced by Channel 4 and subsequently shown on the Discovery Channel examines the history and workings of everyday machines. Originally
developed as a comic strip, the film uses live action and cartoon animation to explain the inner workings of common household and office equipment.
Arthur Ganson’s Machines (1978-2004, 70 min)
By Arthur Ganson
Available at www.arthurganson.com
This DVD documentation of 36 of Ganson’s kinetic art machines provides good overall views and close ups of his work. The film includes animation sequences
showing how he bends and solders wire gears, and texts capturing the artist’s thoughts about machines and the creative process.
Wire Works (1992, 5min)
by Michael Rudnick
Contact the filmmaker to purchase a copy opixr@netscape.net
This film documents some of Rudnick’s 3-dimensional wire art works that depict human fables.
Sharmanka (Russian for “barrel organ,” 42 min)
by Murray Grigor
Available at www.sharmanka.fsnet.co.uk/Shop.htm
Founded by sculptor-mechanic Eduard Bersudsky and theatre director Tatyana Jakovskaya in St.Petersburg, Russia, in 1989, and based in
Glasgow, Scotland, since 1996, Sharmanka is an kinetic theater of hundreds of carved figures and pieces of old scrap, which perform to music
and synchronized light.
A Point of View on Teaching
Soren Kierkegaard
The Journals 1864
That if real success is to attend the effort to bring a man to a definite position,
one must first of all take pains to find him where he is and begin there.
This is the secret of the art of helping others. Anyone who has not mastered
this is himself deluded when he proposes to help others. In order to help
another effectively, I must understand what he understands. If I do not know
that, my greater understanding will be of no help to him. If, however, I
am disposed to plume myself on my greater understanding, it is because I am
vain or proud, so that at bottom, instead of benefiting him, I want to be admired.
But true effort to help does not mean to be a sovereign but to be a servant,
that to help does not mean to be ambitious but to be patient, that to help
means to endure for the time being the imputation that one is in the wrong
and does not understand what the other understands… For to be a teacher
does not mean simply to affirm that such a thing is so, or to deliver a lecture,
etc. No, to be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner, learn from the
learner, put yourself in his place so that you may understand what he understands and in the way he understands it…
Evaluation Guidelines Excerpted from
"The African Primary Science Program: an Evaluation and Extended Thoughts"
by Eleanor Duckworth
1) Does she make suggestions about things to do and how to do them?
2) Can she show somebody else what she has done so they can understand her?
3) Does he puzzle over a problem and keep trying to find an answer, even when it is difficult?
4) Does he have his own ideas about what to do, so he does not keep asking you for help?
5 ) Does she give her opinion when she does not agree with something that has been said?
6) Is she willing to change her mind about something, in view of new evidence?
7) Does he compare what he found with what other children have found?
8) Does he make things?
9) Does she have ideas about what to do with new material you present to her?
10) Does she write down/draw some of the things she does, so she does not forget what happened?
11) Does he sometimes know ahead of time what will happen if he does a certain thing?
12) Does he like to think of variations of ways of doing something?
13) Does she ever decide to do something over again, more carefully?
14) Does she feel free to say she doesn't know an answer?
15) Does he cooperate with other children in trying to solve a problem?
16) Does he ever continue this work outside school time?
17) Does she ever bring materials to school, to investigate in the same way?
18) Does she talk about this work at other times of the day?
19) Does he make comparisons between things that at first seem to be very different?
20) Does he start noticing new things?
21) Does she start raising questions about common occurrences?
22) Does she ever repeat one experiment several times, to see if it always turns out the same?
23) Does he ever watch something patiently for a long time?
24) Does he ever say, "That's beautiful?"
I think that you will agree that if a child does even five or six of these things, they are benefiting.