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isabelledirtydesign-blog · 7 years

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Over the course of the semester we experimented with a number of drawing machines, visual aids and processes that have heightened our awareness of the relationship between humans and machines. Specifically, we have explored how these relationships are evolving with emerging technologies, and shaping how we design. We have explored how our own design practice is affected by making an outcome with a ‘machine’ of our own invention.

We experienced a series of lectures on various design practitioners and design styles and also undertook various group projects. Our ‘solo’ projects were inspired by this accumulation of knowledge, research and skill and we carried these out over a series of steps, prototyping and developing our own mark making systems.

The lectures gave us important insight into what ‘came before us’ and helped us to situate our work in context. This idea of situating ourselves/our work in regards to what has already been done by others was really interesting. Rather than designing ‘in a vacuum’ we acknowledged - this is what has been done, this is how this person did this, and this is what we are doing.

All of the lectures and the group projects allowed us to practice this idea of building on what has come before us. For example we in small groups created our own ‘Rube Goldberg Machines” and then merged the groups together into one big chain reaction. Throughout the semester I personally struggled with the idea of a ‘machine’ (any autonomous or semi-autonomous system that assists humans). Our mish-mash of objects and nicknacks was a ‘machine’ and I struggled to comprehend this. I am so used to thinking of things like cranes and printers as machines, so it felt foreign to call something we pieced together with random things a ‘machine’. That being said, I got a lot of enjoyment from this activity and particularly enjoyed the performative aspect of this, and seeing our machine work all together.

Our process changed again and again as we experimented with the wide array of materials. The part that I found most interesting was the contrast between the impact made by different elements. Some parts of the sequence would be carried by a tiny marble rolling along quietly, and some would be a massive crash of a mousetrap or chain. The elements were unpredictable, we had to test them so many times. It took multiple tries to get the sequence to flow all the way through.

I liked starting our sequence with the ‘human’ element of the chair being sat on. Kind of makes me think of the butterfly effect, and also the effect that we as humans have on our environment and how small things we do can impact non human aspects of life. These were the small things that eventually helped me to come to terms with the idea of the final assignment. We weren’t just looking at machines we were looking at how they are integrated into our lives.

To further this experience and add to our knowledge and research, we did some work shops around drawing machines. The sense of uncontrollability I had been feeling with this new way of thinking and designing remained with the experimentation we did with drawing robots due to the ‘messy’ nature of this work. However I really enjoyed this session. Vinny and I created ‘Dotty’ using a paper cup and some metal wire. This small machine moved around powered by the small battery motor. We experimented altering the pens, weight, balance, leveling, batteries, path, obstacles, obstructions. The dotty circles that resulted are what gave our little guy his name - “Dotty”. The movement of the machine (at this stage) gave it a ‘personality’ and thereby gave it a name, which in turn gave it a human element. It was interesting to realise that we had an emotional connection with this machine because we made it, and because it took on a little life of its own when we set it free to roam around and draw.

A benefit of the lectures was getting exposed to the work of a multitude of artists, this was a great launchpad into our own research and encouraged me to investigate artists with spinning, pouring and dripping elements. I looked at Damien Hirsts’ spin paintings. He throws the paint onto a spinning canvas. The erratic way the paint falls and spreads out in his works kind of takes the control out of the artists hands in some way. Theres not really a guarantee on how its going to look in the end. You can control the colour and speed, but the rest depends on physics. Linda Benglis was one of the people that stood out to me in the lectures for her work pouring paints because of the free nature of her works.

Some insights from my research were creations in which gravity contributes as well as the contrast between the idea of control, rigidity and structure vs freedom and mess. I documented these explorations on my tumblr and found it weird but cool when classmates mentioned images they had seen on my tumblr. I guess thats part of the reason the tumblr is valuable, that we were able to get an idea of what others were learning and in turn learn from that too. I made a conscious decision to comment on other classmates posts, and even reposted a couple in the spirit of open communication and collaboration.

We had an incursion by Karen ann Donnachie, who taught us the basics of Processing, the open-source coding platform for artists and designers. She demonstrated how to create a number of typographic animations.

Andy posed the question “Could this become another tool for you to explore human-machine relationships within your project, or your design practice in general?”

I had been lacking direction with my project and feeling a bit lost, so I took this on board and really thought about how I could explore processing. I liked the human/machine interaction of the coding Karen showed us, as each input would create a reaction which still needed to be ‘unlocked’ by an human. For example how we put into the computer certain coding (machine) - which we could also customize (be that the shape, size, colour) and then clicked, moved the mouse around (human) to determine the outcome.

To further explore the human-machine relationship I thought I could try and do portraits of people or things, using processing - with either an actual description of the person or a poem relating to them, or written by them. The portrait would be made up of their ‘story’ or them in words. Furthering the human-machine relationship.

This could be a really interesting thing to explore independently. However I did not pursue this path in the course.

I was intending to use a record player to do some trials of some kind of spin art but in the mean time, I explored my back shed and discovered an old fan. This sparked my attention and having undertaken the course so far I had a renewed perspective and didn’t (as i would have previously) immediately discount this as useful or usable. I took the fan out, and preceded to take it apart, lay it down and got to work. By taking of the wire face of the fan, and unscrewing the safety cap I was able to remove the blades.

By securing various canvases to the fan blades I had a means to then attach the canvases to the fan with the fan blades and rotate them this way. An important element here was balance. Having the canvas centered and properly secured ensured that the canvas would spin properly. I found that if it was unbalanced the fan would make weird noises as if it was not functioning properly- clicking. In one of my initial trials with firstly just spinning a blank canvas, it flew off as i hadn’t secured it tight enough. From then on I taped the canvases extensively and also worked up the speed settings slowly to test that it could take it. I used weights to hold the head of the fan in place as it is not designed to work horizontally. The ‘neck’ of the fan was fairly flimsy in this horizontal position and also quite light, so the force of the fan would unbalance it. The weights improved this dramatically. This prototype was the beginning for me feeling passionate and actually driven. I felt like it had all sort of clicked and I was getting the idea of the whole thing. I think I needed to go through all the lectures and workshops, AND the confusion/doubt to get to this point. My brain was constantly questioning things, and it finally had a direction.

Once the machine was a working prototype I began to test it with the substances. I began by placing the paint on the canvas before commencing the spinning. The spinning motion of the machine caused the substance to spin out over the canvas due to the speed and rotation of the fan.

The outcome can be varied however depending on where the paint is placed by the human. This had similarities to the work of Abraham de la Torre. In the outcome there appeared to be a source point then the pint splayed out from it. I wanted to take away more control from the outcome and then tried pouring the paint as the canvas span, so rather than having a source point, or applying the paint directly like Brian John I then tried pouring the paint as the canvas was spinning. I was really excited by these outcomes and it really gained momentum as I got futher and further along.

I started attempting to use the spinning method to do a hat and tshirt. Kind of overdid these ones to be honest. Too much ink kind of ruined them. The shape of the hat didnt work well in creating a visually appealing pattern with this method of applying ink. With the shirt the ink also spread because of the material and didn’t retain much contrast. However by taping off the edges of the shirt around the canvas it created this crisp border around the ink markings that works really well think.

There was not much balance or good use of space in the hat trial and I think thats what came down to it being a failure. In this case mess was not more. The spinning with these attempts did little in the way of spreading the substance, unlike in the canvas trials as it is absorbed quickly onto the surface. With the paint on canvas, the spinning motion draws the paint out impacting the shapes and space. The designs were determined by where i held the ink bottle above the spinning surface and how much pressure I applied on the bottle. I don’t think this is a favorable result. I preferred the spinning to have a greater impact on the result and to create interesting outcomes. However, as I had found momentum at this stage, this only kind of spurred me on. I knew now what didn’t work and what did, and it gave me goals.

I refined my skills, and undertook the creation of my final works. I looked over the previous work and developments, both canvas and clothing and analyzed what was good, wasn’t so good and why. I was pleased with my final result and felt like as an edition they worked really well together. I really developed my design thinking and challenged myself by persevering with the notion of human - machine design interaction.

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