Dances of Death

So the project is now going to be set up under the various sub-titles of Jean Tinguely's 1986 Dances of Death series. My previous fears that this was simply another reclassification of a concept rather than a means by which to theorise more deeply about the works [and begin naming and detailing] seem to be somewhat unfounded... talking with Phil I finally began to understand what he was getting at by talking about the juxtaposition of beached barges with crashed aeroplanes - though I am still a little way off being able to type it up, bare with me!!

Mengele (Hoch Altar) [High Altar]

Reading deeper into the sculpture series and looking into each model allows me to relate to the design decisions made by the artist and find parrallel materials and geometries within my own site with which to construct my own pieces, under the very same titles as Tinguely's.

The Magic of Jean Tinguely

Prof Spiller has given me a great point of reference and inspiration for the Rheticulating Landscapes project - the meta-matic sculptures of Jean Tinguely. The 2-d images of the works are interesting enough in themselves, but the intellectual ambition (Bartlett Buzz-phraze) behind the direction of the work is music to my ears given the previous discussions with Phil and Neil regarding the direction work own work should take.

In 1959, Yves Klein and Jean Tinguely are quoted as saying that 'art had to pentrate reality and create a universal sensitivity. Art makes reality dissapear; it dematerialises it by making use mainly of speed, sound, light and shade'.

Tinguely's work ranges in scale from small 'Balubas' - small, feathered ironical pieces made in response to the violence surrounding the newly independent Republic of Congo in 1960, - to monumental steel pieces the size of detached houses, built over entire decades, the best example being 'The Head' .

The material common to all of these projects is scrap steel [perhaps an interesting aside to conjecture as to whether an artist operating in today's credit-crashed global economy could afford to operate with such an expensive materil on this scale - a tangible illustration of the effect of capital on the form of art]. Tinguely manages to breath new life into dead elements of previous living machines through the creation of fresh machines and systems, creating crude but elegant devices such as the drawing machine below...

More to follow...

Tutorial 19/11/08

Hmmm... a very mixed bag this week.. the possibility of some much needed direction, but possibly at the expense of relevance..

As I saw it, the main problem with my project thus far has been the lack of a fundamental design question or driving force... I know what it is that I am looking at, and it interests me, but I feel that in order for the designs to develop past a basic exploratory conceptual daliance into something that can be interrogated, calibrated and valued, a more tangible direction or aim is needed.

Phil's suggestion from [last week] to look at crashing a fighter jet into the site was made in an attempt to prompt me into looking at the juxtaposition of different-paced technologies onto the site, and investigate how they might straddle the landscape in altering manners. At this stage I was considering the cockpit as a mapping or controlling device and the boat as more of a single molten material, similar to the air surrounding a living aeroplane.

What I was not considering was the space between 2 technologies; variable reactions to time and scale based on different calibrations to speeds and materials...

'Dances of Death'

Having yawned and ruffled his hair for a few minutes, Neil interjected with some sympathy for my need to understand what it was I am seeking to investigate at more basic umbrella level... His suggestion was to loosen up my theory or need to 'justify' my thread by taking a more sculptural approach, referencing Jean Tinguely's series of sculptures entitled 'Dances of Death', comprised of burnt out wreckages from a house immediately adjacent to the sculptor's studio.

Sounded good to begin with, but after doing a half day of research, mindlessly downloading pictures of crashed or decaying aircraft and Jean Tinguely scultptures, the questions returned once more; if I am to assemble a series of sculptures then I still have to come up with some kind of rationale for their assembly; thinking of them as sculptures or designs makes little difference to my immediate situaion - by looking at death I may have been steered in the direction of a framework with which to create a thesis or narrative, but it is still a blanket concept.. the search continued for a methodology which which to name, construct, and set in motion the elements of a design at a more detailed scale..

The Cockpit: Pilot Instrumentation

After last weeks tutorial, Phil has suggested I consider the reprecussions of a Eurofighter crashing into my site. This idea is to be used as a weapon to understand the representation, mapping, detail, and paradigm shifts that occur when a fast architectural system of high intelligence is juxtaposed with a lower, or slower site such as decaying timber within a landscape... discussions so far have revolved around changing colours and densities caused by movements of the observer within the system...

I have produced one relatively simplistic line drawing superimposed above a photograph, but am as yet to begin named the parts and considering how the image might be arrived at; I think I really need an in depth inquiry into the systems architecture that will enable me to actually assemble this data in a real world scenario...

Phil also pointed me in the direction of computer systems architecture, particular 'FAST' Architecture (Flexiable Systems for Stimulation and Testing).. wherupon I found the below diagram. I think it may be helpful for me to rationalise the objectives of my data-collecting enquiries, and state some aims for the outcomes, as this would allow specificity within the design of the armatures, in turn leading to a level of detail and accountablility, and possibly even iteration. Perhaps a similar diagram naming all the components of my system would be beneficial... I just feel I need a specific enquiry to focus my research and learning regarding these somewhat complex 'FAST' Architectures...

Interstingly yesterday we had a 5th year thesis lecture from Dr Rachel Armstrong, who is also lecturing at UCL this very evening, around the topic of Complex Systems Architecture... Her 'bottom-up' approach deals with the ambition of, put simply, growing buildings. This is to be achieved by a cross-disciplinary approach appreciating the considerably more complex operative rules if living, dynamic materials, rather than reducing them to inert objects...

One thread I discussed with her after the lecture involved looking at the way bacteria operate in relation to the decay of wood - one possible aim for the 2nd part of my project (what to do with the data once collected) could involve looking at a nano-biological defence system for timber framed buildings; recording the unabated decay of timber under natural conditions in order to unlock the algorythms that could hold the key to timber regrowth and repair patterns... maybe an immortal sea-going timber vessel is the ultimate aim?

Perhaps a ship that is able to redefine itself with climate change... the 10,000 year Noah's Ark for bacteria and fauna!!!

Hopefully more on this tonight...

Archaeological Windcatcher Clocks

These renders (immediately below is a photograph) all owe considerably more to the power of Nextlimit Maxwell Render than any modest skills I may possess...fairly simple Rhino models were exported as OBJ files into Maxwell Studio, a little experimentation with a timber material ensued, after which each of the three renders took about 4 hours...

This English clock dates from about 1610 and can be found in the British Museum's Horology section, ticking away on display. To create the below design, I looked into the 5 requisites of any timepiece - Energy, Escapement, Control, Wheels, and Indication in order to rearrange the principles of time into an achaelogocial exporatory armature...

Energy is provided by the wind, stored inside a variable speed coil mechanism, and redistributed using an escapment and control system containing a horizonal weight pendulum. This motion is transfered using wheels to a cylindrical weighted brush, which rythmically rubs away at the surface of the steel structural component still attached to the decaying timber...



This last image is a render manipulated with a simple radial blur in photoshop to represent motion. Overall I am happy with the image but the top left hand corner contain some slight pixelization that I may have to do something about...

More Drawings...

This notation drawing begins to imagine the relationship between multiple members of this dying fleet, communicating with each other through the tops of their [virtual] masts, all the way from estuary to muddy grave, recording the story of their decay.

The above design owes it's basic principle to the 'leg' section pioneered by Theo Jansen and referenced previously on this blog; the leg section is extruded through it's ability to slide up and down the vertical elements, reacting to the tidal forces that turn the propeller element. In place of a 'foot' is a tool that works primarily along the horizontal plane, scratching and disturbing the surface of the sediment below in relation to the movement of the system as a whole.

This drawing looks into the possibility of disecting a rudder and making it's sections subject to the varying displacement of three seperate (interconnected) agents: sediment, water (tidal rythms) and winds.

First Fruits...

This series of drawings contains a conceptual set of archaeological investigative armatures that straddle the dead vessels, seeking to measure the decaying materials to discover the alogrythms that are both inherent within the ecology that acts upon the vessels, and created by the inteface between the this existing ecology and the system that has invaded it (the dead or dying vessel).

Decay and movement occurs at differing speeds and along differing vectors relative to the materials involved and the parts of the local environment affecting them; water will not have the same effect as sediment will on timber, in the same way the timber and steel will react differently to immersion in either water or sediment. There is also the direction, scale, and force of the actions to be considered.

The above system looks to investigate the divorce of steel from timber; the force binding steel and timber previously was largely friction on it's own; friction was allowed through the bulbous turgidity of the timber cells prior to their decay; as this given changes under decay, the system is subject to paradigm shift, and eventually loses much of it's order:

More to follow...

Michel Gondry + Bjork

I was fortunate enough the other day to rip a whole heap of stuff off John's portable hard drive, including a collection of Michel Gondry videos, a large proportion of which were music videos for Icelandic 'pop'? artist Bjork [who now also collaborates with the ex Unit 15 video artists Lynn Fox]. I had come across analysis of the work of Michel Gondry before, notably a documentary of the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind...

For me Gondry's approach seemed to centre on simple low-tech tricks with little or no computer trickery; in the film these are just that, tricks, but in the below Bjork video for Beachlorette, this technique, or method is not hidden, but celebrated.

In this particular video, Gondry exaggerates, pierces and manipulates the divide between the audience and the artist/performer, using multiple media and stage sets, all ultimately fed through a television set, or the internet:

Another video, Hyperballad, does go beyond the singular celluloid surface, and collages various angles and images onto the frame. This reminded me of the Bryan Cantley drawing exercises the Masters students participated in recently; layering, distorted perspectives and coded surface textures are common to both artists... I guess it all leads back to the imperative of suggesting altered states within a static 2-d frame...

Theo Jansen's Strandbeest

A few weeks ago I came across a jaw-dropping 5 minute 'ted' talk by Theo Jansen, describing the herd of Strandbeest he was creating on the beach in Holland.

At the time I had no Idea Theo Jansen had lectured at the Bartlett none too long ago [2006]. The architectural relevance of his work is plentiful. Jansen creates herds of sibling 'beests that inhabit beaches, harvesting, storing, and using wind energy using simple materials such as empty lemonade bottles. Jansen hopes their evolution (not exactly self-propogated, more his own continous re-evaluation of sibling models) will lead to their eventual self-reliance. Possible future uses for the technology include reclaiming or protecting Holland's coastline by gradual collection and re-deposition of sands.

The above sectional model shows Jansen's '11 holy measurments', the ideal component lengths that allow this re-invented 'wheel' to act like a limb. Many different lengths of tube were analysed by computer to evaluate the ideal triangle shape as seen by the pen markings on the paper background.

Again, similar to the investigations into horology, this kind of influence may be more relevant when I begin to refine a design, this week has probably seen far too much thinking and reading, not enough doing!! But fascinating and inspiring nonetheless...

'Escapement'

Now I am beginning to understand the basic workings of horology a little, I have seemingly stumbled upon the really important piece of the puzzle, the part that begins to hint at how a mass of microscopic cogs measures/records/distorts time...

I will try to describe my own crude understanding, with as little reference to my sources (wiki!!!) as possible, chiefly as a means of attempting to personally interpret the research and its relevance to my project...

The 'escapement' element found in most almost any modern time-keeping piece, has evolved a variety of descendants that can either be described as 'mechanical' or 'liquid'. Any timekeeping method featuring an 'escapement' can be described as a repetitve oscilliatry process (such as a swinging pendulum), as opposed to a one-way flow process (such as a water-clock or egg timer). This improvement yeilded huge gains in accuracy.

The above self reversing process is an example of a mechanical process; the reilability of an escapement depends on the quality of workmanship and the level of maintenance given. A poorly constructed or poorly maintained escapement will cause problems. The escapement must accurately convert the oscillations of the pendulum or balance wheel into rotation of the clock or watch gear train, and it must deliver enough energy to the pendulum or balance wheel to maintain its oscillation.

[World's largest pendulum clock, Shinjuku]

The crucial element in escapement design is to give just enough energy to the pendulum in order to keep it swinging, and to interfere with the free swinging of the pendulum as little as is possible. As the lubrication of the escapement ages, friction will increase, and less power will be transferred to the timing device (for example, the pendulum). If the timing device is a pendulum, this means the pendulum will swing a shorter and shorter arc. Contrary to popular opinion, the time taken for a pendulum swing is not constant regardless of the size of the swing; the swing time changes with the size of the swing. Therefore, a dirty escapement will cause inaccuracy because the arc of the pendulum swing becomes shorter (the clock will speed up). To minimize this effect, pendulum swings are kept as small as possible.

For now I think all that is crucial for me to understand is the principle, a self-reversible, repetetive, oscilliatry process. The immediate obvious [metaphorical] link to my site can be found with the coming and going of the tide. I hope the fascinating details of calibration and tuning can be re-visited once a convincing design is up and running, but for now I guess I should leave the clocks alone for a while, and get some more drawings done.

I have been [quite rightly] advised to back up my hand drawings by scanning them; once this is done it should be simple to post them chronologically to chart the project.

Chrongraphs

Along the same lines as the seismography investigation, I am looking into the measurement of time, and the chronograph seems as good a place to start as any... All I currently know is that it looks like an incredibly complex instrument with an infinitude of tiny cogs... let's see what else can be learned...!

The Greek words "chronos" and "graph" stand for "time" and "writing". A chronograph is a chronometric (time-measuring) device which contains a mechanism that allows to stop at least one hand to facilitate reading of the elapsed time.The chronograph was invented by a Frenchman, named Rieussec, back in 1821. Literally, this was the only timepiece that bore the name Chronograph rightly. It was actually written on the dial with a small pen attached to the index. The length of the arc of the circle displayed the time that had passed. The index was fixed, while the dial turned. In 1822, Rieussec was granted a patent for his invention.

Chronographs are watches that can meassure time in different ways. Besides normal timekeeping, they can be used for one or more specific time measurements. For this, the dial has several sub dials with a scale, from which the measurements can be read. A central second hand can be started and stopped, without interfering with the continuous time.

The design of the dial of chronographs depends on the number of subsidiary dials. This can be two, three or even four. One of them is likely to be situated on the "9" of the dial, and shows the continuous seconds. When the chronograph is activated by pushing the top button, the central seconds hands starts moving. After one complete cycle is completed and the hand has returned to "12", the minute-indicator, located at the "3", will jump one position. With this simple type of chronograph a period of 30 or 45 minutes can be measured.

More complicated chrono's have a subregister for total hours, often located at 6 o'clock on the dial. This enable to take measurements up to 12 hours. Even fairly simple chronographs have a very complicated movement.

The escapement of a watch is that mechanism which operates in a very precise manner in order to release increments of time through the gear train of a watch. The Straight Line escapement from the Fredonia Watch Company. Many companies used the term "Equi-Distant" escapement when describing the type of escapement used in their watches. This is interesting as all escapements commonly found in pocket watches used and equidistant escapement. The escape wheel is round and has 15 teeth. The pallet has two impulse jewels which by obvious terms divides the escape wheel into a circular operation, thus becoming an equidistant escapement.

The diagram above shows the typical gear train of a watch. The escapement of a watch begins with the escape wheel. Next you will have the pallet. The pallet makes contact with the balance wheel as shown in the diagram. The balance wheel swings back and forth and with each swing locks and unlocks the pallet as it engages the escape wheel. This arc-of-motion can range from 18,000 beats per hour to as much as 28,000 beats per hour on some wrist watches.

Seismo[graphics]

SCATENI'S SEISMOGRAPH

In order to begin to understand the task of designing an apparatus that tracks the movement of the vessels relative to the shift in tides and sediments, Phil has suggested I look into earthquake technology - seismography etc... I found a fantastic set of drawings and accompanying explanations at the following site at http://www.gutenburg.org/

Italy, with her volcanic nature, has very naturally made a specialty of movements of the ground, or seismic perturbations. So the larger part of the apparatus designed for such study are due to Italians. For the observation of the vertical and horizontal motions of the ground, different apparatus are required. The following is a description of those constructed for each of such purposes by the Brassart Brothers. Some of the explanation are a little long-winded, but necessary to really comprehend the beautiful complexity of these machines...

APPARATUS FOR THE STUDY OF HORIZONTAL SEISMIC MOVEMENTS.

Apparatus for Studying Horizontal Movements.—A lever, movable about a horizontal axis, carries a corrugated funnel, i, at one of its extremities. At the other extremity it is provided with a counterpoise which permits of its being exactly balanced, while not interfering with its sensitiveness.

DETAILS OF THE APPARATUS.

The opening of the funnel passes freely around a column, v, upon which is placed in equilibrium a rod that terminates in a weight, P. The corrugations of the funnel carry letters indicating the four cardinal points, and the funnel itself is capable of revolving in such a way that the marked indications shall always correspond to the real position of the cardinal points. When a horizontal shock occurs, the weight, P, falls in a direction opposite thereto, and into one of the corrugations, where it rests, so that the direction of the shock is indicated. But, in falling, it causes the lever, F, to tilt, and this brings about an electric contact between the screw, h, and the column, n, which sends a current into the electro, E, so that the armature of the latter is attracted. In its position of rest this armature holds a series of parts, S, A, L, which have the effect of stopping the pendulum of a clock placed upon the same apparatus. At the moment, then, that the armature is attracted the pendulum is set free and the clockwork is started. As the current, at the same time, sets a bell ringing, the observer comes and arranges the apparatus again to await a new shock. Knowing the hour at which the hand of the clock was stopped, he sees how long it has been in motion again and deduces therefrom the precise moment of the shock.

The small rod, f, which is seen at the extremity of F, is for the purpose of allowing electricity to be dispensed with, if need be. In this case the screw, h, is so regulated that F descends farther, and that f may depress the armature of the magnet just as the current would have done.

APPARATUS FOR THE STUDY OF VERTICAL MOVEMENTS

Apparatus for the Study of Vertical Movements.—In this apparatus, the contact is formed between a mercury cup, T, and a weight, D. The cup is capable of being raised and lowered by means of a screw, so that the two parts approach each other very closely without touching. At the moment of a vertical shock a contact occurs between the mercury and weight, and there results a current which, acting upon the electro, E, frees the pendulum of the clock as in the preceding apparatus. In this case, in order that the contact may be continuous and that the bell may be rung, the piece, A, upon falling, sets up a permanent contact with the part, a.

ROSSI'S TREMITOSCOPE

BRASSART'S SEISMIC CLOCK