Week 1
How to Talk About Painting
Assignment:
Design a potential final project. Model the project in one or more CAD programs of your choice. Design a personal website that you can upload each week's progress to.
For this project, I wanted to think up a generative machine: something that would do what I designed it to do, but would surprise me in what specific results it created. I tried to think of something that would integrate multiple learning modules throughout the semester. I decided on a machine that will listen to what you say, interpret the audio signals, and paint you a painting.
The first step was a hand-drawn sketch of my concept.
A spinning platform, like a record player, holds the paper. An arm moves along one axis, dispensing paint from bottles. Because the paper is spinning (essentially moving right to left) and the arm sweeps along one axis, equivalent to up and down, we can cover the whole paper. Controlling the speed of rotation can also allow for more variation in the paintings. A microphone picks up incoming audio signals, which will be processed by a small computer and interpreted into signals that can be sent to move the arm and dispense paint from the jars. I don't know yet what kind of mechanism would be best to dispense paint. Perhaps a pump. A battery and a small motor will provide the energy to move the arm and operate the pump. Next up: design this thing in CAD. I attempted to use FreeCAD but I found it pretty frustrating. Small movements of fingers on the trackpad will send the screen zooming in or out at wild dimensions. FreeCAD is not very intuitive and not quick to learn to use. With a limited repertoire of commands, this is what I made:
Astute readers will notice that my CAD model is upside-down. I don't know how to fix this. This is an overly simplistic model that does not yet have a mechanism for releasing paint from the nozzle, or for properly attaching the rotating part of a motor to the nozzle arm and the turntable. It's also missing a proper holder for a mic, and I'm sure many other things that I don't yet know about.
This project required also making this website. I've never written code or built a website before, so I owe tremendous thanks to A.B. for giving me the most amazing quick tutorial in HTML, text editors, and website building 101.
a brief lesson in art history
Spin art was originally a cheap, easy and fun way for kids to paint.
Until Damien Hirst, bad-boy British Artist, decided he wanted in on the fun but also realized he could sell spin art for millions by making paintings super big and bright and calling them High Art. And he did, because he's Damien Hirst, and once you've sold a dead shark for $10 million people will pretty much buy anything from you.
