Each WTW kinetic sculpture goes through an idea development and trial and error process to get to the final product. This is how new mechanisms are created, run-time is lengthened, and many other pieces are refined.
Four students at the Utrecht School of Art and Technology created the following cardboard mechanism. It took a lot of trial and error to get there. Go here to view the various prototype stages to get to the final.
Cardboard Mechanics Installation from Sasj on Vimeo via Dug North.
Several sculptures and drawings that Marji made during her years as a student at Rhode Island School of Design started me thinking about wooden machines as sculptures. Here's a video showing some of her works and one of my first attempts at a moving piece c.1975.
For more information on the history of Wood That Works and spring driven kinetic sculpture visit this link.
Writing about my "Chime Carillon" kinetic sculpture has me thinking about kinetic sculpture sounds. My current favorite is the very large sculpture Falling Water that is in our living room. I like the motion of this sculpture but after living with it for a while I think I like the sound it makes even better than the motion. Each of the 5 wheels makes a soft clicking sound and because each wheel moves at a slightly different speed the pattern of clicks is constantly shifting. It's hard to describe, sort of like a babbling brook or a soft rain but without the "wet" feel.
In this video I placed the camera very close to the sculpture to try and record the soft sounds it makes. When listening to it keep in mind that in a silent room these sounds can barely be heard from 20 feet away.
A representative from a toy company contacted us in 1982 to talk about toy designs. He had seen my kinetic sculptures and wondered if I had ever thought of designing and licensing toy designs. This was also the year that our second daughter was born so we were getting well aquatinted with children and toys and the idea appealed to us.
Our first design was the bicycling bear. Marji did the characterization and I did the mechanization. I built the model out of wood and Marji painted it and brought it to life. The toy company loved the idea but after a bit of research determined that it was too large (26 inches high x 22 wide) to make at a price people would be willing to pay. The mechanism didn't really lend itself to shrinking (the story of many of my designs!) so we had to put it aside. But the toy bug had bitten us and we started designing. We had an in house testing and inspiration department and the ideas just kept coming.
Eventually we licensed some designs and a few products actually came to market. In general though the final product bore no resemblance to our initial models and looked like every other cheap toy on the market. We grew disenchanted with the toy business at about the same time that our "inspiration and testing department" outgrew young children's toys. It was time to move on.
We have fond memories of that period. We had a great time designing together and with our kids. We met many wonderful people in and around the business. Probably most significantly to my current work, it was through the toy industry that I heard about constant force springs. You'll notice an abrupt change in power source between 1982 and 1983 in the sculpture archive.
Inspiration comes from many sources. David and I regularly go on “art” excursions – not to look for specific ideas but to be inspired by the astounding creativity of others. A regular October road trip is to the high-end Paradise City Craft Fair in Northampton, MA. David started his craft career showing at these type of events but now we go as observers and as craft collectors. We followed that with a weekend in NYC going to the Museum of Art and Design to see the Slash: Paper Under the Knife show. Well worth a visit. To follow in the same vein check out the work of Peter Callesen. Very intriguing.
by Marji
David has been building kinetic sculptures for over 30 years and there are a series of questions that keep surfacing. Variations of "But does it tell time?" is a classic. There are many talented clock makers out there and telling time has never been David's goal. There just isn't enough motion in a clock. Or so we thought until I saw this video on Youtube. Here is a clock that definitely qualifies as a kinetic sculpture as well!
This video shows one full cycle of the kinetic wall sculpture entitled Evolution. Full cycle is the time from one push of the spring mechanism until the next. Evolution has a particularly long cycle time of about 5 minutes. Initially the two wheels move in opposite directions at similar speeds. The back wheel usually (but not always) slows down first and starts rocking back and forth creating constantly shifting patterns throughout the cycle. I find some of the most interesting patterns are created near the end of the cycle when both wheels are moving very slowly. Total run time is about 4 hours per complete winding. You can find more information about Evolution by going to the Evolution page at woodthatworks.com. I've detailed my thoughts throughout the design process earlier in this blog starting here.
After many months of delay I finally built the first prototype of "Evolution" a month or so ago. It has made it from the studio, where I tweaked it for a few weeks, to our dining room so I can live with it in a nice environment as I continue the testing.
The sculpture works as I had hoped it would. The patterning is quite dramatic and very different from any of my previous work. The animation above captures the essence of the motion and patterns but not the full length or complexity of a cycle from spring push to spring push, usually around 3 minutes. The wheels move quite slowly toward the end of the cycle creating some of my favorite patterns. The relatively large mass off the wood wheels allows for this slow motion while still storing enough energy to trigger the spring mechanism. The cycle times and patterns are not regular. They vary depending on the speed and direction the wheels are moving relative to each other when the spring push occurs. I'll put up a video soon.
Marji thought of the name "Evolution" for this sculpture because of my series of blog posts describing the process of designing this piece. The series starts at this link. I plan to keep testing the Evolution for a few weeks and hopefully make a test production run next month.
My favorite sculptures are the ones that frustrate and challenge me. Quandary has that quality. I've lived with this piece for a long time.
I arrived at the patterning concept fairly early in the design process. I started with the idea of 4 overlapping satellite wheels composed primarily of nearly straight lines I added the circles for balance and I was pleased with the result.
Finding the right mechanism to move the patterning mechanism proved to be much more of a challenge.
The first mechanism I played with was a version of the 2 arm mechanism I've used in sculptures like the Variation series. I never built the mechanism. I didn't like how it looked with the patterning assembly.
I liked the symmetry of the next mechanism. It was based on an old mechanism design I hadn't used in years and thought deserved some new attention. I built this mechanism and it worked pretty much as shown in the animation. There were a few problems. Visually it was too big and complex for the patterning portion of the sculpture. All the complexity also reduced the run time to far less than I had expected. It was also difficult to set up and string.
I didn't give up easily. I set the sculpture up in our home and over a period of many months I tweaked the mechanism design and started playing with the patterning design. I found that by rearranging the satellite wheels I could create different patterns. This drew me on. I tried a number of different arrangements both in animations and on the model itself but in the end I just wasn't happy with the sculpture. I could see something was there but I couldn't find it.
I finally decided to junk the complex mechanism and all the patterning variations and try something very simple. I call the mechanism concept my "fall back" mechanism because it relies on the fact that an off balance wheel will fall back and swing like a pendulum when it looses momentum. I've used this concept in pieces as varied as Matrix, Harmony and Sun Dance.
I had doubts that the mechanism would work with this fairly heavy patterning assembly but there was only one way to find out. In fact it didn't work when I first tried it. I had to play with the balance and add some swing to the satellite wheels to keep it from stalling but with this simplification the sculpture came together. The subtle swinging motion added interest to the pattern as did the irregular start and stop of the motion assembly. The smaller mechanism brought focus back to the patterning part of the sculpture. To top it all off it ran for more than 10 hours and was simple to set up!
I learned a lot in designing Quandary that I will apply to future sculptures. Both of the initial mechanisms still intrigue me and there is a lot more exploring to be done with angle and arrangement of satellite patterning wheels in designs with 3, 4 and 6 satellites. I have no idea where it will lead me but I'm looking forward to finding out!