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Instrument Seven – developments from Instrument Five

October 4, 2011
Drawing instruments
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Instrument Five (Nat Chard)

In the picture above you can see the view the catapult that is going to throw paint has of Instrument Five. As noted earlier, having the folding picture plane behind the drawing pieces means that many of the subtle splatters of deflected paint are obscured by the main body of paint that misses the drawing pieces and deposits a large splat of paint on the picture plane. The same instrument can be seen below, showing this relationship from the side.

Instrument Five (Nat Chard)

Instrument Seven has the same chassis as Instrument Five but has a new picture plane that sits adjacent to the flight of the paint (see below). The folding picture plane has adjustments between each individual plate plus the whole picture plane can rotate slightly. The plane is set up so that the area closest to the drawing pieces forms a harbour to protect that part from a direct flight of paint. Some of the direct flight can catch the back end of the picture plane (or the front if the catapult is turned far enough.

Instrument Seven (Nat Chard)

(Above) You can see how little of the Instrument Seven picture plane sits behind the drawing pieces.

(Below) Side view of Instrument Seven.

Instrument Seven (Nat Chard)

The Instrument Seven drawing pieces are also developed to be more robust and larger targets for the paint. We are no longer discussing the Bird Automata test track in this instrument – the drawing pieces shown here are a media test to push some of the thoughts about what the drawing pieces could achieve. There is a main wooden piece that is protected by a number of slatted screens. as the paint penetrates the screens to cover the wooden piece the slats become more opaque to the flying paint.

Instrument Seven (Nat Chard)

(Above) A detail of the Instrument Seven Drawing Pieces.

Instrument Seven (Nat Chard)

I will post some images of Instrument Seven drawing tomorrow. Below is one of Instrument Seven’s drawings.

Instrument Seven drawing (Nat Chard)

And another one…

Instrument Seven drawing (Nat Chard)

More Instrument Five

September 28, 2011
Drawing instruments
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Drawing Instrument Five (Nat Chard)

The earlier pictures of Instrument Five concentrated on two of the four instruments. Here is the whole cast.

Drawing Instrument Five (Nat Chard)

Drawing Instrument Five (Nat Chard)

Drawing Instrument Five (Nat Chard)

Drawing Instrument Five (Nat Chard)

Drawing Instrument Five (Nat Chard)

Drawing Instrument Five (Nat Chard)

Drawing Instrument Five (Nat Chard)Drawing Instrument Five (Nat Chard)

Drawing Instrument Five (Nat Chard)

I will post when possible over the next few days when internet access is possible but there may be some breaks.

More on Instrument Six

September 27, 2011
Drawing instruments
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Instrument Six set up for direct viewing (Nat Chard)

THe shadow in the submarine photographs (previous post) float in the air because there is a parallax between the flashes of each photograph as well as the parallax between the two photographs. Instrument six has an object to cast shadows and a screen. For direct viewing there are two candles (see above) on a track that have a polarising filter for each candle. There is also a mechanism to adjust the distance between the candles. The screen is a material that maintains the polarisation of light in the reflection, and is made for 3D projection. The observer wears polarising glasses and the parallax between the two shadows locate a single shadow in front of the screen. By reversing the filters the shadow can be placed behind the screen.
When taking photographs a single clear light bulb is used on the same track. A left eye image is taken and then the camera shifted 65mm to the right for a series of right eye shots. For each of these the light is moved along the track progressively, so that when they are each combined with the left eye picture, they place the shadow at different depths.

Instrument Six, set up for direct viewing (Nat Chard)

Instrument Six, set up for direct viewing (Nat Chard)

Instrument Six set up in photographic mode (Nat Chard)

Instrument Six set up in photographic mode (Nat Chard)

Instrument Six set up in photographic mode (Nat Chard)

Instrument Six set up in photographic mode (Nat Chard)

Instrument Six set up in photographic mode (Nat Chard)

Instrument Six set up in photographic mode (Nat Chard)

Shadow from Instrument Six (nat Chard)

To view the shadow in 3D go cross eyed so that the two shadows register one over the other. Try to relax and the 3D image will appear. You will see the shadow sitting a short distance off the surface of the screen. When viewing like this you will see three images with the 3D version in the middle. The lines on the screen are there to help resolve the 3D image and are not needed in the direct viewing version.

Instrument Six

September 26, 2011
Drawing instruments
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Instrument Six (Nat Chard)

Instrument Six is not on the same trajectory as the other instruments, but arrived as a consequence of a conversation about instrument five. I was explaining the drawing pieces to a friend as elements of space that were active.

Drawing Pieces on Instrument Five (Nat Chard)

As an analogy I said that they were a little like the interior of a submarine that was made up entirely of programme and not of passive elements. My friend e-mailed back to say that he had not been in a submarine so I assembled and sent off a pair of stereoscopic photographs I had taken a couple of years earlier showing such a space. After I had sent them I took a closer look at the stereo pair and noticed what was at first an annoying blur hovering in space. Quickly I realised that the annoying blur was on fact the very thing I had been chasing, a paradoxical shadow. It was so obvious how it had occurred that I was annoyed at not thinking of it before. At the time I was working on Instrument Five and stopped work on those instruments to build Instrument Six to play with the possibility of a shadow detached from the surface on which it should by rights be cast. The picture I sent is below but the lower image from another view works at least as well. Tomorrow I will post some more pictures of the instrument and its floating shadows in 3D.

Submarine interior with floating shadow (Nat Chard)

The floating shadow is just to the right of the periscope. If you are new to this blog, yo can view the image in 3D by going cross-eyed. When doing so, place one image over the other until they register. You will see three images, with the 3D image in the middle.  If you are having difficulty pinning it down, try adjusting your horizon slightly to make sure the images are level with each other. The three dimensionality improves if you hold it for a short while.

Submarine interior with floating shadow (Nat Chard)

It is worth persevering with resolving the 3D image – apart from the floating shadows, submarine interiors really come alive in 3D.

Drawing Instrument Five Drawings 2

September 24, 2011
Drawing instruments
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Drawing Instrument Five Drawing (Nat Chard)

The earlier Instrument Five drawings were mostly media tests to learn and practice the instrument. The drawings in this post are discussions of a more developed version of the Bird Automata Test Track.

Drawing Instrument Five Drawing (Nat Chard)

(Above) The flying paint discusses a particular flight. The new more developed beam can be seen running horizontally in the middle of the frame, with the paint flying just above it. You can see one of the hoop-like drawing pieces has caught a meniscus of paint that will burst and make its own splatter after the event.

Drawing Instrument Five Drawing (Nat Chard)

Drawing Instrument Five Drawing (Nat Chard)

Drawing Instrument Five in the process of drawing (Nat Chard)

Drawing Instrument Five in the process of drawing (Nat Chard)

Drawing Instrument Five in the process of drawing (Nat Chard)

Drawing Instrument Five in the process of drawing (Nat Chard)

Drawing Instrument Five in the process of drawing (Nat Chard)

Drawing Instrument Five in the process of drawing (Nat Chard)

Bird Automata Test Track

September 22, 2011
Bird Automata Test Track
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Bird Automata Test Track (Nat Chard)

The different versions of Instrument Five discuss a development of the project shown in this model. One of the limiting agents on an indeterminate condition is typology. The embodied knowledge in things carries with it embedded behaviours. I have visited quite a number of research establishments where new architectural questions bring a combination of new architectures but often with borrowed bits from elsewhere. One such place in Cape Kennedy where NASA launches most of its rockets. Along the coast is a compressed archeology of space flight architecture. At one end is a nipple on the concrete apron and a pole to hold a bleeder tube. This is the launch architecture for the captured German V2 rockets after the war. It is generic, portable, un-sited and does not discuss the body. After passing a succession of ruined Mercury and  Gemini launch sites (as well as an early Apollo site) you come to the space shuttle launch pads, formerly used for the giant Saturn Five rockets of the Apollo programme. These emerge out of the landscape and are tied to it by the gravel roads that lead to the Vertical Assembly Building. In less than forty years a highly developed architecture emerged particular to a new venture.

The Bird Automata Test Track  is the “before” model for the drawings in Instrument Five. Or the drawings in Instrument Five try to develop what is started in this model. It is at the V2 stage – generic, without a site, portable, and the only acknowledgement of people is in an access stair and the seating positions for the cameras.

Why a Bird Automata Test Track? The speculation is that if architecture was more of an automaton – if it had the capability to also be awkward, teasing, silly, precisely helpful, sometimes sulk and sometimes playful, for example, then it could be in a position to nurture a far more indeterminate condition than one that is more fixed in its relationship to our occupation. The test track is the first step – how might we behave with automata, how can I examine the idea of an automaton before looking at it as architecture, those sorts of questions.

Bird Automata Test Track (Nat Chard)

Bird Automata Test Track (Nat Chard)

Bird Automata Test Track (Nat Chard)

Bird Automata Test Track (Nat Chard)

Bird Automata Test Track (Nat Chard)

Bird Automata Test Track (Nat Chard)

Bird Automata Test Track (Nat Chard)

Bird Automata Test Track (Nat Chard)

Bird Automata Test Track (Nat Chard)

Bird Automata Test Track Birds (Nat Chard)

The image above is of the birds that can be clipped in to the track trolleys for the animated films of the rack in action.

Drawing Instrument Four

September 19, 2011
Drawing instruments
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Instrument Four (Nat Chard)

Instrument Four is a departure and is a test bed for instruments Five and Seven. The previous drawing instruments projected light. In terms of working with uncertainty and indeterminacy the physics of light was too predictable and too much under my control. Instrument Four projects paint rather than light. There are two instruments that talk to each other, rather than the monologue of the previous instruments. I will explain the ideas more fully when discussing instrument Five, but the paint hits a series of objects and through that collision splatters onto the picture plane. Instead of a figurative shadow it is a shadow of the play between the action of the paint on the drawing pieces.

Instrument Four (Nat Chard)

Of all the instruments they are the least elegant as objects as I tried to find the measure of the new material i was working with.

Instrument Four (Nat Chard)

They did, however, provide enough encouragement that such a form of projection could provide a means of making indeterminate drawings and more importantly, an indeterminate relationship with the instrument.

Instrument Four (Nat Chard)

The drawing pieces are the white plastic pieces sitting above the picture plane. I will explain them further when showing Instrument Five.

Instrument Four drawing (Nat Chard)

The test drawing (above) shows one of the key problems with instrument four (and five). The folding picture plane is behind the drawing pieces so that the subtle splatters from the thrown paint hitting the drawing pieces are obliterated by the main thrust of the flying paint. At this stage the paint is standard interior house paint. In subsequent drawings it is thickened with acrylic thickening gel.

Instrument Four is very much a test –  the benefits reveal themselves in the subsequent instruments.

Patterns

September 15, 2011
Drawing instruments
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Pattern1 (Nat Chard)

These are some of the patterns made to manufacture drawing instruments one to three. The following four types of instrument are made on laser cutters (and the subsequent ones have reverted to aluminium using a waterjet cutter). The patterns are made of cibatool, a homogenous and isotropic material designed to have no variation in character and to machine easily. I cut them on my small cnc mill.

Pattern 2 (Nat Chard)

The pieces of wood are added as air vents when making the silicon rubber mould so that whatever is poured into them can displace the air in the void. The parts for drawing instrument one were cast in plastic and for instruments two and three (and the incomplete instrument) in aluminium. For these I cast wax into the moulds that the foundry covered with a ceramic case and then melted the wax out to make the mould for the aluminium.

Pattern 3(Nat Chard)

Pattern three (above) was the first piece I machined. There are no drawings of the whole thing and no complete drawings any of the parts. They were designed incrementally, even within each part, so the only thing known about the next component was the dimension and geometry of the fixing to the previous piece.

Underside of chassis (Nat Chard)

Leg pattern (Nat Chard)

Dome brackets (Nat Chard)

Frame for drawers (Nat Chard)

Various components (Nat Chard)

Drawing Instrument Three

September 14, 2011
Drawing instruments
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Drawing Instrument 3 (Nat Chard)

Instrument Three is a linear development of Instrument Two, which was destroyed in transit while returning from an exhibition. The picture plane is a little different, but in most other respects it is a remake of Instrument Two.

Drawing Instrument 3 (Nat Chard)

Drawing Instrument 3 (Nat Chard)

 

Drawing Instrument 3 (Nat Chard)

Instrument Two Drawings

September 10, 2011
Drawing instruments
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Instrument two drawing (Nat Chard)

Here is one of the drawings from Instrument Two. It is a photograph on photographic paper that was held on the picture plane with acrylic plates, so the holes around the edges are from blots that hold the plates (and the photographic paper) to the picture plane. The dark parts are the projection of the white model in the box (projector) and the white parts are the negative of the shadow. below is the positive from this negative (in conventional photographic terms).

Instrument two drawing positive (Nat Chard)

The only reason for showing thei image is that it makes it easier to see where the various parts came from, so the projection is now white and the paradoxical shadow is black. The shadow seems to register with the base of the projected model, but is mysteriously smaller, geometrically perhaps appearing to be the object for which the projection is the shadow. You can also see photograms of the plate edges (that hold the paper flat on the picture plane) and some of the registrations cut into the surface of the plates.

Below is a sequence of drawings. The whole sequence can be seen in a picture in the previous post.

Instrument two drawing (Nat Chard) 2Instrument two drawing (Nat Chard) 4

Instrument two drawing (Nat Chard) 9

Instrument two drawing (Nat Chard) 10

The difference between the images is established mostly by folds in the picture plane. As the picture plane adjusts to question the projection, the model int he projector also moves to try and sustain its opinion on the picture plane.