UCA 3D Design 1: Cause and Effect
Assessment Week Task: Goggles
Over the assessment and feedback weeks, we were given some tasks preparing for the pathway. We had to watch a few videos of Cause and Effect or Rube Goldberg machines, collect objects we could use to build our own, and finally create a set of perspective-altering goggles to make drawings with.
I wasn’t sure where to start, and it got late, so I decided to use some sock packaging I found in my room as a base. To create the perspective distortion, I made the eye-holes as small as possible, and taped over one of them. This is the result!
Drawings with Goggles
We were then instructed to draw our classmates with the goggles on, in roughly 4 minutes each. I made 6 of these drawings with the time I had.
Cause and Effect Research
The work of cartoonist Rube Goldberg
(Goldberg, 1931)
The cartoonist Rube Goldberg made a series of comics describing unpractically complex machines that ultimately complete a simple task. The basic them for each machine is that a series of unrelated processes trigger one another in sequence, adding unnecessary steps to reach an outcome. More recently, these machines are made real for entertainment (Wikipedia Contributors, 2019).
The basic style of Rube Goldberg’s comics makes them easy to follow : the machines are designed in a single plane diagrammatically, with all elements visible at once. We chose not to limit our project to a single plane when building our own to avoid the complexities of mounting objects to a wall, letting us focus on the chain reaction itself.
This Too Shall Pass - Music Video by ‘Ok Go’!
(Ok Go et al., 2010)
This video by ‘Ok Go!’ uses a long series of rube Goldberg style interactions to complement their music, with specific events lining up to the beat or changes in tone. They work in multiple planes, but since the events are recorded, the camera can follow the chain step by step. This makes the process much smoother than viewing from a single point. The comic value of the steps is less prominent than in the original Rube Goldberg machine, but still present. We were inspired by this to work in 3 dimensions.
Méta-Matic No.17 - Jean Tinguely
Some of Jean Tinguely’s work creates inspiration for Rube Goldberg machines. The apparent pointlessness of this machine aligns itself with the pointless nature of a cause and effect machine. It also highlights that the machine itself is beautiful and meaningful without the process that it completes, and the necessity then to consider the whole form when building it.
(Van Rolleghem and Pictoright, Amsterdam, 1959)
Tuesday Workshop: Rings
Ben Fletcher, the workshop technician, gave us the first of weekly workshops in the workshop. Workshop. He showed us a few different things, including how to make simple wooden rings. I started with some yellowish box wood, and made these two:
1st coat of varnish:
2nd coat of varnish
The next day I made another, using an incredible looking wood called wood of life or lignum vitae (Wikipedia). The wood has green streaks that make it look freshly cut long after it’s been felled.
For both woods, I chose to use the column drill to help with precision.
For this piece, I used a band saw and then a band sander to get this hollow cylinder:
And then a Dremel to round the edges, followed by different grits of sandpaper to get this result:
The piece cracked, so I used contact adhesive to mend it, and sanded down the joins to make them less visible:
The Cause and Effect Machine
After research, our main effort was to create our own Rube-Goldberg machine using found objects. Our machine combined hot wheels tracks, dominoes, tensioned string, levers and rolling golf balls in roughly this order. These created the series of pointless interactions that make up the whole.
Photo Evidence
The largest issue, not visible in the final run as documented here, is failed connections across the set. Dominoes did not always fall predictably or weren’t placed correctly, the tensioned string was not always released properly. Most issues would only crop up 1 in every x runs, but the number of connection points and increasing complexity as we kept building meant something almost always failed.
These images document the entire chain of connections from the first hotwheels car to the thank-you sign at the end.
Vector Diagram
To try to condense the run into a single sheet, I made a vector diagram of each stage, the red arrows to show how each links into the next.
Photomontage
On a similar idea, warping and rotating images allows them to form a non-proportional photomontage that is similarly easy to view as the diagram.
The photographic version came out easier to understand, possibly as the elements in the images are easier to understand in 3D space. I tried to resolve this issue with the diagram by adding horizon lines as well as outlines of walls and other key objects in purple, but the photomontage still comes out as a better representation.
Videos of final run
On the last day, we presented our final product to the class as well as other pathway students. It failed, but this video shows the run in motion, including human interventions to keep the momentum going.
View post on imgur.comReference list
Goldberg, R. (1931) Self-Operating Napkin. [Comic] At: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rube_Goldberg%27s_%22Self-Operating_Napkin%22_(cropped).gif (Accessed 11/01/2023).
Ok Go et al. (2010) OK Go - This Too Shall Pass - Rube Goldberg Machine - Official Video. At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w (Accessed 11/01/2023).
Van Rolleghem, J. R. and Pictoright Amsterdam (1959) Jean Tinguely with Méta-Matic No. 17 in front of the Eiffel Tower, 1959. [Photograph] At: https://www.studiointernational.com/jean-tinguely-machine-spectacle-review (Accessed 11/01/2023).
Wikipedia Contributors (2019) Rube Goldberg machine. At: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rube_Goldberg_machine (Accessed 11/01/2023).
