ACTLab: Extreme Freestyle Hacking
Copyleft 2007 Evan Wilson
My ACTLab page ||| Project One ||| Project Two ||| Project Three
For my second project I made a painting in motion. It consists of three large dowels, three 12V batteries, three 12V 6.8RPM motors, epoxy, a switch, part of a 2"x4", some wiring, paint and lots and lots of electrical tape.
My initial idea was to paint the same or a similar painting on all three of the dowels and to offset them slightly on the spindles of their respective motors. I envisioned a bird or some other object appearing to fly or move across the dowels as they rotated at the same rate but beginning at different points. However the motors which I could afford to buy weren't perfectly synchronized with each other and so a synchronized movement of objects "across" the painting became impossible.
Still though I needed a good way to attach the dowels to the motors. So I emailed Jerry Chamkis and asked if I could borrow his lathe. Of course being the great guy he is he was enthusiastic about it so I went over to his place where he helped me with the lathe and with soldering the wires in the electronics part of the piece.
We paralleled the batteries and motors so that the whole thing could be controlled by one switch which I bought the next day.
Then I attached the dowels to the motors with epoxy. After they dried I began the process of attaching the motors to the wooden base. I used lots of tape to do this. I had bought three U-bolts which were the right size but it was more worth it to work with tape for me.
After this the only thing left was to paint it. Because the synchronization was no longer possible I just did abstract stuff. And I was feeling uninspired artistically by the time I got to the third dowel so I just left it blank. If anybody asks it's some sort of minimalist artsy statement.
Many thanks to Jerry for his help.