User:Roman

Roman (0982345)

Elective: Mimicking Machines

When we first started our groups main goal was not to make the plotter draw. We ended up with the idea to make a machine that would dip a teabag in a cup and than slowly start swinging it around and letting tea fly trough the room. It would have no use, other than a performative one. Because of convenience, lack of time and the bag swinging less fast then anticipated we decided to let the bag swing under the plotter, instead of above. Because of it not totally being as we first imagined we decided to let the teabag be dipped in ink and let it make patterns and splashed on paper. Here I lost one against the group with my initial goal of "anything but drawing", although I have to admit in the end it was the right decision to have added the paper and ink.

We started working more with the coding of the movements. From here on our team existed of Maxime and I. The issues we had with the programming, although it went pretty well, started shaping the outcome of the project (in a good way). Because the tea bag didn't quit got the swing we intended we started playing with the "dipping function" of pulling the tea bag up and down that we first only intended for dipping the bag in the tea. We then also used this function of (quit violently) pulling the bag up and down while swinging, and intending for the bag to drip more. Even though this didn't had the effect as we thought, it did influence the path of the bag quite a lot. In the end I think the state of play, when we were just messing with the machine before the presentation trying out new things and other ways of coding and improvised solutions, was the most important one. Although this didn't even had a very large impact on the end result, this was the most interesting fase because we really looked for what the plotter had to offer and how we could manipulate and use the errors that we or the plotter was making.

If we would ever develop it further we could work on making the tea bag actually swing fast. We could either perfect the machine making it very precise in its movement, or go for a even more chaotic approach than we had now. For me the plotter would be doing more of a performance than drawing. Also I would move the swing of the bag to swinging it above the plotter, instead of below. Which if we had enough time should be a quite reachable goal.