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Art

The Page Turner: A New Rube Goldberg Machine from Joseph Herscher

The Page Turner is the latest device from New York born, New Zealand raised, and Brooklyn-based kinetic artist Joseph Herscher who builds elaborate Rube Goldberg machines that use complex chain reactions to complete mundane tasks. Some of Herscher’s effects here are subtle in their brilliance. He often creates small loops where his devices refer back to earlier steps, for instance the final state of step 25 is also used again as part of step 30. You can see more videos of his ingenious work here. (via automata, junk culture)

Art Design

Custom Polargraph Drawings

Mechanical drawing madman Sandy Noble (previously) continues to crank out great polargraph drawings, but has taken the artform in two new directions. First you can now order customized polargraph prints directly via Etsy, all you have to do is provide the imagery. And, for the more robotically inclined (ie. hardcore), Noble helps you buy or build one of the devices for endless squiggly drawing fun.

Art

Sandy Noble's Polargraph Drawing Machine

I was checking out some photos emerging from this weekend’s Interesting 2011 conference held in London (there was a world record attempt at ping pong ball mouse trap nuclear fission, among other things) when I stumbled onto a portrait of the group’s organizer Russel Davies being drawn with a very strange device. It turns out the robotic drawing machine was built by maker/designer/craftsman Sandy Noble and he calls it a Polargraph which is really nothing more than a pen attached to string that’s moved by two small motors. With an assist from good ‘ole gravity and some clever software the pen arcs back and forth, similar to a standard back-and-forth plotter printer, creating the beautifully textured drawings above.

Drawing machines are certainly nothing new, what with Harvey Moon’s Drawing Machine that successfully debuted on Kickstarter last year, and even Eske Rex’s enormous weight balanced spirograph drawing machine. However this variation on the design shows lots of exciting potential for such a primitive if somewhat quixotic method of drawing. You can learn more about the nitty gritty details of Noble’s printer here and see some more photos here.

Art

Drawingmachine by Eske Rex

(click images for detail)

The Drawingmachine is a mechanism by Copenhagen-based artist and designer Eske Rex that will be on display at MINDCRAFT 11 in Milan starting next week. The device is constructed of two interlinked pendulums that control a single ballpoint pen resting on the surface of an enormous canvas. Via Danish Crafts:

Drawingmachine is a construction involving two pendulums, each suspended from a tower construction and connected through “drawing arms” and moveable joints. A ballpoint pen resting on a drawing surface covered with paper is mounted at the point where the pendulums come together. The pendulums are set in motion by hand, and their movements are represented on the paper. The movements of the pendulums affect the entire room, and the experience engages the beholder’s body. While the rhythmic repetitions cause the beholder to pause, the drawing emerges on the paper.

The apparatus immediately reminded me of countless childhood hours spent with my beloved Spirograph. If you enjoyed this I also recommend Harvey Moon’s Drawing Machine, and the works of Tony Orrico.

Images courtesy the artist, Danish Crafts, and Jeppe Gudmundsen. (via core77)

Documentary Photography

Magic Feelings, Portraits of Roller Coaster Riders

Photos by German photographer Thomas Wrede from his 1996 series Porträts von Achterbahnfahrern.