learning the ropes

I’ve been thinking about machines: machines that perform and people who perform with machines.  These are some visual references that I’ve found interesting in considering this subject matter.

This idea came out of a discussion Shlomit and I were having last Friday evening about whether I was making a performance or an installation.  She pointed out that I really needed to consider the performance from the audience’s perspective, so I considered flipping the whole thing around — facing the audience through a sheet of glass rather than standing with my back to them.  During the performance, I could scratch at the back of a sheet of glass covered with black paint. The drawing tool would continue to generate some sort of audio.  This performance concerns perception and revelation. As I scratch away paint to reveal the audience and the space which I cannot see at the beginning of the performance.  If I trace the outlines I see, I will also be rendering a mirror of the audience and simultaneously revealing my image through the scratch marks.

I created this mockup so I could see what it looked like at full size from the audience perspective.

On Monday evening, Wendy Richmond visited to see what I’ve been working on.  One thing she questioned, both in watching me, and in using the mechanism herself, was whether I was bothered by the way the ropes constrained me to a section of the board.  I hadn’t been terribly bothered by it, but at the same time, was already been working out a way to get past it with the infrared-detection scheme.  The question still remains – what place do ropes have in this work?  If they do belong in this work, is the tension of the constraint also part of the work or something I need to remove?

Later in the week, though, I sketched one possible solution to the roop loop constraint.

By replacing the rope loops with a simple system of counterweights, I would be able to move the drawing tool freely across the entire drawing surface.

On Saturday, I put together a prototype, by cutting the rope loops and adding water-filled soda bottles as counterweights.

At first, the system had too much friction, but after adjusting the pulley locations and changing the amount of weight in the soda bottles, I found a good balance.