PERSISTENCE OF VISION MACHINE
Epigraph
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The readymades of Marcel Duchamp are ordinary manufactured objects
that the artist selected and modified, as an antidote to what he
called "retinal art". By simply choosing the object (or objects) and
repositioning or joining, titling and signing it, the found object
became art.
--- Readymades of Marcel Duchamp
About
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A number of years ago I was living away from 'home' and only saw my
good friends at the odd times when we all happened to 'return'
simultaneously. So, one such time when me and my good friend Liam had
'returned home' together, we got up to some serious antics when we
made an assemblage out of an old bicycle wheel, a wooden chair, an
Ardunio, a WiFi router, a strip of LEDs, and a motor from a household
fan. The outcome of all these things together was a persistence of
vision machine, which we likened to being something of a glitched-out
Duchamp readymade. We felt the nod to Duchamp was earned because, in
keeping with Duchamp's ideas of "work with what you can find" (my own
paraphrase), the machine was built entirely out of found objects.
Somehow (really, somehow) it worked. The fan motor makes contact with
the rim of the wheel, causing it to spin. A strip of LEDs attached to
one of the spokes light up, controlled by a battery-powered Arduino
(hanging onto its dear life) in the centre of the wheel. Across the
room a computer which sends commands from a NodeJS webserver to the
Arduino. A web interface lets the artist choose patterns, colors, and
set timings in realtime. Somehow (again, somehow) the thing
worked. And it was capable of some pretty intricate patterns, too.
Looking back now (circa 2018), I don't remember the process of this
project in its entirety. But it seems to me now that it came together
pretty quickly. Liam and I are like that. We hold onto ideas for as
along as we can complete them, usually a weekend. The trickiest bit
with the build was figuring out how to attach the bicycle wheel and
the fan motor to the chair in a sturdy way. In the end, the solution
was nothing more than a drilled hole (wheel) and some screws and
electrical tape (motor). Good enough!
Overview
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Stats
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- Project started: 2018
- Project status: Done
- Medium/tools: Bicycle wheel, fan motor, chair, NodeJS, Arduino,
Quick links
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Images
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IMG Portrait of the musician
IMG Web interface
IMG Portrait of the artist
IMG Portrait of the architect