The Automatic Puppet

Posted by tinkartank on January 15, 2010

Here goes:

Ok, so I’ve got 20 RC servos. What do I do with them? I build a puppet-machine, with twelve servos pulling one string each.

Twelve might seem much, but each string comes out of a fixed hole in the box and can only pull the point it is connected to in one direction. So, in order to move a hand in two axis I need two strings attached to two servos. This way I use two servos for each hand, one for each leg, three for the head and one for the neck, leaving two spare servos for where ever it should be needed. The lower back of the puppet is hanging stationary from two fixed strings and is therefore the base of all movement.

The twelve servos are controlled from a single Arduino board. In the video I use a max patch that let med control each servo from a fader on a midi controller, store positions and crossfade seamlessly between two positions. Later I have programmed positions, transition times and sequences into the Arduino board so the machine can work stand alone. I think I will give it some optical sensors so it can respond to people passing. Lamps are also coming up.

Check the gallery:

Random Art Games

Posted by tinkartank on January 8, 2010

After years of experimenting with machines and chance in creative processes, the time has come for reflection and teaching others. We are doing this the next week at CAMON in Alicante. So I have spent some time lately reading up on randomness, aleatoricism and improvisation, including their branching into artistic practices from the 20th century to the present. Fun stuff, but it reminds me of all the times I tried to make a machine with one button that would rearrange my material and failed, ending up learning something else instead. Random is not easy, but its epistemological journey from the divine via scientific discourse to our present Take-away-random, has made it soft. Magic on the other hand is the result of tangible processes.

Here is my first cut-up, it was made during a writing workshop some 10 years ago based on a personal story describing computer games, roleplaying and finally theatre.

That journey was one get’s whole new world the different confided for me and when house with thick books beginning of fantasy/mind, into the real world a hack’n’slash and how you stone and he answered; reality and the end worlds of the different playing on tired of you want “to do” we started of game it was possibilities roleplaying was it wasn’t anti different styles just throwing so I’ve travelled different dimension like a stepping started playing so we a bunch of boys trapped in the TV-set the concept of a very strange idea no playing board and pictures sitting around a gradually exploring the anything why do anything this box world and I asked my friends social but still eventually the glory days you can a totally is theatre game, but still infinite in dragon’s a opened up very basic the game is my stepping stone after playing is that was dungeons & I was young table from into took win etc. I think computergames all over the galaxy in my for me could I saw this sci-fi had to end a year of later I do whatever I remember – I don’t wanna grow up basis this games of dices with a year but what type it at.