The artifact that I have been producing is a violin double pendulum machine. For this class, I was inspired to go with a Baroque/ Rococo aesthetic style combined with the traits from the arts and crafts movement. This style really spoke to me because it is associated with the time era from which the violin is extremely popular. During this era, humanity built several buildings custom made to accommodate and amplify the tone and acoustics of the violin. Because of this, the violin has very deep roots in these artistic styles. I particularly enjoy these styles so it seemed like the logical choice to go with
The double pendulum machine is set as a decoration and is designed to be interacted with. Essentially, the user will get to see it sitting as though it is a normal very fancy violin. However, once it is touched, it breaks this illusion and begins spinning. Depending on where the force is applied will change the ways that it spins dramatically. I decided to do this project after watching this short video on instagram and it lead me to an idea of making this with an artistic flair and in a violin theme
https://youtu.be/gMJjY1yyLV4
As I watched the video, I just thought of how the pendulum mechanism actually works. It is a pretty simple concept and that led to me making some initial sketches of the idea. As seen below is the first drawing that I came up with.
At this point I hadnt really thought too much about any aesthetic but the envisioned product was going to be pretty rustic or vintage. Then the class had an assignment to think about several different aesthetics to make a new product. I drew several different iterations however I fell in love with the idea of the baroque and rococo design. The drawing below was the aesthetic I chose.
An idea came later to carve this pattern into copper plate. I was very out of my element on this, so I talked with the professor and she gave me some great ideas of etching this into a thin copper sheet instead. We then found this copper etching video that I referenced in my making of the product.
After watching the video I drew up the etching pattern that I would use and then I etched the copper following the instructions in the video. This lead me to the final result of
I then colored the copper sheet in order to make the figures stand out a lot better which was really successful
I then through a lot of woodworking and trial and error with the weighting of the device was able to make it function properly. There are two main bearings that allow the piece to spin. I was able to reuse the front plate of the previous projects violin and attach a connection for one of the bearing to cause this piece to rotate. I then made the other pendulum arm in its entirety. I spent dozens of hours on this project but I think that it was worth it. Seen below is a video of the mechanism doing full spins. I would really recommend downloading it because it is really cool especially after coming up with the best way of spinning it. This video is seen below