#mech2

This is the documentation about my second new media art installation or mechanical cartoon. 

At first, I thought of making more minimal and abstract installation using only linkage mechanism. As I study linkages further and further, I became to be fascinated with the simplicity(just with bars and joints) and versatility of them. They are used in many everyday objects, tools and even in human bones. Moreover, it is also involved with mathematics. Doing research, I found out a lot of interesting papers and references regarding to linkage and folding mechanism in general:  math by Meccano, geometric folding algorithms by Erik Demaine, hyperbody courses from Delft Univ., origami mathematics, Hoberman's iris mechanism and so on to name a few so that I ended up with being interested in the other fields related such as folding mechanism, origami, robotics or structure in general.

There are too many possibilities to be developed so that I decided to start with the simplest idea: Make a page of cartoon with as many kinds of linkage as possible. There are 6 different linkages, for each of which I made prototypes more than 4 times. I wanted for viewers to interact with crank but should have to give it up because of the fragility of the material (cardboard+MDF+steel wire) at the end. Instead, servo motors move each frames with the timing set by Arduino. I intended to make it a physical interactive comic and it turned out like the above. Though the idea behind this is quite simple- that is the reason why I titled it as 'Study'-, it could be a starting point to make the other project with the mechanism I figured out this time. 

Circuit and code

7 Servos + Servo breakout + 8 leds + Switch + Arduino Code using Interrupt and Debounce to make the input signal stable (gitHub)

Mechanisms in detail and references

For each frame

Cyclists : Joules THE ROBOT

Dog : Theo Janson's holy 11 holy numbers, Bowwow （わんこ）

Workers : Scissor linkage

Tram: Wipers

Umbrella

Camera iris: Mechanical Greeting Card Iris, Iris Diaphragm Prototype Workshop

Linkages in general

Make: Math Monday - linkage series

6.S080: Mechanical Invention through Computation (MIT course material)

6.849: Geometric Folding Algorithms: Linkages, Origami, Polyhedra (MIT online lecture)