Oldschool Clock Shop
Schönes Portrait von Etsy über den Sutton Clock Shop, in dem alte Uhren repariert werden. Das Video ist voller Zahnräder, Tick Tack und alten Uhrwerken. In meinem Elternhaus hatten seit immer eine alte Standuhr stehen, die hatte meine Mutti von ihrer Mutti, die wiederum von ihrer Mutti und die von ihrer geerbt (wir sind grade bei meiner Ururgroßmutter mütterlicherseits, meine Uromi hatte ich noch kennengelernt… ihr Spitzname war Didid-Oma). Die Uhr wurde von massiven Gewichten angetrieben und schlug zu jeder vollen Stunde so laut, dass ich, wenn meine Eltern verreist waren, ich allein zuhaus war und meine damals lokal berühmten Houseparties schmiss, die Gewichte abhängen musste, um bleibende Hörschäden bei meinen Mitfeierern zu vermeiden. Old Times in doppelter Hinsicht. Jedenfalls: Schönes Portrait vom Etsy Blog:
As the year winds down, we wanted to take a look at a place where time is of the essence. The Sutton Clock Shop on New York’s Upper East Side has been serving its customers for over 60 years and is truly a father-son business. Perched above the streets and filled to the brim with clocks of every shape and size, it’s a place where time continues to pass, and yet, simultaneously stand still.
Typographic Gears
Mario Klingemann hat Zahnräder mit Buchstaben gebaut! Toll! Hier noch ein Video mit den Dingern aus Holz. (via Make)
Antikythera Mechanism rebuilt as a Watch
Die schweizer Uhrenmacher von Hublot haben den bekannten Antikythera-Mechanismus (Wikipedia) – ein Analog-Rechner, den die alten Griechen vor zweitausend Jahren zur Berechnung der Bewegung von Himmelskörpern bauten – in einem Armbanduhrwerk nachgebaut. Das Teil ist leider nur eine Konzeptarbeit für eine Ausstellung nächstes Jahr, wäre allerdings ohnehin unerschwinglich. Awesome!
This video is a tribute from Swiss clock-maker Hublot and film-maker Philippe Nicolet to this device, known as the Antikythera Mechanism, or the world’s “first computer”. The fragments of the Mechanism were discovered in 1901 by sponge divers near the island of Antikythera. It is kept since then at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece.
For more than a century, researchers were trying to understand its functions. Since 2005, a pluridisciplinary research team, the “Antikythera Mechanism Research Project”, is studying the Mechanism with the latest high tech available.
The results of this ongoing research has enabled the construction of many models. Amongst them, the unique mechanism of a watch, designed by Hublot as a tribute to the Mechanism, is incorporating the known functions of this mysterious and fascinating ancient Mechanism.
Hublot painstakingly recreates a mysterious, 2,100-year-old clockwork relic – but why? (via /.)
Vorher auf Nerdcore:
Ancient mechanical Computer rebuilt in Lego!
U-Ram Choes Guardian of the Hole
Sehr schöne Skulptur von U-Ram Choe: „a kinetic, seal-like creature that appears to be breathing while dozens of intricate “wings,” leaf-like and gold in color, flutter above him. Guardian of the Hole (Custos Cavum in Latin) is the name of the piece, and its creation was inspired by a 10th-century Indian sculpture, Shiva as Lord of Dance“. Das Vieh liegt grade im New Yorker Asia Society Museum rum.
U-Ram Choe’s Mesmerizing Animatronic Sculpture, ‘Guardian of the Hole’ (via Make)
Gustav Hoegens Animatronics-Showreel 2011
(Youtube Direktanimatronics, via MeFi)
Schickes Animatronics-Showreel von Gustav Hoegen, der hauptsächlich Viecher für Doctor Who gebaut hat und derzeit an Ridley Scotts Alien-Prequel Prometheus arbeitet.
Vorher auf Nerdcore:
John Nolans Animatronic-Showreel
The Midnight Archive Ep.4: The Automata
Ronnie Thomas von The Midnight Archive hat mir grade die vierte Folge seiner Webserie über komische Dinge in Brooklyin geschickt. Heute gehts um Jere Ryders seltsame Automaten.
The Automata And Automatic Music — Tucked away, in a quiet and pleasant suberb of New Jersey, there exists one of the most fascinating collections of artistic engineering ever collected. The collection belonged to Murtogh Guiness, of the Guiness Brewering company. Its contents are, what i can only desrcibe as the early days of robotics, engineered for our ancestor’s entertainment. Dolls that perform incredible tasks, full orchestras in the middle of your parlor, and my favorite of course, a banjo that plays itself. The collection is maintaned and managed by Jere Ryder who began his interest at a very early age. He is now entrusted to the collection at the Morris Museum located in Morristown New Jersey.
Vorher auf Nerdcore:
The Midnight Archive: Webisodes about the strange Things
The Midnight Archive: Modern Day Mummys
Occult NYC Walking Tour
The Midnight Archive Ep.3: Making Men out of Mice – Anthropomorphic Taxidermy
Clifford Stolls History of the Curta Calculator
Zu Curt Herzstarks Curta Calculator, dem ersten Taschenrechner der Welt, den er im Konzentrationslager Buchenwald zumindest konzeptionell fertigstellte und der 1948 auf den Markt kam, hatte ich schonmal was vor ein paar Jahren. Aber damals kannte ich die Geschichte hinter der Maschine noch nicht und jetzt hat AT&Ts Techchannel ein weiteres Video von meinem Lieblingsirren Clifford Stoll online gestellt, in dem er diese erzählt.
Auf The CURTA Calculator Page findet man so ziemlich alles zum Thema, die Bilder habe ich von dort, Snip von Wikipedia:
The Curta was conceived by Curt Herzstark (1902–1988) in the 1930s in Vienna. By 1938, he had filed a key patent, covering his complemented stepped drum, Deutsches Reichspatent (German Empire Patent) No. 747073. This single drum replaced the multiple drums, typically around 10 or so, of contemporary calculators, and it enabled not only addition, but subtraction through nines complement math, essentially subtracting by adding. The nines’ complement math breakthrough eliminated the significant mechanical complexity created when “borrowing” during subtraction. This drum would prove to be the key to the small, hand-held mechanical calculator the Curta would become.
His work on the pocket calculator stopped in 1938 when the Nazis forced him and his company to concentrate on manufacturing measuring instruments and distance gauges for the German army.
Herzstark, the son of a Catholic mother but Jewish father, was taken into custody in 1943, eventually finding himself at the Buchenwald concentration camp. Ironically, it was in the concentration camp that he was encouraged to continue his earlier research: “While I was imprisoned inside [Buchenwald] I had, after a few days, told the [people] in the work production scheduling department of my ideas. The head of the department, Mr. Munich said, ‘See, Herzstark, I understand you’ve been working on a new thing, a small calculating machine. Do you know, I can give you a tip. We will allow you to make and draw everything. If it is really worth something, then we will give it to the Führer as a present after we win the war. Then, surely, you will be made an Aryan.’ For me, that was the first time I thought to myself, my God, if you do this, you can extend your life. And then and there I started to draw the CURTA, the way I had imagined it.”
Der Kritzler: 2D Window-Drawing-Machine
(Vimeo Direktkritzel, via Make)
Alexander Weber hat sich für sein Büro in Hamburg eine Zeichenmaschine gebastelt, die ihm die Fenster vollmalt. Das Ding liest erstmal ein SVG-File aus, dass dann an den Kritzler geschickt wird, programmiert hat er das alles in Processing, auf seinem Blog steht ziemlich genau, wie er das gemacht hat. Toll!
I used Processing for implementing the host software. Processing was the first choice because it is primarily targeted for graphics programming and plays well with Arduino. Any other software that could talk to the serial port would work here as well.
The host software falls into two parts. The first part is for reading an SVG file and sending it to the machine. It starts with loading the first SVG file from a directory if there is one. Then you could still scale, mirror and move the shape on your canvas. If everything fits, the drawing is sent to the Kritzler, one instruction after another.
Situationist Drawing Device
Ji Soo Han und Paul Ornsby haben ein Gerat namens Situationist Drawing Device entwickelt, das die Bewegungen der Person und ihre Interaktion mit der Umwelt aufzeichnet, während man die Welt durch ein altes optisches Trick-Gerät sieht, dass die Tiefenwahrnehmung umkehrt: dem Pseudoskop.
Von Wikipedia: „A pseudoscope is a binocular optical instrument that reverses depth perception. It is used to study human stereoscopic perception. Objects viewed through it appear inside out, for example: a box on a floor, would appear as a box shaped hole in the floor. It typically uses sets of optical prisms, or periscopically arranged mirrors to swap the view of the left eye with that of the right eye. In the 1800s Charles Wheatstone coined the name from the Greek ψευδίς σκοπειν — “false view”. The device was used to explore his theory of stereo vision.“
(Vimeo Direktdrawing, via bldgblog)
As each eye retina receives different images, both conditions blurrs into one and simultaneously alternate – phasing in and out over the other. This blurring affect, as known as retinal rivalry, creates a new perception of the site. Device was initially adapted from Pseudoscope [Greek language - false view] which is a binoucular instrument that reverses depth perception. The idea of reversing left and right eye vision was adapted to reverse forward and backward vision
Expanding from the static point, it was developed for use along a route bisecting the borderline, incorporating a bodily experience as one navigates through the newly perceived space.
Nach dem Klick noch ein paar Bilder seiner Scrap Metal Refinery-Serie, experimentellen Architektur-Illus, aus denen das Situationist Drawing Device entstand.
Waterdrop Positioning Machine
(Vimeo Direkt, via Hackaday)
Pe Lang macht Kunst mit Maschinen, oben eine seiner neuesten. Die platziert 441 Wassertropfen auf einer ultrahydrophoben Oberfläche und nach fünf Minuten Stunden, wenn sie verdunstet sind, fängt sie von vorne an. Hübsch!
Falling objects – positioning systems from 2009-2011 is an custom made machine that adds drops of water onto a special textured surface. Each drop forms into an almost perfect sphere through the surface tension of the water and the omniphopic Material. The electronically controlled pipette wanders through a square grid of 21 x 21 drops to form a micro-matrix and returns to the beginning. After approximately 300 minutes, and when the water drops have evaporated, the same process starts again.
Auf Vimeo gibt’s noch mehr seiner Kunstmaschinen, die mit Motoren und Magneten arbeiten, ein paar der Clips nach dem Klick.
How to build the Real Life-Version of MC Eschers Waterfall
(Youtube Direktescher, via Boing Boing)
Vor ein paar Wochen bloggte ich über eine Real Life-Version von MC Eschers Wasserfall, jetzt hat jemand eine detailierte Anleitung auf Instructables zum Nachbau des Teils gepostet.
A dimensional geometry merged from 3 hexahedrons is placed on the top of the Left Tower. And on the top of the Right Tower placed another dimensional geometry merged from 3 octahedrons. And we call the part under the waterwheel the Pooland from the Pool there is the “1st flume”, the “2nd flume” and so on. Water falls from the Platform in the upper part of the Left tower.
As the aim of this project is to re-establish the marvelous scene of Waterfall from plane to 3D and present us a vivid show, it is important that: first, how to realize the impossible architecture structure; second, how to realize the water circulation within flume-waterfall circle.
There are many different ways to approach the aim and here is just one of them. You may keep on your own probing and come up with some cool ideas~And before the project starts, you have to convince yourself that:
1. Perpetual motion is impossible;
2. Perpetual motion is impossible;
3. Perpetual motion is impossible;Well….and still you have to accept that:
1. Water always flows to a lower place;
2. Seeing is not always believing.
Perpetual Motion Machine: The real-life version of M.C.Escher’s Waterfall
John Nolans Animatronic-Showreel
(Youtube Direktreel, via Marco)
Schickes Showreel von John Nolan (Where the wild Things are, Harry Potter, Hellboy, Lesbian Vampire Killers).
Real Life-Version of MC Eschers Waterfall
(Youtube Direktwaterfall, via MeFi)
Eine echte Version von MC Eschers Wasserfall. Und jetzt würde ich gerne ein Video dieses Teils aus einer anderen Perspektive sehen.
Ancient mechanical Computer rebuilt in Lego!
(Vimeo Direktlego, via MeFi)
Vor zweitausend Jahren haben die ollen Griechen nicht nur die Philosophie erfunden und den Grundstein zur Demokratie gelegt, sondern auch den Computer von Antikythera gebaut, ein Analogrechner zur Berechnung der Bewegung von Himmelskörpern. Für so ein antikes Uhrwerk ist das schonmal nicht schlecht. Völlig abgefahren wird es aber, wenn das Ding von einem Nerd in Lego nachgebaut wird.
Andrew Carol rebuilt a 2000-year-old analog computer out of Legos. It predicts the year, date, and time of future solar and lunar eclipses accurately to within two hours. All using plastic gears.
Behind the Scenes: Lego Antikythera Mechanism, die ganze Story zum Original-Mechanismus gibt’s auf Nature: Ancient astronomy: Mechanical inspiration, hier noch ein zweiteiliger Film von Nature dazu: Antikythera Mechanism Part 1, Part 2. Unbedingt alles ansehen und durchlesen, superfaszinierend!
