Designing and Building the Iron Genie Harmonograph - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Designing and Building the Iron Genie Harmonograph

And a bit about its history

Anita ChowdrySlide2

What is a HARMONOGRAPH, and what does it do?

The Harmonograph is a pendulum-driven device that makes drawings.

The drawings are visual expressions of the combined frequencies of the pendulum oscillations.Slide3

This is the Iron Genie

The Iron Genie is a sculptural interpretation of the

Harmonograph

.

It makes really cool drawings, and it is totally analogue.

Completed in 2013

It took nine months to design, and nine months to fabricate.

It stands two metres high, and it weighs a bit.

It is made mostly of steel, brass and zinc.Slide4

The PendulumGalileo Galilei 1564 – 1642 was the first to make an empirical study of the pendulum and designed the first pendulum clock. Christiaan Huygens expanded on this and in 1673 published his studies in “

Horologium

Oscillatorium

”

Replica of the first pendulum clock, Science Museum, London

A

Pendulum

is a swinging device consisting of a weight or

Bob

on a rod or cable suspended from a fixed point or

Pivot

.

The time taken for each full swing of the pendulum is called the

Period

.

The

Frequency

at which the pendulum swings is determined by the distance of the

Bob

from the

Pivot

.

The mass of the

Bob

does not affect the

Period

.Slide5

The Blackburn PendulumInvented in 1841 by Hugh Blackburn while a student at Trinity College Cambridge.Professor Hugh Blackburn, Chair of Mathematics at Glasgow University 1849 - 1879

Blackburn and his friend William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin)

“..

swung on 'Blackburn's pendulum', an ingenious device with a double suspension, which could oscillate in planes at right angles to each other

.”Slide6

Lissajous CurvesJules Antoine Lissajous, Professor of Mathematics at

Lycee

Saint-Louis 1847 - 1874

In 1857

Lissajous

gave a series of lectures at the Royal Institution, with optical demonstrations of compound acoustic vibrations. These became known as

Lissajous

Curves

.Slide7

OscillationsThe Relationship between Sound Frequencies and Pendulum Frequencies

The compound frequencies of paired tuning forks placed at right-angles to one another, resonating at different notes, produced the images above.

Lissajous

Curves - Images of sound frequencies from the tuning-fork experiments

Pendulum Frequencies

The distance between the Bob and the Pivot determines relative frequenciesSlide8

Hubert Airy’s observations of a vibrating twig‘Pendulum Autographs’ Nature Magazine, Aug. 17 1871

https://archive.org/stream/nature41871lock#page/310/mode/2up

“It was a happy chance that directed my fingers...to the top of a stiff twig that sprang from the stool of an old acacia, and rose to a height of about three feet where it had been lopped by the gardener’s knife. Pulling the twig aside, and letting it fly back by its own elasticity, I noticed the path which its top traced in the air...”

Airy’s

diagram of the idealized trajectory of the oscillating twigSlide9

Hubert Airy’s experiments with pendulums‘Pendulum Autographs’ Nature Magazine, Aug. 17 1871

The results if

Airy’s

experiments with compound pendulum oscillations at different ratios.

Proportion 1:3

Proportion 2:5

Proportion 1:2Slide10

1893 H. Irwine Whitty published a book of figures made on a Twin-Pendulum Harmonograph he built for the Norwich Science Gossip Club

Whitty

described the tuning fork experiment of

Lissajous

, and the light-figures produced by the compound vibrations of two forks vibrating at different pitches...

“To render them permanent, and at the same time to reduce the rapidity of the vibrations, so that the movements can be followed throughout by the eye, is the object of the harmonograph..”

“The instrument was first constructed by Mr.

Tisley

, of the firm

Tisley

and Spiller, the well-known opticians.”

Download the book at http://www.anitachowdry.com/harmonograph-resources/4585944436Slide11

Harmonic Vibrations and Vibration Figures edited by Herbert C. Newton (c. 1909)

Benham’s

Triple-pendulum Harmonograph

Twin-Elliptic Harmonograph

Tisley’s

Rectilinear Harmonograph

Newton & co. traded between 1851 and 1950Slide12

Lateral and Rotary HarmonographBenham’s Triple-Pendulum Harmonograph is a

Rotary Harmonograph

: the drawings are the result of two rotary movements.

Tisley’s

Rectilinear Harmonograph

is a

Lateral Harmonograph

: the drawings are the result of two lateral movements. Slide13

Why were these devices invented, and what was their purpose?

They were philosophical toys and they served little practical purpose!

Born in the age of the scientific and industrial revolution, they were the outcome of the curiosity of practical men of science.Slide14

Harmonographs and geometric pensThe continuing appeal of the machines and their drawings

In the 1960s Desmond Paul Henry made drawing machines out of “bombsites” from decommissioned WWII fighter planes.

http://www.desmondhenry.com/

http://www.balintbolygo.com/index.php

2000s pendulum and mechanical pens by

Balint

Bolygo

2000s Photographic images made using a Blackburn pendulum by Paul Wainwright

http://www.paulwainwrightphotography.com/pendulum_gallery.shtmlSlide15

Why would a contemporary artist choose to focus on the harmonograph???

Art & Science – Art as a journey of discovery

“In watching a harmonograph in action, you can witness the unfolding of natural geometries that have always existed independently of us.

They are part of the dynamics of the universe. We cannot easily draw them without the aid of mechanical devices.”

2012 My prototype, based on

Benham’s

Triple-Pendulum Harmonograph

Instructions to build this at:

http://www.karlsims.com/harmonograph/index.html

“Harmonograph drawings in some way reveal structures in nature, and my work is all about exploring natural patterns and forms through geometry, fractals and drawing.”Slide16

Studying the development of natural formsSlide17

Form, Function and EleganceAnalysing and re-designing the structure of the prototype

Three pendulums look better arranged in a triangle.

In music and

geometry, triplets,

triangles and

tetrahedra

express dynamic energy.

Would the pendulums work together at a 60

degree

configuration?Slide18

Location, Context and Inspiration St. Pancras Station and Grand Hotel, London

Completed in 1873, this monument to Victorian ambition evokes the age of coal, steam, iron and state-of-the-art engineering on a grand scale.

It inspired the retro-futuristic design of the Iron Genie harmonograph – the aesthetics of

Steampunk

– “The future that never was” Slide19

Designing the Iron Genie

Technical drawings made using traditional drafting skills and 19

th

century drawing instruments.Slide20

FabricationLearning to work with steel at Central Saint Martin‘s, U.A.L.Slide21

Brass detailing and heat treatment to darken the steel Slide22

The Rooky and the Master at the Lathe

Keeping faith with the integrity of the work as it develops ....

I did not dare to insult the technicians or the sculpture with anything less than the finest engineering quality brass!Slide23

An ordinary mirror just won’t do!

The brass bezel was hammer-formed and hand finished.

The mirror is hand-gilded with palladium leaf.

Brass sheet annealed to make it more pliableSlide24

The etched zinc plates for the table-top

Fresh ferns pressed into soft ground creates an imprint of natural geometrySlide25

Prints from the etched plates

Nature’s Geometry

Fractal Self-Similarity

Harmonic FrequenciesSlide26

Filming in the Crypt

Video filmed by Josh Jones with Julia in the crypt of St. Pancras Parish Church, London.Slide27

The Iron Genie goes out on some hot dates

2015 - Dulwich Picture Gallery, London supporting “The Amazing World of M.C. Escher”

2014 – Museum of the History of Science, Oxford

http://www.anitachowdry.com/iron-genie