Todd Dunning • Kinetic Sculpture from Found Parts

I always enjoy finding new kinetic sculptors. One of the goals of this blog is to share them with my readers. Kinetic sculptors are a small group but with the help of the Internet we are finding each other.

Not sure where I first saw the work of Todd Dunning whether through the YouTube community or elsewhere. I have always worked in wood. I like how the wood softens the mechanical aspects of a kinetic sculpture. Todd works in metal, cold steel with a corroded patina. He goes in the other direction. He has created a beautiful video to view his work. Enjoy

Upgrading My Design Space

My tools for designing kinetic sculptures continue to evolve. For years I have been designing on a a 50 pound MacPro behemoth with a 30" display. I needed the horse power to render my animations quickly and to make videos. I thought I needed a big screen. With the evolution of more powerful laptops with beautiful displays like the Retina Macbook Pro I have changed my tool of choice.  I moved out of my office, sold my desktop setup and bought a laptop. I can now do my designing wherever I can take my laptop. My favorite locatio is sitting up in the gallery space at my studio, often sitting on the sofa enjoying a cup of tea or coffee with Silver Symphony ringing gently in the background. This is a wonderful solution except when I need to be working on two computers at once.

I have a physics program (Working Model) I use for center of mass calculations. It only runs on "ancient" Mac system 9, that in turn, only works on old Macs. . When I need to figure out a center of mass, I work between this program on a 10 year old iBook and Illustrator on new Macbook Pro. I can't balance the two laptops (and my tea) on the sofa. I asked Marji to think about designing a desk for the gallery. I had an old, beat-up press board folding table that just didn't fit in. 

This week, she finished my new desk and it is wonderful!

My "office space" is located in the kitchen area of the gallery space. It is open and visible to the gallery so I requested that the desk be artsy yet functional. Marji thought using a live-edge slab of wood would create a perfect desk. I can sit up high, gaze out the windows and dream.  It's a great place to work.

Marji has posted a couple of blog posts over on her blog, AshbeeDesign.com about this desk and how we made it. Take a look at these two posts: 

• DIY • Live-Edge Desk
• Live-Edge Desk Tutorial

Here are a few detail shots.

 It's perfect!

Buugeng • A Curved Kinetic Instrument

Learn something new everyday.

Today I learned about Buugeng. Buugeng are the curved pieces used in the following YouTube video. Watch how the two folding C-shaped blades are manipulated to create evolving patterns.

How many sculptures created by David can be seen in variations of the patterns created in this dance? I see many.... Impulse,  Serpentine, Crustacean, Jubilee, Sequences, Duet, Castaway, Quest

The word is a registered trademark of Dai Zaobab and it can be translated into the combination of three words - martial arts, infinity, and illusion. It is a cross between dance, motion, juggling, and kinetic sculpture. The first generation Buugeng was created in 2003 and gained widespread exposure in 2007. It evolved from the creator's memories of seeing the work of Michael Moschen.

We learned about it thanks to an email from follower Rick Bissel from The Mobile Factory.  

Always Tweaking - Kinetic Design Changes

This week I am introducing Monarch II.  This isn't really a new sculpture introduction like Swoop was last week. No, Monarch II is a tweak, a significant tweak, to Monarch. 

Part of the joy of my job is the freedom to explore.  I am constantly learning, evolving and changing my designs. I have modified Monarch to incorporate a variation recently refined while working on other ideas. There is a longer explanation about it here on the webpage but suffice it to say, although the motion, action and essence of the two is the same, there is a visual difference in the center. 

 

In Monarch II much of the clutter has been removed. It just wasn't needed in this new, more elegant solution. I have learned that if I don't document these changes, and update the photos in the website, people notice and wonder.  

I have decided, because there is a noticeable visual difference, I will close the Monarch edition (now Monarch I) at 36, and will start Monarch II with the next scheduled production run in June. This will be a new edition of 75. 

• Monarch II Information Page
• Monarch II Order Page 

I am constantly looking for a better design, a better mechanism or even a better tomato soup recipe. It keeps me working and smiling.   

Swoop • A New Kinetic Sculpture

People often ask where David gets his ideas and it can be a lengthy question to answer. Everything in life is an inspiration to an artist; it just may take a while for it to come to fruition in a creative work.  Today, David is introducing his latest kinetic sculpture, Swoop and the original idea for this piece came from an 8mm Howdy Doody video from his childhood. David shares more about the origin and provides a link to the actual movie (now up on YouTube thanks possibly to someone else that loved it as a child as well) at the actual sculpture page here.

Swoop Technical Details:

Limited Edition of 95
Size: 29"h x 23"w x 5"d
Power Source: Constant Force Spring
Run Time: Approximateely 10 hours per winding

This piece is the combination of two new leaps David has recently made in mechanism design. Previously, his mechanisms always gave a power push through a minimum of 120 degrees. He needed to reduce the angle in order to give many small pushes verses one big push. To get the impact of the swoop motion he needed the smaller pushes. Swoop pushes through an angle of 60 degrees. He combined that new mechanism with a technique to have the front wheel move in an opposing direction without having a drive belt running directly in front of it. Those two "discoveries" allowed him to finally create the Swoop motion he remembered from the Howdy Doody film.

The Swoop mechanism works well in a smaller scale.  So much kinetic sculpture is large scale and not appropriate for personal ownership. David has always tried to create sculptures that can fit in the homes.  Swoop does that a bit more easily than some of his recent works.

 Swoop links:

• Swoop description page
• Swoop ordering page