MMU MA Degree Show Exhibition

With my final project finished and assessed, my focus now turns to the upcoming MA Degree Show.  I will be exhibiting my two final project pieces, Penumbra and Keeping Time, along side my contemporaries from a host of different disciplines at Manchester School of Art (part of Manchester Metropolitan University) from 2nd - 9th October.

If you are interested in attending the show, you can find the details by clicking on the image below.

Keeping Time: Brass Body

After a few initial cardboard prototypes, I settled on a shape that I was happy with.  Crucially, the final design came from a practical decision to machine the form in house.  There were two options for machining; waterjet cut out of house – exact precision but a time delay for processing and a higher cost, or machine by hand (guillotine and fret saw) – less precise but can be made very quickly for much lower prices.  I chose to make the casing by hand, and this meant that I had to get rid of the negative cut and that the test tube hole would have to be made with a standard size punch.
Cutting the form was simple, and bending all but the final bend was done easily in the workshop.  Problems came when the back plate had to be bent upward to close the box.  The final bend had to be hand hammered into shape over a square section tube, unfortunately leaving a few dents here and there. 

There were also issues with the first set of rivets made to hold the box into shape.  This was a communication error on my part, as I had envisioned pop rivets closing the case but was under the impression that they were unavailable.  The metal working technician, Rachael Baker, who was teaching me to make the casing, spent a long time hammering in a hand-worked rivet into the back, which was a job made more difficult by me as I had wanted stainless steel rivets – a much harder material to work with than brass.  Unfortunately the finished rivets didn’t look as neat as I’d hoped and the back of the casing had taken a bit of a beating as well.  Thankfully, it was a problem that was easily rectified and metal technician, Phil Hatton, helped me greatly by drilling out the rivets, hammering the back flat, and re-riveting the piece using pop rivets.

With the pop rivets in place, the back dents lessened and a black rubber O-ring holding the test tube secure, the final design is one that I’m very happy with.  As a prototype, I’m happy with the quality.  Now that I’ve made the piece, I can see where extra care would need to be taken to produce a commercial product, but I think that most of the problems that could have arisen (skewing of shape due to lost length in bending, wonky slot cutting etc.) were avoided due to proper planning, and the benefit of having an extremely simple design.

My only concern in this design is that it loses some feeling of heritage by not using the trio of wood, brass and glass.  Though the addition of wood would be purely aesthetic, I feel like the piece has a ‘fashionable’ but not one that is necessarily timeless or passive.  It’s a very nice object to look at, but if brass weren’t so popular a material, would it still be a nice object? Does the brass lessen the meaning of the object because it doesn’t naturally echo it? 

Keeping Time: Aesthetics

The form factor of the metronome was next on my hit list.  How was this object going to look?  My original design borrowed traditional material combinations from scientific equipment – wood, brass and glass – to modernise the archetypal metronome form, replacing the timing chart with a suspended glass test tube to collect the dust. 

Preliminary prototype

The first problem came when trying to work out how to make the glass square-based pyramid.  My idea was to use brass L-profiles running along each corner of the structure to glue the glass in to.  After speaking to the glass and metal technicians, I found out that the standard joining method would be to just glue the glass with UV cement using a former.  This would make the brass structurally unnecessary, and so using it felt to me like I was falsifying the construction in the design.  And so it was back to the drawing board!

Design development in Solidworks

For the next iteration, I took the design back to two components; a box to conceal the metronome workings and a stand to hold the test tube.  I wanted the materials use the same trio of materials for this design - wood for the box, brass for the stand – but this time, I reduced the glass element to just the test tube itself. 

After knocking out some Solidworks models, I still wasn’t happy with the design.  The proportions of the timepiece seemed wrong; the box was too large and seemed to dwarf the pendulum and the test tube. Then there was the issue of whether to hide the mechanism or open the box up and have it on show.

The metronome mechanism

The idea of displaying the metronome mechanism in a glass-fronted box bothered me.  If left completely revealed, the mechanism looks quite messy. The gears are partly hidden and the base plate from which it is suspended feels unsightly – it wasn’t designed to be seen.  Having no experience in woodworking, the simple box construction wasn’t going to give me a finish I was happy with and, overall, I just wasn’t happy with these designs.

It was only after talking to colleagues that I decided to adapt one of my design elements.  Instead of creating one bent brass piece to hold the test tube, why didn’t I create the whole thing from flat brass plate and bend a box out of it?

Penumbra: Code

Coding the sundial has been a challenge throughout this project.  Though I have basic knowledge in C++ from my undergraduate in Mechanical Engineering, I have had to adapt substantial amounts of code to get the sundial working as it should.  During the last module, I successfully managed to write a code for the sun progression during the day, and programmed the moon to rise and set at specific times for the week that it was on display.  For this prototype, my aim was to get the clock fully working, so that it calculates sun- and moon- rise and set itself based on the latitude and longitude of its position and its time zone.  I quickly found out that there is a code library for calculating sunrise and sunset times that I can easily call into my code, but moonrise and moonset require calculating from first principles.  Thankfully, someone else has worked out the maths, and all I need to do is combine it into one programme and then write the code to get my LEDs to respond.

Essentially, the programme in my sundial has four features; sunrise and set (1) , moonrise and set (2), change colour depending on the time of day (3)  (red at sunset, yellow/white at noon etc.) and, position the LEDs to cast a shadow for the time (i.e. 180° from normal clock hands).  This equates to a fairly large amount of code, and so mistake finding can be challenging.  Thankfully there is time before the exhibition begins to watch the clock and fix any errors that might occur.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Modelled from: Dawn Dusk Timer for LED lighting strips by Tom Loos
[https://forum.pjrc.com/threads/25084-Astronomical-code-based-Sunrise-Sunset-simulator-questions]
Using: TimeLord astronomical library by Michael Rice [http://swfltek.com/]
Using: Astronomical Night Lamp project code by Paulo Oliveira. [http://www.paulorenato.com]

2. Modelled from: Moon in my Room Code by “Slackmasterstan”
[https://github.com/slackmasterstan/Moon-in-my-room/blob/master/Moon.ino]

3. Modelled from: ds1307 RGB led day night cycle by Mccluskey1181
[http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=240832.0]

Penumbra: Building the surround

Making the casing for the sundial was challenging. From a practical sense, it had to be made from steel as it was strong enough to support the limestone and could be welded into place.  It also had to house the LEDs at a suitable height from the face, and have room at the back for storing the circuit board.  I started off with a simple design of three annular circles (each waterjet cut) that would have a metal collar wrapped around them and be welded into place. 

Quickly I realised that the back needed to be removable in case of emergency wiring issues.  This added extra considerations as the back could be screwed on but would need some form of block to screw into on the back of the middle plate.  After consulting with the metalwork technician, Rachael Baker, we decided that the cleanest way to do this was to drill three holes in the mid plate and weld a tapped and threaded steel dowel on to them cutting a shoulder joint at one end so it sat within the plate.  This kept it flush on the limestone side, and also meant that it could support the back plate as the dowel acted as a spacer. 


From an assembly point of view, the casing was quite difficult to put together.  Because the rim is bent around the outside of the plates, the plates need to be stacked to the correct spacing with wood and then the front plate welded on, and the collar welded down the side to hold the circular form.  The issue then is how to get the mid plate out.  It needs to be removed to glue the limestone on before it can be welded into place as the limestone won’t fit through the hole in the front.  In the end we knocked it out with a hammer, glued the limestone face on, and hammered it back in with wooden spacers so it could be welded.  It’s not ideal in terms of assembly, but it worked. 

Welded surround, unpainted.

There is a 5mm shadow gap between the edge of the limestone face and the mid plate which meant that heat produced through welding wouldn’t cause any harm to the face.  It also allows for a small notch at the top dead centre of the sundial for the LED cabling to pass through.  This notch also aligns with the seam of the collar so the back can locate correctly.  The centre of the mid plate has a hole in it to reduce weight but also to help with locating the underside of the stone face during gluing so the 5mm gap is even all the way around.

Once the mid plate has been welded in to position, the sundial can be assembled and blocked for spray painting and the wiring.  I chose to spray paint the casing matt black as I had used scrap mild steel from the engineering workshop on the circular plates, meaning that the rim of the casing (made from bright steel) was a different colour.  The matt black colour also helps to emphasise the face of the sundial and the stark contrast does make it look more celestial.

Penumbra: Faces

Limestone tile (detail).

Having started this project during the last module, I had already developed a strong message that I wanted to convey and had some experience with the electronics behind the project, now I had to finalise the aesthetics of the piece and write some fully working code.

The overall form of the product had been decided while making the previous prototype, but for the final prototype I had the challenge of selecting materials that best communicated the meaning behind the product.

From the outset I knew that I wanted to use a natural materials in the sundial to echo an ancient celestial/shamanic style.  I considered a variety of natural materials in different combinations; a smooth, chalky white gypsum face with a rough cut slate gnomon; a pale lime mortar face poured around a knapped flint gnomon.  From the chalk-like faces, I progressed to limestone.  Much easier to source and work with, a limestone face also echoes the sentiment of the piece as it is thousands of years old, made of fossilised sea creatures.  The problem with limestone would be sourcing a thin slab at a reasonable price, and cutting it.  I had initially thought that this might be a job for a stone mason, until a friend of mine asked if I could use a floor tile. Finding a natural stone floor tile was easy enough – I went to Topps Tiles and picked the style I wanted – the problem would be processing it and ensuring continuity. 
  
Because natural stone tiles are mined from vast quarries before being split up into smaller units, the colour of the stone varies from tile to tile.  Having bought three tiles in two different varieties, I felt lucky that they all turned out to be on the lighter end of the spectrum.  When I was tile shopping I was struck by the quality of the natural stone; some looked like aerial views of barren deserts, their veins like paths in the sand, while others looked like planets, craters scattered across their faces.  Naturally, I chose the celestial ones, with one tile resembling the moon and the other the sun.

During waterjet cutting

Cutting the tiles was the next hurdle.  The tiles were 12mm thick and because I needed a perfect 35cm diameter circle, the only accurate way of doing this was by waterjet cutting.  The issue with waterjet cutting natural stone is that if the jet hits any inclusions or fault lines, the whole tile can split.  Thankfully the technicians in the School of Engineering were willing to give it a go, and with my fingers crossed I watched as my tiles were cut.  I only needed one to work out of the three (I bought two back-ups just in case but at £15 a tile, I was really hoping for the best), and amazingly, all three worked perfectly. 

Then it was just a matter of choosing my favourite one and making the case for it.

Penumbra: Theory

Visual render of Penumbra

Penumbra: noun. A shadow cast by a celestial body.

During my research it has become increasingly apparent that the more technologically advanced (and technology dependant) we become, the more linear our time becomes.  We move forward at an ever-increasing rate, chasing the next advancement, and leaving behind the natural world and it’s cyclic time – that of re-birth and renewal.  In his essay on products and their relationship to time, Stuart Walker hypothesises that time has two distinct progressions; secular time and sacred time. (Walker, 2004) Secular time relates to the everyday life of a person, it is linear and fleeting.  Sacred time is circular, it represents the changing of the seasons, the rotating of the earth, birth-life-death-renewal.  Our lives are dominated by the linear progression of time; we feel it slip through our fingers like grains of sand. 

The celestial bodies in particular have resonance in our ancient and modern religions, where the events in our lives are an echo of the lives that have gone before us, their cyclic motions visualising the repetition of what Mircea Eliade calls “Great Time” (Eliade, 1954) – the long now.
Penumbra is a conventional timepiece that reflects the cyclic nature of the world around us.  In our technology obsessed lives we need a reminder of the forces that define our days and nights – the sun and moon. 

The wall clock takes the form of a traditional sundial, where the sun and moon are represented by LEDs set into the frame of the clock.  As the sun moves throughout the day, the LED sun moves around the outside of the clock, casting a shadow onto the hour position.  As the sun rises and sets the LEDs change colour, simulating sunset.  During the night, the moon becomes the time keeper as it rotates around the clock.  The LED cycles are set to mimic the natural solar and lunar cycles over Manchester.  At this time of month, the moon rises early in the day, shines with the sun and sets at around midnight.  This natural progression is replicated in the clock, meaning that at certain times of year, the moon will eclipse the sun and the clock will cast no shadow.

Keeping Time: An Introduction

After isolating the meaning that I wanted my second exhibition piece to convey through dust collection, I started thinking about what form the piece could take.  I briefly considered using dust as a base material for the product but quickly decided that that was a much larger project in and of itself and may also detract from the physical act of collecting dust.

I spent a long time debating if the dust collecting piece was related enough to the LED Sundial for the two to be cohesively displayed together.  Though they are both about time, and how we experience it, one is focused very much on the present and the other on our progression from the present to the past.  I also needed to think of an object to embed the dust in to; something that would allow me to collect dust while also resonating the message of time progression.

I decided to go back to basics and look again at timepieces.

One thing I have noticed about my own work methodology is that if I get stuck, or end up going round in circles, I need to take a step back.  A big step back.  Often all the way back to first principles.  It is there that my thoughts become clearer and I can start to think laterally again.

During this investigation I hit upon the idea of using a metronome.

A metronome is a unique timepiece in the sense that it displays the progression of time, without having any way to record it.  Unlike a clock, you see no progression of numbers or dates, but you are constantly aware of the audible tick of the pendulum driven mechanism.  It is the definitive timepiece for revealing the present; there is no record of the past within it and no prediction of the future, only the now.

In this way, the metronome was the obvious choice for pairing with dust collection – the metronome displays the present while the dust, settling from our present environment, charts the progression to the past. Keeping Time.

Collecting Dust

This is the contents of my hoover.  Don't switch off.  Let me explain.

During my last module, I began investigating the concept of time; how we percieve it and the different types of time that effect our world.  I wanted to continue this exploration in my Final Major Project, and produce a range of products that correspond to my Learning Agreement..

Functional objects that reflect the human condition; playing on our perceptions of time, ageing and religion through domestic products.

To develop a product alongside my LED Sundial, but without infringing on it, I decided to look again at the philosophies about time and our connections with the natural world.

The German phenomenologist, Martin Heidegger (as quoted in The Spell of the Sensuous), describes the concept of the present as "usually represented in the sense of a succession of a calculable sequence of nows."  These 'nows' chart a linear progression of time; this linear time that feels so inevitably finite, and what prompted my study into the more spiritual, uplifting circular time for the development of the LED Sundial.  I began looking at the way we define our time. 

What is the difference between past and present? 

When does the present become the past? 

How do we measure our time?


David Abram's The Spell of the Sensuous has become a pivitol book in my exploration into time and the natural world.  It details and debates some of the most interesting philosophies around the subject, and highlighted for me the inherent connection between space and time - or rather place and time.  Space-time is now a widely regarded scientific theory, but the abstract philosophies behind it can be extrapolated to expand our understanding of the past and memories.  The theory states that the place that an event occured in is intrincically important to the event; when you remember a memory, you can frequently pin point the exact place it happened, not just by location but by your connection to that environment through your senses.  I started to consider our past environments and how they are preserved. 

How could we measure the progression of our present to our past and take our environment into account? 

It was at that point that I started thinking about dust.

Dust is all around us, whether we like it or not.  Contrary to popular belief, only a small percentage of house dust is made us of human skin; most of it is hair, soil, air pollution particles and fibre from textiles including your clothing, your carpet and your curtains. 

In my family home we have a lot of pets, including some very large dogs who shed a lot of hair.  Even the most diligent cleaner can't avoid the inevitable build up of dog hair behind the washing machine and under the fridge.  Months or years after a pet passes away, you'll suddenly decide to sweep under the fridge and lo and behold, a wad of molted pet hair appears at your feet and your memories about your beloved deceased pet all come flooding back to you.

Dust is the forgotten fibres of your wooly jumper; it's the pine needles from that Christmas tree that you didn't get rid of until it had turned thoroughly crispy; it's the brick powder that the builders covered the house in when you had your kitchen done.  It falls as a linear memory of the past from our environments.

Like a living sedimentary rock, it embodies our environment as a corporeal fossil.

And only bit of it is made of your old skin...

The Learning Agreement

An excerpt from my MA Learning Agreement; a statement of intent for the Final Major Project.

My research during the Material and Emotional Values of Product Design unit led me to explore my initial design ethos of passive and humble products through investigation into the ageing timepiece - a product that adapts or changes over time, allowing personal reflection on our individual perceptions of time.  Through the initial idea development of the previous unit, I began to consider our own relationship with the world around us and our inner sensitivity to the natural world. 

My ambition for my future professional practice is to continue to develop products that echo the human condition.  I believe that the reflection encouraged by a product and the interaction we have with it allows us to build sustainable relationships with products, relieving the environmental pressures of consumerism while promoting a deeper connection with our own personal environments.  To better understand these concepts, I will be supplementing the design process of the project by studying a range of philosophical theories encompassing humankind’s spiritual connection with the natural world, and our perceptions of the passage of time.

My product focus is to produce a range of objects to reflect my interest in producing functional products that reflect the human condition.  These products may also include digital and mechanical technologies, utilising the strengths of my own background in Mechanical Engineering.

Though my aim is to ultimately produce domestic products, I am also interested in producing pieces that would be suitable for gallery exhibitions, and as such I will be targeting this market to identify an external professional collaborative partner.

Due to the philosophical nature of my research, I believe my ambition for my Final Major Project aligns with the MA learning outcome.  Undoubtedly, due to my engineering background, any functional products I design will be analysed in-depth technically, but I believe that the deeper meaning to the product is the more important factor and so I will be striving for an MA classification, as opposed to the MSc.

It is my intention to submit a range of functioning prototypes that encourage reflection on the human condition and thus meet the conditions of the MA learning outcome.