For my final design part of my project, I have decided on creating an electromagnetic machine or display that is driven by randomness. After experimenting quite heavily with programmable electromagnets, ferromagnetic objects, and generally strong magnets, I had developed a good understanding of the material and its complexities. What drew me to the electromagnetic medium, is the invisible and intangible forces they generate, and how they compare to the black-boxed nature of computation, algorithms, and artificial intelligence. Their movement or operations can often appear invisible to us, where we just don’t understand them or think and actuate in a similar manner.
Below are some experiments done with the electromagnets.
The electromagnets seem to generate a mind of its own when pulsed at different speeds and orientations. The unpredictability is well suited to this idea of randomness in computation, that I have been recently researching.
These Random Machines v01, would be 4 by 6 mechanical display powered by electromagnets. I wanted this ratio to encapsulate the idea of a portrait painting dimensions, ie, similar to the Mona Lisa for instance. I plan on mounting it to a wall, and have an audience view this computational and random machine as they would a painting, where they are also free to interpret its operation as a pseudo-living and breathing entity or merely a computational box.
The design will be much more portable than my previous idea, and does not fully succumb to a speculative narrative of a futuristic machine, but instead, lives here and now in the presence alongside us. The overall construction of it, is rather complex, requiring some tricky PCB coil and electronic design, and a further 3D printed encasing with some programming to generate the random motion.
The first step requires me to design the PCB coils. After doing so I will have to prototype and test the electromagnetic coils and electronics on a breadboard. Thereafter I will have to design an additional board of electronics, and then programme its final motion.
Here is a mockup and rendering of my envisioned idea.
The design of the PCB coils will be done in KiCAD, and will be manufactured through JLCPCB. Hopefully, my design is correct the first time, and I can get straight to testing as soon as the third term of campus begins.
I want the work when finished, to be an abstract representation of computation that captures the apparent randomness of machines, that is still able to allow for audiences to question how we understand and perceive these machines, away from speculative narratives and typical anthropomorphic ways. Currently, these machines are programmed with instructions, having different tasks and uses – they aren’t really a collective entity. By speculating we can often undermine the complexities and the art in their creation. By often making more of what they are, we are ironically doing the opposite. These machines are tweaked to give us outputs that are not random. If a truly random machine does exist, where its outputs cannot be determined or predicted by us, then we can say it isn’t programmed or governed by any instructions. In this case, we may have something as amazing as we humans see ourselves.
Nirav Beni 