Dead Tree Technology

A messy day's workspace.

 Counter the notion of what is sensible, this mechanism doesn't use Boolean logic.  That's all done in software.  There is not even an "if/then/else" statement in there.  The closest analogue I have is, "it was, it is and will be". 

I call this work "wiggly one in oil-skin".

 My development cycle starts with a sketch on paper, mainly free-body diagrams with arrows. Numerical simulation is done on a Linux host using Octave, Python, and C.  [More recently I've discovered the Processing language and have gone a bit off the rails with generative video.]  A bespoke compiler generates the coefficients for the encoded tables. The tables, gears and gear trains are drawn using SVG extensions to Inkscape. The scale is a determined by the material, 5mm plywood, the cheapest workable material from the lumberyard. The final “full scale” version will be built to the sub-millimeter scale.

 

Part of the inspiration for this was the idea that I could bring a tree back to life and more than that it could be made self aware in some way.  I guess that's why I thought it should be purpose built to calculate self-similar fractals.  What better way to breath life into a machine than to give it a program to execute. Wait until you see how it's programmed.