Robotics for Creative Practice: Final Project

The Corporate Machine™ : Alan Turner, Cindy Deng, Bolaji Bankole, Lucy Scherrer

We started brainstorming by examining the concept of an imperfect robot. We were interested in exploring what it mean

s if the completion of the robot’s task is intrinsic to its own destruction, or if the task itself seems pointless. We felt like there were many layers of meaning to a robot that was clearly programmed by someone to do a task, but the task was either detrimental to the robot’s physical well being, physically not possible for the robot to complete, or something ridiculously pointless that makes the viewer ask questions about the reasoning behind the robot’s conception.

In thinking about the form of the robot, we also starting to think about what message we could share in the creation of a pointless or self-destructive robot. This concept lends itself to talking about things that are cyclical, self-inflicted, and oppressive. We discussed the idea of voluntarily buying in to a destructive process, as the robot would be “willingly” (or under the illusion of free will) performing this task. This made us think of the art piece “Capitalism Works for Me” displayed at CMU last year by artist Steve Lambert.

Inspiration:

We drew our inspiration from the concept of machines that either can’t perform the required task or that comment on the emptiness or meaningless nature of their task in its execution or termination. An example of this is a recent work by the artist Banksy, which was a painting fitted with a shredder in its frame so that it would self destruct upon being bought, which it was for $1.4 million.

When we talked about self-destructive cycles, an idea that quickly came up was carnival claw games. They are enticing and seem potentially very profitable, but it’s a known fact that most of them are either scams or just very difficult. Nevertheless, most of us have at least once put money in the machine just to predictably walk away with nothing. We would like to use the familiar image of a claw machine as a representation of something that is tempting but ultimately a waste to talk about the vicious cycle of capitalism.

User story / experience description

The user will first notice the familiar form and visual aesthetic of an arcade claw machine. They will then realize that the machine is filled with money tokens, and that the claw is automated with a preset task of winning one of those tokens. After the claw picks up a token, a task that will likely be somewhat difficult and will produce a performance of working hard to accomplish a given task. Once the machine finally picks up a coin, it will drop it into the chute that usually gives the player the prize once it has been won. However, once it goes down the chute it will roll down a curved ramp that wraps around from the back to the front of the machine, and will eventually deposit it right back into the original money slot, starting the machine’s cycle over again. The way the coin drops into the chute and rolls down the slide to be inserted back into the slot is a big part of the machine’s performance, as it is the transition mode between what will probably be a long tedious process of picking up a coin.

Justification

By using the familiar concept of a claw machine and copying the brightly colored, arcade aesthetic, we believe we can create a piece that facilitates a conversation about capitalism and everyone’s role in it. The performance created by the difficulty of the machine to pick up a coin and the persistence it has in completing its task, regardless of the fact that the task will only facilitate another task that needs to be completed, gives us an interesting motion that could generate important conversations.

 

Required Resources

We will build the box from wood and acrylic. We will program the claw controller with an arduino, and use pneumatics to facilitate the movement of the claw and gantry.

We have found tutorials that detail how to build a functioning claw machine.

Online Reference Tutorials

1) All cardboard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16MVPbX2D1M

  • Uses only cardboard
  • Used colored liquid and syringe
  • Simple and cheap
  • Human operated
  • Can copy its claw design to save money

2) Instructable Arduino machine:

 

3) Instructable claw machine:

Complete Inspiration/Concept Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IaAgcEvQSAPElhGsyK4iajJoTBz6xqqf5CcQ7bHVdUs/edit?usp=sharing

 

Tentative Bill of Materials: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eVIVccV6ddtWG9GdTNytcZu_d2M-6q04A1epIoKyB3g/edit?usp=sharing

Tentative Schedule: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1a-DKMc-WEbsHTBH2toEKTikKpcTGsSJdaxbFZQ8czFw/edit?usp=sharing