Due: Tues., Mar. 2, 10:30AM

This week we will explore creating pneumatic animation. For this assignment you are to create three pneumatic-and-fabric test pieces that you animate to express three unique emotive states. Allow yourself to play with the pneumatics, fabrics, form, and qualities of movement find an interesting emotive states.

A few prompts:

  • Make something and try animating it – what are the emotions being expressed? Does it have one state of emotion or does it change over time?
  • How do your fabric or other material choice affect the feeling of the emotive expression? If you changed the materials, how does that change what is expressed?
  • Where does this expressive object / creature live? Do the movements and/or emotions read differently in various contexts?
  • Try to make one of them breath or sigh – how does this affect it’s emotional quality?

Objectives

  • Explore pneumatics as an expressive media.
  • Explore how other materials can exaggerate, amplify, dampen, or constrict our experience of the expressive pneumatics.

Materials

You have received a number of materials to build pneumatic structures and also a variety of pieces of fabrics. Use these materials (and any of your own) to create your test pieces. Keep in mind that you will need to reuse your syringes and may need to reuse your tubing for future projects. Be very careful and aware when using the hot soldering iron.

Approach

This assignment is very materials based. You are called upon to be inventive and open as you create your pneumatic objects. You may have one idea you begin with while you are constructing the pneumatic portion and then once it is made, you may realize it is very different than what you expected – allow yourself to be open to what it is sharing with you about itself. Materials are expressive; lean on the emotive quality of materials rather than using something like a drawn face to express emotion. Lastly, we encourage you to embrace the test pieces as objects / creatures that are unknown to you. Rather than trying a replica of something you are already familiar with or have seen before ( such as cat, soda can, or rubber duck) focus on conjuring emotive states through the objects’ movement, tempo, evolution, or presence.