April – May 2020
Clocks keep our rhythm. Some would say they dominates our lives, defining when we wake, eat, work, meet, rest, exercise, play, and sleep. Others see these artifacts as opportunities to showcase cultural and scientific achievement, as in Al-Jaziri’s Elephant Clock. In the Spring of 2020, the NYUAD Machine Lab class undertook the design and fabrication of such a clock.
At different intervals throughout the day, different mechanisms would activate to express a representation of the contributing artists derived from their hobbies. As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the project shifted to an exercise in 3D modeling.
Contribution
For my piece of the clock, I modeled a rock climber climbing a cliff-face. An elevator mechanism lifts a limb-movement mechanism up over the period of an hour. The climber’s opposing limbs alternate their movement until it reaches the top at the end of the hour, when the elevator mechanism releases quickly, causing the climber to fall to the bottom.
Process
