Zazaziza

As part of the Somethingscopes series, the Zazaziza optical department has been sketching and testing a concept for a motorised forensic camera that takes instant film snapshots of computer screens.

How it works - so far

The Polaroid sheet camera uses the basic principle of light polarisation to mimic the behaviour of a camera diaphragm and shutter. LCD screens emit polarised light which allows a Polaroid sheet in the camera to take on the diaphragm behaviour.

By changing the rotation of the Polaroid sheet, the amount of light that passes through can change from almost nothing (diaphragm closed) to nearly the full intensity that is being beamed by the source (diaphragm fully open.) In this way the “Polaroid diaphragm” adjusts the amount of light reaching a photosensitive material–a single sheet of instant film*–that will become the final picture.

A stepper motor controls the rotation of the camera body, from the light blocking position to the fully open position (90 degrees), in which the instant film is exposed for a predetermined amount of time before the whole camera body is rotated back to the blocking position.

After being exposed, the instant film sheet is taken out of the camera body (in a dark room) and developed normally by making it pass through a roller mechanism. Hopefully, all this explanation will make more sense after watching the video of the camera in action:

As of now, Zazaziza has no idea what problem this camera is the answer to, nevertheless we hope it can be seen as a small homage to the genius of Edwin Land, one of the greatest inventors of the 20th century.

Zazaziza has no affiliation whatsoever with the Polaroid Corporation or the FujiFilm Corporation, we’re just instant film groupies.

*Instant film FujiFilm FP-100c was used, although other references of Fuji or Polaroid should also work fine.

Dearest Zazazizung friends: May randomness bring good things for you in 2008. Hold on, since we are invoking randomness here, it’s very unlikely that it will bring good things to all of you, being it so random, you see. On the other hand, since we don’t have that many visitors, let alone friends, then it wouldn’t make the goddess of probabilities go crazy and commit suicide if all of you, imaginary or carbon-based, would have a great 2008.

Anyways, thanks for reading us during 2007. This year sucked, by the way, but next one’s gonna be awesome! Right?

(footage of some EL oracle telling in the form of hexagrams what 2008 will bring!)

Above: Moon Eclipse. Plate 497, Natural History album, Compañia Nacional De Chocolates, 1980s.

Machine: Turns energy into work.
Rube Goldberg (RG) machine: In a convoluted and seemingly absurd way, turns energy into work no one cares about.

After many imaginary diatribes, fights and long discussions, Zazaziza decided that RG machines needed a proper classification system. As with everything in life, we encountered many grey areas, borderline RG machines and plenty of non-sequiturs, but decided to continue our intellectual pursuit just the same.

In any case, for those visitors forgiving enough to read a stream of consciousness outburst badly disguised as structured thinking, here are some categories we think could be useful as a proto-framework in the study of Rube Goldbergian phenomena:

1. Purpose

Along life we may encounter machines that are Rube Golbergian proper and proud of it, machines that are proud of having a supposedly beautiful noble purpose (as delusional as that might sound), and machines that do not have a clue whether they are RG-compliant or not.

1.1 Run of the mill(ish): Those that unabashedly go great lengths to do something deemed futile. This constitutes presumably the bulk of obvious, in-your-face RG machines out there, at least in terms of popularity and media exposure. –Example: Pitagora Suitchi (info, YouTube clips)

1.2 Nihilistic: Those that do absolutely nothing, and produce that nothing in an exquisitely obfuscated, and probably proud way too. –Example: The Do-Nothing Machine

1.3 Unintentional: Those machines armed with wishful thinking and overambitious goals that usually presume their own usefulness. Ultimately, contraptions in this category thoroughly fail as efficient machines, but behave beautifully as flawless, classical RG machines. –Example: Web 2.0 software machines? national legislative branches of power?

2. Time scale

How long does it take for the machine to finish its process and yield its inefficient result? seconds? minutes? eons? are RG machines the ultimate form of procrastination?

2.1 Faster-than-you-can-blink contraptions: Some machines can operate at blazing speeds, using absurdly complex arrays of components to produce innocuous work with uttermost efficiency (time-wise.) Think of Moore’s law meets RG machines. –Example: Microprocessors, ephemeral man-made chemical elements.

2.2 Long now-compliant: Those RG machines that are in no hurry at all to finish their processes. –Example: Evolution.

2.3 Open ended/infinite: Self-assembling spontaneous machines that can lie dormant for centuries, their end result is usually completely unpredictable (but futile) and is often a one-off type of thing. If only they weren’t infinite and human race wasn’t on the verge of extinction, we could find out if they do come to an end and what happens then.
–Example: Egyptian pyramid curse mechanisms activated by archaeologists opening tombs.

3. Spatiality

Physical or geographical boundaries almost always affect the behaviour and outcome of RG machines. Admitedly, this category is a bit dodgy, but come on, you’ve already read this far… just go on.

3.1 Contained: Your garden variety of RG machine that comes to life in a garage, workshop or some contained space no larger than a 2 storey house.

3.2 Continent-engulfing, solar system-wide, etc.: Is the butterfly that flaps its wings in the Amazonian forest causing–via chaos theory–Godzilla to sneeze over Tokyo part of an RG machine?

3.3 Evil nano-level or a bit bigger RG machines: self-explanatory. –Example: Molecular switches and sensors made from RNA

3.4 Networked: Those machines that are scattered around the globe, usually each part or node of the machine can be considered an RG contraption itself, which affects all other nodes. The work produced by each module remotely triggers the next one and contributes to the whole RG machine. –Example: Baynham & Tyers RG machine. Notice the part where mobile phones are used to connect 2 parts of the machine (scrub to 2 minutes 10 seconds.)

4. Reality Layer

Is the machine made out of molecules? is it a watchable, touchable, lickable entity? does it only exist as an abstract information-processing assemblage? Do you often hear voices alerting you about the location of RG machines no one else can see?

4.1 Tangible: you know.

4.2 RG machines of the mind: Imaginary RG contraptions and psychological mechanisms of individual and collective nature that can involve awkward social interactions, hallucinations and bouts of OCD.

4.3 Virtual, software-based: Truckloads of lines of computer code to produce antiwork. It could refer also to computer simulations of physical RG machines. –Example: Using IM to chat with a person seated next to you, especially if gossiping, The incredible machine (computer game.)

5. Systemic meta relationships

How RG machines relate to their environment and among themselves.

5.1 Zombies: Apparently useful, efficient, God-fearing machines in their own right that unknowingly work as sub-processes for meta RG machines.

5.2 Metamothers: RG machines that produce RG machines. Ad nauseam.

Unsurprisingly, many pesky, incongruous afterthoughts remain in the air. For instance, if all machines are ultimately RG machines, or part of a cosmic RG machine, as we hinted at once, then RG machines aren’t that especial and you would have to ask yourself what would be the value of such a taxonomy. At this point everything seems very confusing. Dear imaginary reader, can you think of more/better examples and extra categories?

The first exploration in the Somethingscopes series is the Polaroid flower, a mechanism of gears, rubber bands and a USB-powered motor that makes spin a circular arrangement of Polaroid filters.

The Polaroid flower is based on the principle that light, as a transverse electromagnetic wave, can be polarised, that is, instead of having it going in all directions, there are ways of making it disperse in only one direction. Polarisation is also the principle behind LCD screens, which means that this kind of screens use Polaroid filters in order to make the liquid crystal arrange visible.

So, what happens when a series of Polaroid filters overlap? the answer is that they further filter down lightwaves depending on their rotation, and in certain combinations they can filter specific frequencies (colours).

When an observer uses polariser lenses oriented perpendicularly to the direction of the light coming from the screen, that light is blocked; however, if between the screen and the polariser lenses there are additional filters oriented at different angles, the overall blocking effect of the polariser lenses can be cancelled out in specific areas.

Hopefully, some of the above will make more sense after watching the video below. The next step for the Polaroid flower is to make it augment or react to what is happening on the screen.

Somethingscopes are a series of objects that explore interactive/reactive phenomena from the eyes of a Victorian time traveler. These electromechanical/optical contraptions draw inspiration from simple machines, and what they do is basically try to interfere/react with/to computer screens.

A distant cousin of the Somethingscope is the contemporary widget, a small application that runs in its own window and provides very specific information to the user. A Somethingscope can be seen as a physical widget of sorts, in the sense that it is a small contained system that lies on the screen and it might react to and influence whatever is happening at the GUI level of the computer OS, but since a Somethingscope is physical, it could be understood as a kind of reverse augmented reality, that is, augmenting the virtual from reality.

As this is a work in progress, our self-imposed brief might be subject to change, nevertheless the spirit of the idea is to recreate simple physical/optical phenomena that could persuade humans to think and feel about the dialectic of the physical and onscreen worlds and . Or something.