Almost Scientific » In The Media

Interview on Make Blog

Alan — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 11:20:28 +0000

If you missed it Make blog did a nice interview with me regarding my affiliation with Applied Kinetic Arts. I’ve reposted the text below. You should also go check out the interviews they did with Nemo, Ben and Jeremy.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been doing a series of interviews with members of Applied Kinetic Arts (AKA), “a community of artists working within the medium loosely defined as ‘kinetic’. Works incorporating motion, light, sound, and interactivity are represented by the group’s ever expanding member base.” The more members I chat with, the more I’m impressed and moved by their sense of camaraderie. The talented folks who make up AKA are not just a group of artists, but they are a community in the true sense. Today, we speak with Alan Rorie. I first met Alan a couple of years ago at Maker Faire Bay Area, where I saw his Neuron Chamber (pictured above) for the first time. The steel and glass sculpture demonstrates the firing of neurons in the human brain, and I approached Alan to give him an editor’s blue ribbon for the project. He immediately smiled and said, “We won!” The “we” naturally meant the collective and he was eager to share with the crew. The vibe these folks create is inspiring.

1. Tell us about yourself. How did you get started making things and who are your inspirations?
I started making things when I was in graduate school at Stanford working on my Ph.D. in neurobiology. Although the work was really interesting I found it unsatisfying. So much of it was in the abstract; I was interested in the physical world, but in science you begin in the physical world but you end up in abstraction. I wanted to work more with actual physical objects, so I decided to get more involved with making things. There were always things I wanted to do but couldn’t because I didn’t have access, like welding, but when I went to Burning Man I found a community of local people involved in making crazy stuff, and doing awesome metalwork, so I became involved with them and slowly taught myself how to weld. A lot of the people in that community were my inspirations, particularly Kinetic Steam Works, and my fellow member of AKA, Nemo Gould. It’s an honor to now to be able to work alongside a lot of the people who inspired me to get involved with this kind of stuff to begin with.

2. How did you first become involved/interested in making kinetic art? Tell us about the first kinetic piece you made.
As soon as I started making things, I wanted to make kinetic art because I’m very interested in engineering and design. I was also drawn to the inherent challenges of making a kinetic piece — something that functioned in interesting ways. I was always interested in industrial components like bearings, so kinetic art was natural for me to get involved with. My first kinetic piece was The Triaparator for the Steampunk Treehouse, which was a series of three fully functional brass apertures.

3. What goes into building one of your pieces? What’s your process?
My process is generally the same. I begin by doing hand sketches and brainstorming. Then I move into computer-aided design, which I love. I get as far as I can in CAD. From there, I migrate the piece into the real world. Once it becomes a part of the real world, I abandon the CAD model and work with what I’ve got. Often there are huge sections of a piece that can’t be CADed and need to be done afterwards, and I really enjoy that tension between what can be predesigned and what needs to be made and designed on the fly.

4. What’s the biggest challenge in making art that is kinetic?
Not figuring out to solve kinetic problems, but how to solve kinetic problems within the aesthetic constraints that you’re working with. Most kinetic problems have simple solutions, but often those solutions conflict with the aesthetic look of the piece. As an artist, you have to re-solve a lot of traditional kinetic problems in interesting ways. The hardest thing is getting the motion of kinetics you want, while having it look the way you want.

5. What’s your favorite tool/material?

The milling machine. It gives you a large amount of freedom to do interesting things with a tremendous amount of precision.

6. How has being a part of a collective like Applied Kinetic Arts helped you and/or informed your work?
It’s provided me with a group of like-minded people, peers, from whom I can draw inspiration, advice, and information. Camaraderie. Being a part of a large, collaborative projects like the ones we do in Five Ton Crane(The Steampunk Treehouse and The Raygun Gothic Rocketship), has really helped me to create work I could never create alone, and to share in a collective artistic vision.

7. Is your art strictly a hobby or is it a business? Does it relate to your day job?
It’s both. I think it’s important to consider the business aspects of art. Artists deserve to get paid for their time. Certainly there’s a tremendous amount of management of money involved for shop rent, consumables, and tools that you need to factor in. I’ve never thought of my art as a hobby. Since I started it’s always been what I want to do with all of my time, and I’ve spent the past couple of years working hard to make a living doing it, and that’s a work in progress.

I teach metal fabrication classes, so in that my art is directly related to my living. And this winter I’ll be expanding to do more custom design and fabrication. In the context of considering myself an industrial artist, I’m also interested in the process of producing objects en mass for sale, and harnessing the tools of production and industry to create art. For example, my wooden and papercraft models of the Raygun Gothic Rocketship (for sale in theMakers Market). It’s been interesting figuring out how to make those in enough number and quality to sell.

8. What new idea (in or outside of your field) has excited you most recently?
I’m really excited by the continued development of CAD/CAM and the growing accessibility to 3D printing and scanning. Also, the possibility of microbial life on Europa, a moon of Jupiter.

9. What is your motto?
Less think, more build. Another one: It’s always easier to make a hole bigger than smaller.

10. What advice do you have for people who want to get started in the kinetic arts?
Start looking around at all the objects around you, from doorknobs and lamps to drawbridges and cranes. Inspiration for interesting kinetic movements is everywhere. Start doing things. Keep things simple. Follow your interests. Use lots of lube.

Thanks, Alan! To check out more images and videos of Alan’s work, head over to his site Almost Scientific.

Almost Science, Always Art

Alan — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 23:59:20 +0000

Almost Science, Always Art

BY LESLIE W. CHINN

Alan Rorie is a neuroscientist by training. These days, however, you’re more likely to find him using an MIG (metal-inert gas) welder to send sparks skimming over a cool slab of metal than peering at glowing monkey neurons through a microscope.

From Neurons to the Neuron Chamber

Not too many years ago, Rorie was a graduate student at Stanford University, investigating the amalgamation of different types of information in the cortexes of macaques during the decision-making process.

Now, Rorie amalgamates metals (and sometimes other materials) into works of art in a process that he calls “almost scientific.” This is also the name of the science and art collaborative that Rorie founded, as well as the name of his website, www.almostscientific.com. The goal of Almost Scientific, the collaborative, is to “educate scientists about art and artists about science” through the creation of art pieces that tend to be quite large, with moving parts.

Rorie always has been intrigued by moving parts— as a child, he says he was “really interested in taking stereos and blenders apart and putting them back together.” He also loved to read and write stories, which eventually led him to study the humanities in college. But, Rorie began to feel that the true source of being able to understand and appreciate the humanities was rooted biologically, in the brain. “What makes a great painting or symphony really has to do with how you perceive it,” says Rorie, “so I became very interested in the neuroscience of perception.”

By the time Rorie discovered that neuroscience wasn’t yet able to explain how the brain experiences art, he had nonetheless become intrigued. “I was already hooked on just understanding the brain and how it works,” he remembers. To this end, Rorie did a stint at the National Institute of Mental Health, then moved to California for graduate school.

Slowly, however, Rorie began to see that his future was not at the bench. It took a while for him to decide that he wanted to focus on, as he puts it, “art and creative pursuits.” Arriving at this conclusion wasn’t easy, particularly because everyone, including himself, thought of Rorie as a scientist.

The Process of Creation

In his studio in West Oakland, Calif., Rorie creates works with fantastical names: the Raygun Gothic Rocketship, the Triaparator and the Neuron Chamber. This last work is an “electro-kinetic sculpture” that demonstrates what neurons are and what they do. And, yes, it uses electricity: 9,000 volts make for an impressive action potential as they arc, a blinding blue light, down axons made of metal.

Rorie not only is interested in teaching nonscientists about neurons— he also would like them to understand the mechanical workings of the Neuron Chamber. “In the sense [that] I can teach either the scientific content of my sculpture or the physical mechanics of it,” he says, “I am happy to do that.”

Rorie appears to derive a great deal of satisfaction from the design and construction of his work. Because many of his pieces are large and have moving parts, he makes use of engineering techniques— for example, CAD (computer-aided design) programs during the planning process— as well as tools intended for more industrial purposes, such as the MIG welder.

“A lot of the really large-scale pieces that I work on require a tremendous amount of engineering,” says Rorie, “and that is a huge part of the challenge and the fun and the beauty of these pieces.” He seems to revel in the process of creation, or as he puts it, “figuring out how to take something crazy and make it real.” This also is part of the message of Rorie’s works— to inspire people with the way he has taken a material as strong and rigid as metal and molded it to represent something as delicate as a human neuron.

As in science experiments, meticulous planning in art only goes so far. Nothing ever comes out the way you planned it, Rorie says, so you always have to be ready to adapt to the reality of the work. “At a certain point, you stop telling the work what it’s going to be,” he explains, “and it starts telling you what it is.” But, unlike many scientists, for whom the ultimate thrill is seeing their work published, the excitement is over for Rorie once a piece is done. “It’s more the process that’s important to me— it’s more the thrill of doing than the thrill the final product brings.”

Action, Reaction

Science and art may seem to exist in separate spheres, but Rorie believes that ultimately, they’re both about communication. It’s the direction in which the two are communicating that’s different, much like a reaction that can run in two different directions. The way Rorie sees it, scientists generate conceptual abstractions to explain physical phenomena, whereas artists generate physical embodiments of their abstract ideas, thoughts or knowledge. The Neuron Chamber was an experiment in this concept for Rorie: He wanted to take his knowledge of neuroscience and communicate it via a sculpture of “high-voltage, robotic neurons in an alien observation tank.”

So, was the experiment successful? Paul Doherty, founding director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, thinks so. He watched people interact with Rorie’s Neuron Chamber while it was installed at the museum. “As the visitors figured out what was happening, they could predict aloud what the spark would do next, then laugh if they were correct, or moan if they were not,” Doherty recalls. “[They] had been drawn into the world of sparks and neuron modeling.”

Rorie often creates pieces that move, light up, or spew sparks or steam. He does this not only because he enjoys the engineering challenge but also because it makes the art more “alive.” Kinetic art has “action and reaction to the world around it,” Rorie says. “It gets touched and moved; it wears down.” In a way, the moveable aspect of Rorie’s art is a continuation of the bidirectional communication experiment. Moving parts encourage people to interact with the art, which means that Rorie’s pieces sometimes wear out or break. He doesn’t mind— in fact, he likes to fix them because it gives him something to do at gallery shows.

“The Path Is That Simple”

For bench scientists who yearn for the freedom of arc welding, Rorie has this advice: find something you love and do it, and soon you’ll get to be it. He expands upon this in two parts. The first is that there isn’t necessarily a formal process for every step of one’s career. “You don’t need to apply,” he says. “If you want be a carpenter, you just go and be a carpenter. The path is that simple.”

The most difficult step may be overcoming one’s self-identification as a scientist, as it was for Rorie. So here’s the second part of his advice, which is more of a pep talk for those who don’t view proficiency with a confocal microscope as a skill that can be translated to another line of work: “Your education as a scientist is deeper and stronger than just the field in which you work.” Rorie notes that while he doesn’t do science anymore, he uses the skills that he learned as a graduate student every day.

Besides, says Rorie, as a scientist, “you are on the cutting edge of knowledge— so why can’t you do anything else that you imagine doing?”

What’s going on right now!

Alan — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 04:51:46 +0000

At this very moment I am with the rest of the Five Ton Crane Crew in Milton, Delaware (Rehoboth Beach, really) installing The Steampunk Treehouse for the very last time.

Why is this the last time? Well, it is now part of Dogfish Head Brewery!

The install is going well, and the folks at the brewery are amazingly cool and incredibly excited to get the house. We’ve just begun the install, and we’ve not had any time to get proper photos or video together, but it’s all going really well. I’ve been posting some updates on twitter if you want to stay up to date on the install. I’ve built a whole new set of apertures for them, and there are lots of other new details we’ve added, so I’ll be sure to get some photos of all that.

Also, there is a film crew from the Discovery Channel here who are doing a series on the brewery, and they’ve been focused on us for the past few days. They have gotten some great footage. The show won’t air until January, but we’ve been told the Treehouse install will be the subject of one of the 45-minute episodes.

In other news: The Raygun Gothic Rocketship has been 100% enthusiastically approved for a 14-month-long, public installation on the San Francisco waterfront at Pier 14! The landing is scheduled for August 8! Yikes, that’s soon!

As part of that, the Almost Scientific team has been designing a Rocket Stop. What is a Rocket Stop? Well, a Rocket Stop is to Rockets what a Bus Stop is to buses. It will be a 11′-tall steel sculpture with a 40″ back-lit graphical display (graphically designed by by Five Ton Crane’s ever-awesome Jody Medich.) There will be a lot more posts about that in the coming weeks.

A lot going on this summer!

Oh, and, The Raygun Gothic Rocketship was also just featured on Wired! Let David take you a nice tour of the RGR:

Video Documentary of the Raygun Gothic Rocket — from West Oakland to Black Rock City

Alan — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:59:37 +0000

This is a documentary of the making of the Raygun Gothic Rocket and its installation at Burningman.

One day when I was working on the rocket, this kid showed up with all this camera gear and lights. He started setting up and taking shots in the middle of the shop while people were working. Not just snapshots, mind you, but actual photographs.

I remember being a little annoyed at first, because he was kind of in the way, and he wasn’t there to do anything but take pictures.

But when I saw the photos this guy was taking, they were amazing.

I got to know him, and it turns out he’s an amazing photographer and videographer named Sean Donnelly.

After taking photos and videos of us throughout the making of the Rocket, he came out to Burningman with us to videotape the installation. In addition to putting together a great Oakland Tribune article about us, he also did this video documentary that he just posted on Vimeo.

So many times I cringe whenever I see myself in a video that features the work we do. But because Sean spent so much time with us, I think he really captured who we were and what the project was about.

I love how it shows the project from the beginning to the end, all the way through to the installation. It really focused on the people. Sean realized early on that the people who made the rocket made it to be with the people who were making it. The fact this video shows that is one of the things I like about it.

Blast Off! from Sean Donnelly on Vimeo.

a documentary on the building of the raygun gothic rocketship!

Almost Scientific and The Neuron Chamber in Wired Video

Alan — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:00:12 +0000

When we did our last show at the Exploratorium I did a video interview with Wired about what The Neuron Chamber was and how it worked. I loved that they wanted me to explain in detail how it worked and not just give a 5 second sound bite. Well the video just went live and it’s really great. They wove in some footage I gave them from our show at The Science Gallery in Ireland and Maker Faire. Thanks Wired!

The Raygun Gothic Rocket in Time

Alan — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 05:17:54 +0000

Our man David Shulman delivers the straight dope on the RGR in this interview for Time — that “dielectric barrier discharge” he’s talking about is our Uira Engine. This was a really nice short piece and David does a great job :

Oakland artists launch rocket at Burning Man

Alan — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:40:49 +0000

The Raygun Gothic Rocket was again featured in the Oakland Tribune. This is a follow up article to the one published a few weeks ago.

Oakland artists launch rocket at Burning Man

By Sean Donnelly
For the Oakland Tribune

Black Rock City, Nev. — The rumor at this year’s Burning Man Festival was spreading. Was that 40-foot-tall rocket ship hailing from a West Oakland warehouse planted in the harsh desert soil going to launch?

Some said it wasn’t possible, but most wanted to believe.

As participants at this year’s festival rode up to the rocket in a car converted into a pirate ship blasting electronic music or on a glowing bicycle — or even nude on a Segway Personal Transporter — the members of the Raygun Gothic Rocketship camp were happy to accommodate the imaginations of the visitors.

David Shulman, one of the three lead artists, had his story nailed. The rocket would launch one to three feet because of a “constricted high-energy plasma flow engine,” thanks to collaboration with researchers at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. The whole playa was waiting for the Friday night launch.

The rocket team

Back at the rocket camp, which consisted of 85 people, the community displayed back at Louise Street Studios in Oakland was in full swing. In the middle of one of the harshest natural environments in the U.S., the crew had constructed a camp with a lounge area, wireless Internet, solar showers and a full kitchen catered by good friends Kim Morabito and Andy Tannehill, who run an Oakland-based organic catering company appropriately called Table Nectar.

“Having friends cook in the kitchen,… it feels like you are having a family gathering every night,” said Natalia Villalabos, a dedicated volunteer.

Brunches included meals such as banana-blueberry pancakes, bacon and fresh fruit. Dinners ranged from Indian to Cuban. The meals were a time of relaxation and camaraderie for the group, when one could partially shield oneself from the whiteouts that were a common occurrence and connect with friends and family.

“If you are having a bad day, you have multiple pairs of arms that will give you a big hug and a kiss,” Villalabos continued. “You feel really solid in this community. … We spend so much time being caring to one another.”

The more time one spends with the Raygun Gothic Rocketship artists, the more one realizes this journey was about more than building a retro rocket. It was about the bond created when creative minds share skills and personalities.

“The driving force for me is to create in this type of environment and to be able to create collaboratively,” said lead artist Sean Orlando. “We’ve been able to assemble engineers, scientists, structural engineers, computer programmers, people with no skills whatsoever, and they can come in and work together to create something.”

The rocket became the shared common goal for the industrial artists, who are part of the growing arts movement in West Oakland that is one of its kind.

Launch night

An estimated 30,000 visitors made their way to the rocket for the Sept. 4 night launch as the rocketeers held a 500-foot perimeter to avoid any fiery accidents. A rough dust storm rolled through the Black Rock Desert, whipping dust into every crack and crevice of the rocketeers’ playa-damaged bodies and delaying the show for close to two hours.

The crowd grew impatient, but when the countdown began, the masses chanted with enthusiasm. The next few minutes resulted in a dazzling display of pyrotechnics.

Jack Schroll was the leading man in the team that created blue fireballs and a massive showcase of fireworks, which consisted of 100 gallons of methanol and 55 gallons of gasoline. The preparation back in Oakland took “one hour per second of display,” plus the nine hours it took to install the day of the launch.

While the rocket didn’t actually get airborne, the fireworks were so dazzling that many watching still weren’t sure if that plasma achieved its goal.

“I can’t even fathom how many stories there are about what actually happened …,” Orlando said. “It’s really exhilarating to think something that we created sparked enough interest with people that they would want to come and see what we’ve done.”

Heading home

As the exodus of Black Rock City took place, the team began to remove the scaffolding of their installation.

“I felt a little sad today,” Orlando said. “I’ve strengthened a lot of my friendships with people. I think it will be really exciting to see where the rocket ship goes.”

For now, it is back in seven pieces and in storage in West Oakland. In one sense, the journey is complete for the 60-plus team of artists, scientists, engineers and builders.

But there is always something to add to the rocket, and while the crew is still getting dust out of their bike chains and healing cracked skin, one can sense a project is right around the corner.

“Based on everything we have accomplished, we can pretty much do anything we set our minds to,” Orlando said.

Oakland Tribune video featuring the crew of the RGR

Alan — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 02:26:19 +0000

My friends … my crew.

I come in at around 1:30 mins.

The Raygun Gothic Rocket, Uira Engine and Almost Scientific on Cnet!

Alan — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 20:58:52 +0000

Check out this Cnet article on the RGR, featuring a very garbled explanation of the Uira Engines drive mechanism. I had no idea this guy was shooting video with his DSLR. This video starts pretty much right after I finally got it all working. There is also a shot of the Dihemispheric Chronaether Agitator in the photo gallery.

Evoking the romance of space travel, 1940s style

Here is an embed of the video from the piece:

Raygun Gothic Rocket on Make blog!

Alan — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:52:29 +0000

Check out the post on the Make blog about the Raygun Gothic Rocket featuring video by Almost Scientific!:

It Doesn’t Cook Alien Brains, But Yes, It Is a Neuron Chamber — Almost Scientific featured in Solid Smack

Alan — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:18:21 +0000

My pal Corbett over at Instinct Engineering just let me know that Almost Scientific and The Neuron Chamber were featured on the Solid Works design blog Solid Smack. You can find the original post here, but here is the text of the post:

It’s not so much that everything in the future will be built around the idea that we’ll need a proper vessel to study the organs of extraterrestrial life, but you can imagine very quickly that it would need to look stinkin’ cool… and have lights and bolts and stuff.

For instance, it would almost certainly look like the Neuron Chamber by Alan Rorie. It’s Art. It’s Kinetic. It’s Almost Scientific and it’s a mash-up of 3D mechanical design, late nights spent welding and entertaining the minds and hearts of attendees of the Maker Faire and other events.

Alan gives ya some more insight to how he creates his art. Prepare your mind.

I usually have my SolidWorks models loaded up in the shop so I can pull whatever measurements I need on the fly. For me allot of the fun of of using SolidWorks is spending a lot of time building a nice model and then slowly seeing it come to life in the real world. I’m also love to see how you think and interact with the object changes, as the real world constraints (and mates) take over.

We are currently using SolidWorks to design many of the elements of the Raygun Gothic Rocket (the model).

The Neuron Chamber on Laughing Squid

Alan — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:19:49 +0000

Laughing Squid is always one of the first blogs I check out to see what is going on in the Bay Area and beyond, so it was supper cool to load it up this morning and see The Neuron Chamber right there at the top of the page.

Thanks Laughing Squid!

Burstein! wrote:

The Neuron Chamber by Alan Rorie is an electro-kinetic sculpture of a steel and glass frame that contains hand-forged steel and copper model neurons. Even better, the neurons within the chamber create and send beautiful electrical arcs down the interior of the sculpture. These arcs do more than merely look pretty, but they have changed the sculpture itself by oxidizing its innards, giving it a new layer of color and depth.

The Neuron Chamber in Gizmodo

Alan — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 07:56:54 +0000

Tom Sepe just passed me a link to a Gizmodo post featuring The Neuron Chamber.

Here is my posted reply to the orginal post and the comments:

Hello all –

I’m the artist responsible for The Neuron Chamber.

First, thanks to Gizmodo for the post and thanks to ya’all for the comments.

Second, The Neuron Chamber is a collaborative work and credit should also be give to Ben Carpenter (www.backbonemetals.com), Jo Slota (www.joslota.com) and David Shulman.

Third, I assure you this is not a work of Steampunk art. Just because an object has brass fittings on it does not mean it is Steampunk. Trust me, I’ve built Stampunk art and this is not it.

And to address other comments:

We estimate The Neuron Chamber will likely become sentient when we hook it up to the internet and feed it a steady stream of blog comments and tweets.

Maker Faire has always show art, especially, hand made, interactive kieneitc art.

If you think art is dead then you are not living.

I’m not sure what a Flood parasite is but I hope it’s tremendously evil and difficult to kill.

I’m also not sure why a neuroscientist would be offended by this post or The Neuron Chamber. Some of my best friends are neuroscientists and they’ll assure you this is one of the least offensive things I’ve ever done.

Thanks!

Reuben Margolin Video

Alan — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:30:45 +0000

Reuben Margolin is a fantastic, kinetic artist who makes stunning wave machine.

Take a few minutes out of your day and watch this Make video featuring him.

Reuben and I are fellow member of Applied Kinetic Arts. Speaking of AKA, we are doing another show at Maker Faire this year and Almost Scientific will be installing The Neuron Chamber (assuming it makes it back from Ireland on time).

Almost Scientific on NBC news

Alan — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:44:31 +0000

Last week NBC news interviewed Me, Sean O, Tom Sepe and Oliver Lowe (of ReSearch, who is working on a book about Steampunk) about steam-stuff.

Tom give a nice interview about his steam-powered scooter.

While none of the interview of Me or Sean is shown (I think we might have been a bit too snarky at 7am) there is some great video of the Dihemispheric Chronaether Agitator and the Triaparator and the Treehouse.

Check it out (sorry for the ad):