Wednesday, August 6, 2008
God help us — even the weather channel has published an article about Stampunk. Overall the article is a rehash of the same old tropes and themes that everyone else has been printing. I’m stunned that there are people out there getting paid to rewrite the same (uninspired ) article that has been written ten [...]
Photographer Michael Rauner took some cool photos of some of my work (The Triaparator, The Dihemispheric Chronaether Agitator and The Neuron Chamber) at the Fire Arts show. He also as some great shots of the Steampunk Treehouse and KSW.
You can see his whole gallery from the show here.
Below are some of the photos [...]
{Set 1 Set 2 Set 3}
They say the night is darkest just before the dawn. Well that was true for the crew of The Neuron Chamber. We had a few long nights of fabracation on this project but none was more intense (or perhaps as fun) as the final night.
This set of photos [...]
{set 1 Set 2 Set 3 }
So I was way too deep in some grinder-dust induced madness to post photos of The Neuron Chamber while we were fabricating it but now that I have emerged from the dark of NIMBY, re-interfaced with my computer and dusted off the camera I’ve started to go though the [...]
Here is a photo of The Neuron Chamber at it’s first showing at The Crucibles Fire Arts Festival.
More to come!
Be sure to check out the Fabrication Photos: Set 1 Set 2 Set 3
I’m honored to have been featured in this interview by the fantastic Meredith Scheff for The Steampunk Workshop.
I’m still recovering from finishing and showing The Neuron Chamber and will have the final round of photos form it up soon!
Portrait of a mad scientist: Alan Rorie of Almostscientific.com
Meredith Scheff — Mon, 07/14/2008 - 15:05
(image: Alan [...]
Lot’s of parts getting made — too tired and busy to write anything more then this:
I know you only look at the pictures anyhow, so enjoy.
Hello all my fine friends. We’ve been hard at work fabricating the chamber of The Neuron Chamber and I’ve got some photos to prove it.
For this piece, since it was so exquisitely designed in Solidworks and we are on a tight time line I’ve had a majority of the components water jet cut.
One consequence of [...]
So here I am making this sculpture of neurons in an observation chamber and I keep spitting out these technical terms: axon, dendrites, cell body … to describe different components of the sculpture and no one who is working with me has any idea what I am saying.
So for those of you wondering a bit [...]
One of the most curious moments in my artistic process is when I switch from thinking about the piece in terms of the clean CAD work and begin to deal with the messy, real world materials that are really going to make it up.
I once saw an interview with Frank Ghery where he said that [...]
As I mentioned in the original post describing The Neuron Chamber one of the core elements is a completely original, technically challenging, electric/kinetic effect that we are developing specifically for this project.
The goal is to pull an electric arc though an complex, horizontal curve.
Think of it as horizontal Jacobs Ladder.
I bet you’re asking why [...]
So the project is a go. I got the offical word at the end of last week that The Neuron Chamber is going to be at The Crucibles Fire Arts Festivle. Also, they have provided some generous funding.
The final CAD work is locked in and almost all the parts on the chamber [...]
Well I bet you are getting tired of reading about the Steampunk Treehouse and The Dihemispheric Chronaether Agitator, huh?
Well you are in luck because it’s looking like I am going to be starting work on a new project that I hinted about a few days ago.
The new piece is called The Neuron Chamber and it’s [...]
This is really cool. Here is a full on virtual view of the inside of the Steampunk Treehouse when it was installed at Coachella.
Use the mouse to pan left, right, up and down.
You can see the other virtual tours from Coachella here.
[QUICKTIME http://www.almostscientific.com/TREE.mov 640 480]
I know it’s a bit late but I finally got around to going through my photos from our recent instillation of the Steampunk Treehouse at Coachella.
I tried to document all the various stages that goes into setting it.
You can also see the spreader bar I designed and fabricated in action.
There were too many photos to [...]
Hey all –
I just got back from taking apart the Steampunk Treehouse in LA and found a note in my inbox from some good friends directing me to this cool photo and blurb in Wired.
The blurb is similar to the other write up they did of the the The Dihemishperic Chronaether Agitator.
Wow. I just got back from Maker Faire and had a fantastic time. So many cool projects and brilliant people walking around. A glorious geek fest!
Check out the write up of Almost Scientific and the Dihemispheric Chronaether Agitator in Wired:
Mad Labber Scientist Tinkers With Time
Stanford grad student Alan Rorie shows off [...]
It’s true, my most recently complete work, The Dihemispheric Chronaether Agitator, will be showing all this weekend at the Maker Faire in San Mateo.
I just spent the evening in the shop shining it up and tweaking the gears.
I don’t think I’ll run it on steam power but I’ll have the steamengine there for show and [...]
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
When we took the Steampunk Treehouse to Coachella last week we knew we were not going to be allowed to let the ~45 000 attendees up into the house and we would want to be able to lock up the house when we were off playing.
So we picked up this nice old lock for the [...]
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Hey all’ya all — I’m back from an amazing showing of the Steampunk Treehouse at Coachella.
Last year at this time, when we were first starting the project, I would have never gussed that I’d be able to watch Roger Waters and Prince preform while swinging my feet from the main balcony on the treehouse.
We had [...]
LA Weakly blog (pronounced Hell-A Weakly, according the great show Californication) has put together some nifty excel graphs to addres the question:
Who are these 128 bands [at Coachella], collectively? As one big amalgam, what are they?
I couldn’t resist a data heavy write up about Coachella given that we start packing up the truck to take [...]
Benna is always snapping photos of everyone while we are working and ever once in a while she post some of them. If you are curious to see another persons perspective on what goes on around the work site check out these photos.
I promise there are some goofy pictures of me in there.
The other item that has been taking up some of my time is the design of the spreader bar for the Coachella instillation.
What is a spreader bar
Well, we are going to need to pick up the house with a crane and place it on the trunk. To do this we are going to attach straps [...]
The other night while preping the Treehosue for Coachella we realized that we never signed it. So we’ve decided to create a “signature plate” that would have the name of the piece and the names of everyone who worked on it.
Here is the design I whipped up quickly (so we can have it done in [...]
I’ve designed this kick-ass flyer to promote the Treehouse project at Coachella. These wil be printed up 8.5″ x 11.5″ and distributed backstage, in the VIP areas and inside the Treehouse (which will be closed to to public but open to VIPs)
This is more or less done though there may be some small last [...]
It’s difficult to see in most of the photos of the tree house but the inside of the Triparator windows (on the house wall … yes I’ll get a photo soon) is lined with copper.
It always struck me as odd (though no one else ever noticed) that everything on the Treehouse looked old but that [...]
The new patina on the roof of Steampuk Treehose is starting to take shape.
Our goal is to give the roof some really aged blue-green color by applying a fresh layer of paint on the rusted metal, and then systematically (and artfully) destroying that layer of paint.
Last weekend we laid down the first even layer [...]
I’ve started doing some design work on two new sculptures. Here is a CAD sketch of the first one which, for now, I’m calling “Bloom”.
It’s a kinetic piece ~20″ high and ~12″ wide that is inspired by a blooming bud.
The core idea is for there to be a disc that can be turned and [...]
Last night I also got a good photo of the etching I made for the gift the Steampunk Treehouse crew is giving the Burning Man office to thank them for all their support last year.
I did the etching and Martin did the frame. Kate and Sean lent a hand in finishing it.
Here is the original [...]
Well Coachella is coming up really soon and the Steampunk Treehouse crew has been hard at work getting our little treehouse ready.
We’ve gotten a bulk of the basic upkeep and repair work done and can now take some time to do some cosmetic work.
One of the first things we want to do [...]
