Almost Scientific

Great photo of the Raygun Gothic Rocketship and The Rocket Stop

Alan — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 01:46:55 +0000

Site maintenance

Alan — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 22:48:20 +0000

We are doing some minor rearranging of the site over the next few weeks so if things look incomplete or missing, that’s the reason.

Thanks.

Raygun Gothic Rocketship – Rocket Stop audio

Alan — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 06:46:55 +0000

Listen up …

This is the main announcement for the rocket stop. There are other announcements that I’ll post soon, but this is the core one. If you hang around the Rocket Stop for about 10 minutes you should hear this one.

I wrote it in collaboration with Copylicious, the voice talent was provided by Naomi and Leslie Gruntiz, and the production and recordings were done by Andrew Jimenez. And the programming of all the hardware was done by Five Ton Crane Crew – Weeb, Drew, Colleen, CTP.

My favorite part of this recording is the mention of Larf Flu.

Download audio file (00054rocketstop1.mp3)

Video of The Raygun Gothic Rocketship and The Rocket Stop on pier 14 in San Francisco

Alan — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 04:52:36 +0000

From Flickr users The Other Martin Taylor.

The Raygun Gothic Rocketship Rocket Stop

Alan — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 21:43:59 +0000

The Raygun Gothic Rocketship Rocket Stop — Showing on Pier 14 of the San Francisco Embarcadero for 14 months.

The Home Stretch

Alan — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 07:11:58 +0000

It begins

Alan — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 03:19:48 +0000

Rocket Stop – The cherry on top

Alan — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 02:00:59 +0000

Rocket Stop sign post

Alan — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 07:28:10 +0000

Rocket Stop – base in progress

Alan — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:32:07 +0000

Here’s a quick shot of the base of the Rocket Stop which we just got assembled.

Rocket Stop Fabrication 2

Alan — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 11:24:54 +0000

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.

Rocket Stop Fabrication 1

Alan — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 04:43:21 +0000

The Rocket Stop fabrication is in full swing!

Rocket Stop Design Drawings

Alan — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 05:55:46 +0000

Fabrication of the Rocket Stop should be gearing up over the next week. Here are the most recent CAD images:

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?”