day 1. kinetic principles

Objectives: To create a context for the workshop by showing the kinetic principles used in Tinguely work.

1. Tour of the museum. A reference.

2. Werner: Dissecting Tinguely’s works.

Tinguely built almost entirely from salvaged industrial components: washing machine motors, fan motors, bicycle wheels, leather belts, wire. He did not invent new mechanisms, but combined found ones. We will discuss three works of Tinguely and how he used the following components. The way he used certain types of mechanism that allows for play and wobble, that allowed not for mechanical precision, but rather for mistake, greatly contributed to his aesthetics. During the tour we will look at three of his sculptures to understand how and why he used certain mechanisms and what kind of effect this has on the movement of the work. 

The three works we will discuss are 

1. Méta-Matic No. 17 
2. Meta-Harmonie II
3. Mengele-Totendanz

And we will look at the following components.

• Motors: Tinguely used mainly small AC induction motors with a fixed speed. 
• Transmission:  Because Tinguely used mainly AC induction motors that run on mains voltage, he had to change the speed using transmission ratios. For this he used leather belts or round rubber belts on pulleys, almost ever chans or gears. This creates a type of spontaneity, belts can slip stretches and oscillate, they are not the most precise, but can also flex and adapt rather than break. 
• Rotary to linear conversion: Tinguely often uses eccentric cranks to convert rotary to linear motion. In the drawing machines, Tinguely also uses cranks.
• Amplification and redirecting: He useses long lever arms on pivoting loose bearings.  A tiny motor becomes a 2-meter sweep. The loosness and to the life-like quality of the machines, it wobbles and plays. 

3. Natalia: Lecture about found objects and kinetic art (beyond Tinguely) will cover three main periods of the work of Jean Tinguely and put it in a broader context of kinetic art of the 1950s including the work of Daniel Spoerri, Raphael Soto and Victor Vasarely.