STAIRWAYS TO HELL
Module : Kinetic Sculpture
Brief : To build Rube Goldberg contraption using paper as medium to study and understand dynamics in form and motion and also the usefulness of machines around us.
Rube Goldberg machine is a machine intentionally designed to perform a simple task in an indirect and over complicated fashion. Often, these machines consist of a series of simple devices that are linked together to produce a domino effect, in which each device triggers the next one, and the original goal is achieved only after many steps.Rube Goldberg's cartoons became well known for depicting complicated devices that performed simple tasks in indirect convoluted ways. The cartoon below is Goldberg's Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin which is a famous example of complicated improvised appearance of a machine.
Machines—which, by definition, are useful, but fail to live up to this standard—are seen as an absurdity in our society. Usually, machines that do not serve important purposes are short-lived. Rube Goldberg noticed that ironically these absurd machines were sticking around. Perhaps it was the public's fascination with new, exciting inventions that enabled these machines to linger. Or, perhaps people were effectively convinced by salespeople that this machine was necessary in their lives. Rube Goldberg desired to document this modern phenomenon and won lasting fame.
Rube Goldberg's cartoons reach to such great heights of exaggeration that we are tempted to look for meaning: From where do machines in our society grow? Designers and the public alike can see that machines are rooted in serving some real purpose for people.
I started with the study of forms and simple paper mechanisms and finalized the form of "stairs" as the beginning of the structure. Task of the contraption was to let the ball which is a character in itself to fall into a pit. Stair plays an important part in the structure as it stands in the center connecting the path to a bottomless pit (which signifies abyss - Greek version of Bible).
Stairway gave me a dramatic way of looking at the structure and as the Rube Goldberg itself signifies exaggeration, i gave a character to the stairs by building a demon above it which also signifies the mythological exaggerations around us in society. The whole structure shows the journey of a soul (here ball) from the point of death - when the bigger ball (body) falls in the bucket and scythe hits the smaller ball (soul) - and the ball is forced to be devoured by the demon and travel down the stairways which ultimately leads to the bottomless chasm ( a sound is also triggered when ball hits the pit - depicting endlessness of the pit.)
Iteration:
Final structure :
Process video along with other iterations :
