PERSONALROBOTICS
UNDERSTANDING, DESIGNING & CONSTRUCTING ROBOTS & ROBOTIC SYSTEMS
■ BY VERN GRANER
ROBO SPIN ART — Retro Art Meets
the Joystick Generation
THE VENERABLE SPIN ART MACHINES popularized in the 1960s and 1970s
created funky, psychedelic artwork many of us remember from the carnivals
and county fairs of our youth. Simply put, “spin art” is created when paint is
dropped on to a rotating paper, allowing centrifugal force to make streaks of
color. The RoboSpinArt machine updates this concept by making spin art
attractive to the so-called “joystick generation” of today while also adding on
features to the original design.
REELING IN THE YEARS
When I was about 10 years old, a
Halloween carnival came to a park
near my house, and they had a spin
art booth in their Midway. The spin art
machines they used were the pinnacle
of simplicity — a table with a hole cut
in it for a bucket, and a motor in the
bottom of the bucket with a small
bracket to hold a paper card. The
operator would turn on the motor,
and the kids would use various
ketchup bottle type containers to drip
different colors of paint on the card
as it spun. After a few minutes, the
operator would turn off the motor and
hand you the finished “painting.”
At 10 years old, I thought this was
amazingly cool!
Flash-forward a few years (okay,
more like decades) and I’m in my
garage cleaning up a bit with my 10-
year-old son Nicholaus when I came
across a box with various relics of
mine from that time. One item was a
slightly faded cardboard card with the
classic spin art swirls on it. I showed it
to my son enthusing about how it was
made, how much fun it was to make,
and how cool it looked. Giving me the
patented “uh ... sure
Dad” look, he said it
sounded “okay but
kinda boring.” I wrote
off his disinterest at
the time, but his reaction stayed in the
back of my mind.
What was it that
made the difference?
Why was it interesting
to me at 10 years old,
but not to him?
LIVING IN A DIGITAL
WORLD
■ FIGURE 1.
First sketch of the
RoboSpinArt machine.
After the thoughts incubated in
my head for a bit, it occurred to me
that my son isn’t used to dealing with
devices that don’t have some type of
digital user interface. Video games, the
TV remote, microwave oven, computer, cell phone, and MP3 player ... all
the things he uses daily and understands thoroughly have some version
of a digital user interface. Buttons and
joysticks are usually accompanied by
sound effects, LCD displays, voice
prompts, and in many cases, a rockin’
stereo soundtrack. Although as a kid of
10 I was fascinated by the simple spinning colors of the spin art machine, my
10-year-old son was not nearly so
impressed. On reflection, I wondered
if it was the spin art that failed to ignite
his interest or the interface to the spin
art that was a barrier. If we updated
the interface, would the spin art
suddenly become interesting again?
Coincidentally, all this occurred
about the same time that First Night
Austin (a local, family-oriented New
Year’s celebration) started soliciting
artists for proposals for their annual
70
January 2008
