As Cody captures his sundial orange and it goes on forever until the Raspberry Pi that drives the camera is plugged off from the electricity, I’d like to adapt such mechanism to a clock that we can physically see. That clock will be the escapement mechanism and it drives a pecking-like automaton that swings a pointer with a rubber tip, touching the phone capture button at uniform interval of time.

In a way, i’m creating a physical intervalometer, a device or built-in camera mechanism that triggers a camera to take pictures automatically at a set time interval. It can also do time-lapse photography.

While my previous idea can relate to thesis in regards of creating a distance between the photographer and the camera, this new idea is focuses more on the controlled automation of the act of photo capturing.

This idea also came out because despite my exhaustion feeling of doing photography, I keep taking it. Is it the produced image that i long for or the process of capturing? With an automaton doing it for me, I will examine whether i’ll still feel satisfied with the photography, now that the capturing process is being overtake by the automaton and not done by me. Although, on a higher level I did program the automaton to capture. So you can also say that I did pull the trigger, especially when I first roll the pendulum to create the initial motion. The automated motions afterwards are a question for myself, whether I still have a part to capture on those concurrent motions or it is all in the decision of the automaton’s escapement.

There is a scene or object to be photographed by the phone here. It is.... a clock with a visible hand or a digital clock where we can visibly see the hour, minute and/or second indicator from a photo at a distance (perhaps like at least it can be visible from 2 meter distance?). As the device captures, its output (the photograph of the clock) is literally doing a check whether the escapement still works properly or in time.

When I look up memento vivere, it is about the remembrance to live. I think it is more than a moment of clarity that you remember to live, it is to remembering to live in that moment, the consciousness that you’re doing the very activity you’re in right now and be fully present in just that activity. My activity of choice is photography, obviously. In my project proposal, the act to automate the photography indeed creates a paradox where I do not fully in charge of executing the capture (by pressing the button). But!

"The Machine is only a tool after all, which can help humanity progress faster by taking some of the burdens of calculations and interpretations off its back.” - a quote from I, Robot by Asimov.

I don’t fully agree with above because clearly we become enslaved by the current automation available in the contemporary technology. We become more engrossed in the digital copy of the world instead of the world itself. But on a side note, perhaps the digital copy becomes its own new world that we can appreciate? Who knows?

This project mirrors Asimov’s spirit in leveraging the automations to free human from labour and allow us to live more and experience more of the (origin) world.

Technical Description

The automation of the pointer with a rubber tip that taps the area on the phone screen where the camera capture button is at, will be made possible by a set of gears connected to a slider that holds and moves a pointer back and forth. Its control will be programmed to be uniform in time using the escapement mechanism. A pendulum that swings regularly is attached to a gear, that gear is attached with a shaft to the gear that rotates on the rack, and at the end of the rack a phone holder is attached to it. This creates a transfer of movement from the pendulum to the rack, a transfer of timekeeping command to the camera movement. I have not decided the specific interval of time for the pendulum swing. Now that is for the “programmed” or automaton part, which is handled by time.

For the camera part, we are going to use iPhone 14 Pro camera as this is the one most accessible to me right now. The phone shall be facing the audience (selfie mode) in order to show the camera preview.

The escapement will not be sufficient to move the piston back and forward (for 1 touching motion) in 1 tick. I think we should reserve 60 ticks that will result in 1 piston back-and-forth motion.

* 60 ticks -> touch every 1 minute (60 s)

Mechanism Overview

1. Pecking mechanism -> a pen holder is put at the front of the rack. As the smaller gear rotates, it will move the slider linearly and does create a back-and-forth motion on the pen holder. The pecking mechanism gear group should be able to translate 1 tick of the escapement into a complete cycle of back-and-forth motion. https://www.instagram.com/reels/DXo3WjiCHvt/

1. Escapement mechanism (pendulum, pallet & escape wheel) on the pinion side, connected with a rotating shaft to the pinion

Diagram

Materials

Chipboard

Expectations

I expect to accomplish the linear and escapement mechanism, not sure if i can include the capture mechanism before the deadline. If it is not able to be included in the deadline, the human can follow the phone and touch the capture button manually.

Future Work

It may be interesting to combine this with human intervention, perhaps to move the phone laterally (check my previous post, i abandoned it because the idea is too risky for 3 week work with my current skills).

Inspiration

Automated scroll farming on phone - what is the difference of using bot vs human to scroll? What value do we gain or lose with both?

Fingers by Nik Ramage. An eternally tapping mechanical hand that is made to mirror the human hand movement next to it.

Infinite Scroll by Tjep

And me! I make long panorama fashion photography.

My Prediction

The cool part about this device is that its output will be a testament to how well the escapement works, and possibly could poetically show how the escapement "escapes" the time as time passes due to friction?