#indn211

[kathrynparrindn211]

Final photos of pen

[tor-h-industrial-design]

Research - Themes

I have decided to select the 3 most interesting of the possible themes in the brief to research. This should give me enough to think about that I do not go with the first concept that comes to mind while keeping the research overhead manageable and on topics that are most interesting to me.

A pen used by Alan Turing for sketching design options for his decipher machine

A pen used by Professor Stephen Hawking, in 1970, in his pursuit of time studies while building on Einstein's work on Black Holes

The pen Hua Guofeng used to draft the open letter in September 1980 advocating the “one-child per couple” policy.

Alan Turing

Alan Turing was a British mathematician who worked for the UK Government Code and Cypher School during WW2. He is now known mainly for his work improving on the Polish Bombe machine used to decrypt German enigma-encoded messages, although his contributions to both the cryptographical efforts in WW2 and general computing should not be understated.

The Turing Bombe sped up the process of discerning which configuration of the enigma machine was being used to encrypt messages. When the Germans began changing the 4-8 wheels that set the encryption daily the existing Polish Bombe became unable to keep up. Turing’s Bombe used some of the constraints in the encryption observed by Turing to much more quickly narrow down the correct decryption settings.

Alan Turing is a tragic figure in the history of gay rights, being arrested, chemically castrated and eventually committing suicide. Furthermore between this and the secrecy of the operation it was not until the 1990s that his contributions to the wartime effort (and thousands of lives saved, steering allied ships away from UBoats though deciphered messages) that he received recognition. In 2013 he was pardoned posthumously.

Sources

Imperial War Museum, How Alan Turing Cracked The Enigma Code - url

The National Museum of Computing, Turing-Welcmman Bome - url

Stephen Hawking

In the 1970s Stephen Hawking was working to better understand the fundamental mechanisms of the universe. His work with mathematician Roger Penrose furthered the mathematical modelling of singularities. In the centre of a black hole lies a singularity and further works by Hawking produced the concept of Hawking Radiation. This is significant because it applied both quantum mechanics and general relativity. The other implication of Hawking Radiation is that a black hole not a totally sealed system, it is not perfectly black, emitting the radiation and (almost immeasurably slowly) losing energy, atom by atom at its boundary.

By this point in his life he had been living with a motor neuron disease for almost a decade, having been diagnosed in 1963. His continued commitment to his work even as his body failed is a great credit him. Around the 1970s he would have been wheelchair bound.

Sources

Physics of the Universe, Black Hole Theory & Hawking Radiation - url

Hawking - About - url

Space.com,  How Stephen Hawking Transformed Our Understanding of Black Holes - url

Hua Guofeng

Facing population growth in China that would overburden food, water and natural resources China’s communist party under Hua Guofeng and later Deng Xiaoping instituted the one-child policy with the ultimate goal to stabilise the countries population in the billion persons region.

The inner party politics of the time were very complicated and the situation following Mao’s death was one of change in the power vacuum.

The fallout of the one child policy has been widespread, contributing to many changes in the makeup of Chinese society. The family dynamic shift is still felt today. Although it had its benefits, mainly in addressing the population crisis its uneven enforcement, many exemptions and often politically motivated enforcement, targeting dissidents and minority groups has cast a long shadow.

Sources

Library of Congress, Formulation of the One-Child Policy in China - url

Britannica, Hua Guofeng - url

Britannica, one-child policy - url

[tauausle76k-blog]

[kathrynparrindn211]

Final studio shot and context photo: Whiskey decanter, designed to air small amounts of whiskey while referencing traditional glass making techniques.

[kathrynparrindn211]

Development

[kathrynparrindn211]

Drawing with overlay

[kathrynparrindn211]

Final Video

[kathrynparrindn211]

I was inspired by Jasper John and Jo Baer’s ideas of adding movement and depth into their works respectively. Abstracting concepts into a 3D sculptural form. The slow movement harks back to these being inspired by paintings, as if it was not moving at all. The movement is abstracted from Jasper Johns target paintings. The meaning behind the colours is from a concept of Baer’s: they draw attention to spatial relationships—positive/negative and absence/presence—above subject matter”. This creates depth with positive and negative space in the piece. It is powered via a motor with a screw mounted onto it. The nut is held in place at the top of the box, and the motor is able to run up and down on two bits of doweling. The pin is raised 4mm and rotated on the hypotenuse of a 20mmx100mm triangle.