Past Work - On a Roll
![On a Roll automaton](https://www.peter-heywood.co.uk/data/uploads/1223.jpg)
Completed project. I plan to attached it to a wall at a fairly high level so that the motion of the eyes is more obvious.
Here's a video of it operating: https://youtu.be/1g8L5eyYqvg
My starting point for this project was the last day of 30/30, an exercise calling on me
to make a new work of art on each day of April 2020. The brief was: "Try making that work you've been wanting to make over the past month and never got round to making." I'd admired "Thinks" by Robert Race - see photo below - so I decided to see whether I could make a start on a "re-interpretation" of the idea.
![Thinks by Robert Race](https://www.peter-heywood.co.uk/data/uploads/1215.jpg)
![On a roll](https://www.peter-heywood.co.uk/data/uploads/1200.jpg)
This is how far I got:
It's a section of large bamboo from our garden that's rocked to and fro when the handle is turned, causing a ball to roll to and fro.
I planned to add a figure appearing to tilt the bamboo with his hand while following the progress of the ball by turning his head and eyes. Over the following few months I tried a variety of ideas but wasn't comfortable with any of them.
![papier-mache mask](https://www.peter-heywood.co.uk/data/uploads/1216.jpg)
Then I hit on the idea of using an existing Gelflex (rubbery) mould of my face to create a
papier-mache mask - see above.
![Back view of](https://www.peter-heywood.co.uk/data/uploads/1224.jpg)
The photo above is a back view of the final project.
The gears slow down the rotations which are used to tilt the bamboo (using a cam), move the mask to and fro (by rotating a the black tube on the left), and move the eyes relative to the mask (using a fixed wooden dowel inside the black tube).
The black tube on the right just supports the hand.
![Mechanism for turning eyes](https://www.peter-heywood.co.uk/data/uploads/1217.jpg)
The photo above shows the mechanism for moving the eyes faster than the face. The eyes are connected to a home-made wooden "nut" fastened to a wooden dowel that's fixed at the base. The mask is attached to a black plastic tube that fits over the dowel and is rotated to and fro by the mechanism shown in the previous photo.
![Hand for](https://www.peter-heywood.co.uk/data/uploads/1225.jpg)
I think I made a nice job of carving the hand, which appears to be tilting the bamboo.