BEAST: sketch and make and ponder

I have made an outline sketch of my beast and begun to assemble and build the different components.

The scaffold is a lightweight frame made up with tension cables and L-section aluminum joists, and many many nuts and bolts. I can easily hang, clamp, and fix to the frame (with more nuts and bolts!) my different steam machine components.






The three main components of the Beast:

1) hot water tank
2) water reservoir
3) steam wand

The hot water tank is a component in which I have built in an electric kettle heating element. The heating element is activated by motion sensor (details of copper pot "reverse engineering" below).







The water reservoir is a kind of I.V. drip slowly and continuously replenishing the water content in the tank. A rain collector, installed at the top of the scaffold, draws collected rain water into the water reservoir. The rain collector is a stretchy nylon lined with eyelets which clasp around the edge of the frame (details of water reservoir and fabric below).





The steam wand is a long copper tube inserted into the cover of the copper pot. A long copper tube, expanding and decreasing in diameter carries the steam to the wand end where it then exits into the atmosphere. There are several possibilities as to shape and length of the steam wands. I can recycle the existing steam wand from my the MachinaKafe, or I could model my own steam wand head shape. I would like to see what kinds of steam wand head create what kind of steam "clouds".

Going back to Jenson's paper, I want to recall here her notion that the natural world is dynamic and changeable: there exists no distinction between what is artificial and what is natural.

"It is not possible to isolate the essence of the concept of nature. However, this state of affairs contains a certain potential as regards people’s reflexive interaction with their surroundings: it may provide us with greater possibilities than we have had before to observe and evaluate our own relationship to that which surrounds us."
-Jenson, Remarks on nature, super-ecology, life, production, position and other negotiations

My hope is to make a beast which exists and operates withing different scales and types of systems: atmospheric, meteorological, 19th century steam mechanics, the cultural history of the invented landscape. The beast sympathizes these different conditions into a singular, perhaps chaotic, existence. For example the beast draws from the weather system what it lacks from in extracting in the mechanical construct, and in so doing, allies the complexities and realities of the interdependent ecology we all exist in.

I have been mostly working on the first two components: reverse engineering my copper pot, and making a home made IV drip. I am trying to incorporate details and parts from the first MachinaKafe as I assemble the parts of the beast. Am also looking into parts and details that can be food in kitchen equipment and crockery.



Trouble shooting ! Some trouble has come up with the timer attached to the motion sensor. I would like the kettle, once tripped to "on" by the motion sensor, to run for ten minutes. Unfortunately, it doesn't want to keep the element on for more than 16 seconds. I wonder if this is a result of something in the sensor, or the element... not sure as of yet.