What a mess! Bots and pieces.

     As seen in the stop motion video from my previous post, these machines were truly intricate and complex devices containing more parts than the average automobile. I now had a massive pile of copier pieces to deal with! MASSIVE! As I began to sort through them, with recycling in mind, I began to make connections. At first, the connections to each piece I held seemed to be linked with human anatomy *snicker*. A set of optics from one copier reminded me of eyes, as they might have to anyone who was trying to think along the same lines as I was. But then, things got more involved. Hinges for the top of the copier looked more like back bones than limb joints. Ball bearing rollers from the paper drawers were ribbed and cage like. The gears and bearings all begged to be envisioned in new ways. Anything from wheels on a car, to eyeballs on a creature of some kind. I decided I needed to really sort this stuff out and see where it would lead me.

     I purchased 20 bins from the local dollar store to begin sorting the pieces. I sat on the cold floor of my garage for hours on end that first week as I tried to make sense of what belonged where and why. For example: White plastic was certainly different than black plastic, but colored plastic just had no business being in with either. Metal rods all came in different lengths and widths and some were covered in plastic, or perhaps rubber, or had  permanent gears on them! And the sheet metal, wow, large, medium, and small, some similar, others unique. Individual sets for each. It all needed sorting in my eyes. So each found a home within its own group. Groups grew and changed and shrunk and grew again. But when it was all said and done, I not only had a very well sorted and categorized set of copier parts, I had an extremely intimate knowledge of how each part related to one another, aesthetically speaking, and/or to something in my own imagination. With what ended up being two fully dismantled industrial copy machines worth of bits and pieces and all seperated, sorted, and spread out before me, I begin to look for a direction. As I sat and wondered where all this started or came from "The Whatchumacallit"(See my first blog post here), I began to see a need to apply my passions and my past, to my present. Sorting became a daily routine. With each new copier I obtained, the more sorting was needed. It became more and more complex. Even the individual diodes and fuses from circuit boards fell pray to individuality in the process of sorting. First two, then four, then five, six, seven...twelve, and the list went on. Machine, after machine, after machine. The more parts I gathered and sorted, the more complexly they inter-related with one another.

Next update: Applying dreams and inspiration to a medium unlike any other.