In our exploration into new and exciting ways of mark making I have come across the use of Pendulums as a means of making marks. It ranges from Arduino and robotic pendulum drawings powered by programming and coding (something I endeavour to try out soon) to simple tripod pendulum paintings.
So we constructed two pendulums – one with a horizontal pole held by two vertical stands and another that stood as a tripod. On the pole held by two stands we attached felt tips and Oscar gently rocked the pole for five minutes, creating delicate scribbles on the surface of the paper. With the tripod we attached a squeeze bottle filled with ink/paint – producing lines, or what was supposed to be lines of ink which in turn created patterns (in this case the ink didn’t flow smoothly, it came out as blobs due to the air in the bottle not being displaces – a hole in the upright side of the bottom should do this).
The principle of using a pendulum to make marks transcends art and creativity in that it is also teaching children simple physics – in this case the changing displacement of ink and the amplitude of oscillation (the marks gradually getting smaller/closer together).
In any case, this was a fun experiment, that allowed us all, as a family to take part in. Here are some of the patterns we made!
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