THINGS I’VE LEARNED
BY ADAM SADOWSKY
A Rube Goldberg
Music-Making Machine
Musical group OK Go released the video for their song “Here It Goes Again” in 2005. The iconic video shows the four band
members dancing wonderfully on eight moving
treadmills. Shot with a single locked-off camera,
and now exceeding 50 million views on You Tube,
that video redefined what a viral video could be.
In August 2009, Syyn Labs began discussions
with the band to build them a machine they could
“dance with” in a Rube Goldberg-style chain reaction for their next video. A few requirements: no
“magic,” and the machine should try to hit beats
throughout, play part of the song, and be built to
be photographed in one continuous shot.
The build was daunting, but ultimately it was a
great success. (See the video at
bit.ly/okgosyyn.)
Here are some things we learned.
1. Do the small stuff first. We wanted the machine
to build in excitement, to crescendo with lots of big,
crazy interactions. Also, we’ve found that …
2. Bigger is better. Smaller components are more
fidgety than larger objects. A marble and its trigger
are simply far more affected by dirt, temperature
changes, and vibration than a bowling ball, which
doesn’t much care at this scale. Therefore we also …
Photography by Edwin Roses
4. Have lots of people involved. Ultimately, we
had more than 55! They were all essential and
worked long hours late into the night to get everything working beautifully. Of course, when you have
that many people working on a machine so large,
you must …
5. Assign teams. This machine was really big,
so having a dedicated team for key components
helped improve reliability and minimize danger
(from falling pianos and steel drums). This specialization also allowed for flexibility when last-minute
changes were needed. Why the changes? Well …
6. Aesthetics are important. Some interactions in
the machine were too fast, or too crowded, or just
didn’t have the right “feel” on camera. For example,
the piano was intended to come down slowly, but
it looked so good crashing down that we decided
to make that change. Unintended consequences
occured due to vibration, but a workaround was discovered, and we continued, proving my last point …
7. Be flexible. Early on, we knew we wanted to end
with paint cannons, and we suspected we’d start
with dominoes (a classic!), but the rest was a realm
of infinite possibilities. Many ideas were pursued and
abandoned: some were hard to photograph, others
simply didn’t work. It’s hard to give up on an idea
after days or even weeks of work are invested, but,
we found, it’s often necessary for the greater good.
More photos at:
makezine.com/24/learned
Adam Sadowsky is president of Syyn Labs (
syynlabs.com),
a Los Angeles-based collective of interdisciplinarily talented
scientists, engineers, designers, and technologists who love
to explore the blurry distinction between art and technology.
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