Putting The Pieces Back Together Again
In 2018 Ralf Baecker, a German artist born in Düsseldorf built Putting The Pieces Back Together Again. A two square meter panel with 1250 electric motors uniformly positioned on the surface. Each motor is independently controlled and has a small white rod, no more than a few inches, thin like a straw attached to each driveshaft. Due to the size constraints of the mounting board, both the electric motors and the white rods attached to them are small and installed very close to one another. When the piece is powered, the motors begin to spin, but because of their close proximity to other motors, the white rods collide. On collision, the motor rotates in the opposite direction and records the angle it was able to travel to. Over time the white rod will collide with nearby motors, but from it’s recordings, it will develop an understanding of its surroundings and learn where to optimally position itself to be in harmony with the other nearby motors. After some time, a pattern will begin to appear across the whole panel as the motors begin to organize themselves into a single organization. Baecker’s piece is a visual aid in helping people learn about self-organization by giving them the opportunity to witness the technology at work.
The installation is made up of several satin black aluminum panels to create the two meter by two meter surface to work on. The 1250 motors are placed in a careful grid with a white acrylic rod attached to each of them that are excellent at reflecting light. From the front, the piece's motors can not be seen, and instead, there are small rods protruding from the surface of the piece where the white rods are attached to. The base of the installation is a simple aluminum tube structure to keep it vertical. Although the front of the piece is simple, systematic, and clean, the backside is open to the viewer to see the complicated inner workings of the piece. Looking at the backside, the viewer will find a spaghetti mess of black, red, yellow, and orange wires with little organization, the gray aluminum backs of the 1250 motors, and the individual motor controllers to complement each one. However, because of the shire size and repetition of the layout, the backside has an unorganized but also organized appearance. The layout of the components is methodical, but the chaos in the wiring makes the piece's rear look unorganized at first glance.
In most installations, the artwork is installed off of the wall so that viewers can see the backside of the artwork and see the inner workings of the piece. However, in most of the galleries, it has been installed in, there has been only a single source of light directed at the front of the piece and nothing but darkness behind. The specific lighting setup gives the white acrylic rods the light to appear as if they are a strip of LEDs instead. As well, the piece relies on stark contrasts with the bright white acrylic against the satin black panels to create the most contrasts. If the gallery were to light the piece from the rear as well, it would reduce the contrasts and thus reduce the impact and presence of the installation.
“One of the most highly developed skills in contemporary Western civilization is dissection: the split-up of problems into their smallest possible components. We are good at it. So good, we often forget to put the pieces back together again”
On Baecker’s website, he has a quote below the title of this piece; “One of the most highly developed skills in contemporary Western civilization is dissection: the split-up of problems into their smallest possible components. We are good at it. So good, we often forget to put the pieces back together again,” from Alvin Toffler in the Foreword of Order out Chaos by Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers (Baeker). Baecker’s piece is a demonstration of lots of little pieces being put together to form a single unit. The whole panel of unorganized motors is the problem, and our teachings have taught us to break the problem down to the smallest component, that being the individual motor. As each motor organizes itself into place, and a small amount of progress is made, however, as a group of motors find their place, the growth is more rapid. Similar to finishing off the last few pieces of a puzzle.
Bringing it back to the artist, Baecker’s art focuses on science and technology. Many of his artworks use a significant amount of technology and engineering to demonstrate and propose questions for the viewer differently than they may otherwise experience. Because of Baeker’s unique style and installations, he has won numerous awards for his work, including the Grand Prize at the Japan Media Art Festival 2017, an honorary mention at the Prix Ars Electronica 2012, 2014, 2015, second prize at VIDA 14.0 Art & Artificial Life Award in Madrid (Baeker Ralf About). Particularly, this piece was most recently on display at Ars Electronica. Many of his other pieces are currently in other prominent galleys.
http://www.rlfbckr.org/work/nowhere/
In 2005, Baeker built Nowhere. A tabletop milling machine that carves at a foam block to create a landscape. For those of you who do not know what a milling machine is, you can think of it as a drill attached to a robot that is told by a computer where to drill, how long to drill, and how deep to drill. In Nowhere, the piece watches live search queries from a german search engine Metager and parses the data to decide where to drill. Almost opposite of Putting The Pieces Back Together Again, Nowhere is deconstructing something very simple to create something new and organic. It also demonstrates Baeker’s continuous interest in engineering and technology.
https://www.jessicain.net/pagesnoraa
Related to Baeker’s field and Putting The Pieces Back Together Again, NORAA is an art, technology, engineering, and machine learning project (NORAA). The self-organization in Baeker’s project is a form of machine learning, and NORAA is simple AI with machine learning. It was developed by Jessica In, an Australian Architect and Teaching Fellow at the Bartlett School of Architecture (Jessica In). NORAA is designed to doodle, but instead of a human drawing, it is a robot. The viewer can ask NORAA to draw something, and NORAA will do its best to produce something accurate. It has a database of common items and requests, but if unknown, NORAA will try its best to draw something unique and close to the request. Unlike a printer, NORAA has learned how to draw in a human-like way instead of the common linear methods by machines. Like many AI and machine learning projects, the task itself is likely not the focus, but the journey, learning, and progress is why researchers and artists like Jessica In and Baecker tackle difficult projects.
“Putting the Pieces Back Together Again is an artistic inquiry and meditation about complex systems, self-organization and scientific methodology”
A 2019 Wired Article on Baeker’s piece has a single quote that brings together the whole piece. The journalist Bruce Sterling wrote, “Putting the Pieces Back Together Again is an artistic inquiry and meditation about complex systems, self-organization and scientific methodology” (Sterling). Baeker’s goal was to draw an audience in with the simplicity and contrast but have them stay to think about the organization and movement of the motors. Similar to watching waves crash on a beach, the spinning motor has a sense of calm and simplicity that is difficult to replicate in a kinetic installation. As the motors self-organize, it seems productive to the viewer and satisfying to watch. If success of the piece is measured in notably, it succeeds, if it was in the eyes of the viewer and how they felt it was achieved, and if completion was the goal, it outperformed. In every way, Putting The Pieces Back Together Again completed its mission.
Reference List
“About.” Jessica In. Accessed March 19, 2020. https://www.jessicain.net/about.
Baecker, Ralf. ralf baecker - Nowhere, 2005. http://www.rlfbckr.org/work/nowhere/.
Baecker, Ralf. Vimeo, October 31, 2018. https://vimeo.com/298370406.
Baecker, Ralf. ralf baecker - about, 2019. http://www.rlfbckr.org/about/.
Baeker, Ralf. ralf baecker - Putting The Pieces Back Together Again, 2018. http://www.rlfbckr.org/work/ptpbta/.
“NORAA - Machinic Doodles.” Ars Electronica Center. Jessica In, 2018. https://ars.electronica.art/center/en/noraa/.
Sterling, Bruce. “One Thousand, Two Hundred and Fifty Stepper Motors.” Wired. Conde Nast, January 1, 2019. https://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2019/01/one-thousand-two-hundred-fifty-stepper-motors/.
