Stack: January

New year, new Stack subscription!

January opened with The Lifted Brow, "a quarterly attack journal from Australia and the world". Looking back through my 2014 Stack entries, I can't find any magazines that I really disliked. There were quite a few about subjects I had no interest in, and a couple that were mediocre, but nothing I really had any trouble reading. The Lifted Brow has now changed that! I found it both boring and pretentious, and spent the last three weeks carrying it around, opening it, reading one page, and then abandoning it in irritation.

Its focus seems to be contemporary art and it features a mixture of essays, photographs, art, comics and poetry. I can't really say much beyond that though. I actually feel like I can't review this magazine as I read so little of it. I can say that it is the first magazine I've received through Stack that I've seen someone else reading though! My fellow commuter seemed engrossed in it so I can confidently say it appeals to someone.

Would I buy it again? No. This is one I never want to see again.

The Zoo of Tranquility: The Lawnmowers

This one was a huge disappointment, which I will only take half the blame for! Part of the problem is that the instructions for the models in this book are very complicated and need much more space; the instructions for this model could easily take up twice as many pages. They would also benefit from more diagrams so you can see how things are supposed to fit together. On this model, I made several mistakes fitting the base together as the three layers that form the base are never shown together. The whole thing was completely maddening to build.

Sadly, my execution of the instructions was also a bit lacking. There are numerous holes in the car washing figures that act as pivot points. (The model uses 18 sticks, each one tinier than the last, as pivots.) I should have made all of these holes before I cut the pieces out! Then I could have widened them without worrying about damaging the pieces. As it is, all of the holes are too small and the figures don't really move. I also cut the lawnmowers' legs too short, so they don't catch properly on the ridged surface inside the base. (Although the instructions suggested that it would be a problem if the legs were too long so I focused on avoiding that, not understanding that too long would have been fixable!)

With all of that out of the way, here is a very underwhelming video:

Process photos after the cut. The instructions had just eight steps so that's what the photos reflect!

Xmas Robbin'

Life-drawing at Candid Arts, Islington

The Zoo of Tranquillity: The Woodpecker

This was so fiddly and the result is kind of disappointing. The mechanism makes the tree move back and forth, which in turn causes the woodpecker to move. The idea is that this creates the illusion that the woodpecker's motion is shaking the tree. Unfortunately, it's quite difficult to build up the right rhythm to make this convincing. It mainly looks as though the tree is moving and the woodpecker is hanging on for dear life.

The Zoo of Tranquillity

While clearing our his grandparents' attic, a friend of mine unearthed a copy of "Spooner's Moving Animals" and passed it on to me.

This 1986 book is out of print now, although there seem to be plenty of reasonably-priced secondhand copies online. The book contains instructions – and pieces – to make seven automata. The book also delves into why each automaton works the way it does and Paul Spooner has designed the models with different mechanisms in order to teach the reader a range of automaton techniques.

The copy I have is missing pieces for three of the models (the Goat, the Lion and the Wedding Cake), but I intend to try to make the other four over the coming months. They are:

• the Woodpecker
• the Lawnmowers
• the Horse
• the Anteater

Tower Bridge

Based on a true story!

This is from the same series as the Battling Knights and the Executioner. The pieces for this required cutting out by hand, but a lot of it uses a relatively thin card so cutting them was fairly easy. It took me a while to figure out how the mechanism fitted together though.

Process photos after the cut.