Project 02 – Maniacal Mars Mayhem
Process:
The rep project: create and represent a device for the Martian landscape.
The studio project: find an old tool, figure out how it works. From this, create a device that works by natural forces in the landscape.
The combination: Create a device inspired by the old tool that works in both… or might.
The tool: Apple Peeler/Corer/Slicer
The studio device: some sort of crazy factory-thingie that harnesses geothermal energy to produce energy and water (as a by-product of the steam/ hot air).
Sooo… does Mars have geothermal energy to harness? Probably… somewhere. There definitely was volcanic activity at some point – Olympus Mons, yea! Is it still active? Things are pointing to not… maybe has a cold core now. But what do we know?
Whatever. Details.
Ah ha! Possibilities!
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0709/22marscaves/
This project makes me want to watch lots of tv… Babylon 5 comes to mind since I haven’t watched it in a long while. And as always, beloved Firefly… thought about Serenity when I read the passage about the air miner with the engines that are attached vertically… Thought about trying to make the elevator, but I couldn’t help but relate it to the clairvoyant elevator from Hitchhiker’s Guide… and it would be really large and weird. Although the piece I started working on does kind of look like an elevator…
I was thinking about my tastes in Sci-Fi – Firefly, Bab5, Solaris (the book, the old movie, not so much the newer), We, Aeon Flux, Final Fantasy (VII) – and they tend to be more about human interaction rather than about the machines and devices. So I thought it would be interesting to throw a little of that into the device… above the ground it is more industrial, but below it’s very organic and alive. I imagine the place to be rather dirty (all that wind and red dirt) so the above would be scratchy and worn metal looking and harsh and dark, but the lower isn’t so much as it has the protection of the planet. I really like the thought of having these cable-like things draping around either as tubes / pipes or as people movers or both. Kind of like the mess a mound of electronics makes.
Some pics of influences… (Fray, Midgar, machine from Sky Captain, Serenity) difficult to find things that aren’t vehicles. Mostly I just have to remember what I’ve seen or recall mental pics from reading.
This is my lovely progress on the model… 
And this is my lovely octo-geo-hydro whatchamagig.
And here is the 11×17 sheet which explains all of the parts and what the machine is supposed to do.
