Gears

A project that I made as an undergrad student was a handmade book that was an instruction pamphlet on how the book was built. The book itself was actually one giant piece of paper with all the pages printed on it, and then folded together in a kind of origami accordion. The book actually showed how it was meant to be taken apart, and then interwoven in a zigzag through a series of wooden dowels on a circular piece of wood. The circular base could then be spun like a zoetrope would allow the viewer to see each page of the book in a "persistence of vision" sequence revealing an animation of the book being assembled and taken apart.

The biggest problem with this piece was it took one person to operate the spinning mechanism, and another person to watch it. What it needed, was was a hand crank on the side that would be geared to the rotating base, and allow the viewer to easily spin the zoetrope by hand, and not need assistance...

Since that project is in a garage somewhere in Washington state, and I am in new york city, I can't very easily recreate it, however, I did play around a bunch with lego gears and had a lot of fun...