Picture 4 looks like the outside may have lined up at one point, it is clearly damaged in that area.
Picture 5 makes me think that this was used for something. On the outside all the segments are similar. On the inside the “bad” segments are much darker than the others. If a segment is darker, it is also pitted, and all the hard lines are gone.
I propose that this was something were it was known segments would become damaged over time, and why it was made of such small, but cheaply replaceable parts. I think the interior picture is showing mostly newer castings, with the lower right being older, more worn segments.
If I want freaky calls from weirdos at three in the morning, there’s always Craigslist.
Given the apparent age of the gizmo, the fact that it’s abandoned and the turnover in universities, I’d be surprised if there’s anyone who remembers it or the artist still around. Remember, the Art department head had never seen it.
You guys realize that “Nitro” is typically not shorthand for nitrogen but usually a compound, such as NO[sub]2[/sub]. In which case, if that is what the device is, it would be pressing oxygen and nitrogen together to create, umm, laughing gas. Seems like it has been pretty effective.
I doubt the item itself was 3D printed. There would be no bad castings. What may have have been done is that the patterns for the casting were 3D printed. The sphere only needed about 12 patterns, and the pipework about 8. Then the patterns would have been used in a simple sand casting or similar process. However I actually doubt that even this was done. I agree, the patterns would have been very simple to make, and were probably just wood and filler.
The actual expression “art for art’s sake” came into English-language aesthetic theory from France in the 1830s. It stood for a rejection of a moral or societal requirement in the definition of artistic creation, a stricture–in aesthetic theory if not in practice by artists–dating from Plato.
Although heartily accepted by the avante-guarde (itself a new concept), it was rejected a few decades later by quasi-socialist artistic communities, which counted Ruskin as their choicest intellectual proponent–not unlike the insufferable Plato–of the utilitarian underpinning of artistic creation. Ultimately this was brutally enforced from above (Plato was adamant that it is a task of government ) by both the Fascist and Communist programs and their theoretical underpinnings of art.
The tipping point in the art-for-etc. movement–the null hypothesis, as defined in this thread–as correctedly pointed out by StusBlues, may be seen in the creative work beginning with Dadaists, most famously Duchamp. The utilitarian, art-as-purpose mode continued simultaneously, however, with the proto-Fascism of the Futurists and the proto-Communism of the Constructivists. Duchamp’s most obvious inheritors in the latter part of the 20th century are Pop art and conceptual art.
The manifestos of the artists themselves are naturally catch-as-catch-can. In mainline philosophy, with a great kick-off by Hegel in the decades before Duchamp, esthetic theory became a lynchpin of phenomenology and existentialism, as well as their famous children, deconstructionism and post-modernism. And in the meantime the phrase made its way to the publicist for Marcus Lowe, Samuel Goldwyn, and Louis Meyer, who turned it for the first time into Latin and used it to grace Leo the Lion. [We are not unaware of the possible significance of the animal’s name and that of this poster.] Not bad for a rallying cry from the the 1830s.
Since I collect words, accept these two offerings, both describing objects or processes with no “utility”: Ophelimity and autotelic–or, if you want to turn on hyperdrive, autotélisme.
I thought this when I first saw the picture, but now I’m not convinced. The telling issues as that the defects on the edges of the tiles don’t line up between tiles - if there was some sort of damaging process you would expect it to affect the two sides of the join, or the join apex equally, which it doesn’t. Also, some of the quite bad castings have the pattern of the tie bar location points visible on them. Id there was a process that caused significant erosion of the tiles I would expect these to have been eroded off. Finally, I think the pattern of bad fit is consistent with a casting where the mould was not quite fully filled. Also there is a clear gap, that would appear to be a simple fitment error between two tiles directly under one of the entry port tiles. This would appear to have occurred because the width of the entry tile is slightly too wide, and does not look at all consistent with erosion.
Not fully convinced by this argument, and still thinking about the idea of tile erosion and replacement, but very much leaning to the poor quality manufacture argument.
Are the worn tiles directly across from one of the pipes or entry holes? WE know they are catty-corner from the camera hole, but what about the entry of the pipe assemblage?
My first thought on seeing them was that they looked like they’d been sand-blasted.
I’d ask some office staff or maintenance staff as they are less likely to rotate out. Professors do a lot but usually the “core” of a university stays longer. In fact, I’d ask an entirely different department.
Also, I think there may have been another set of tubes connected to the portals. Maybe another triple-parallel assembly. The top looks like it was banged in to make the parts fit. Could have been damaged but if someone were casting this “free-hand” and with the inconsistencies in the pieces I’d be a miracle if everything fit correctly.
He is shooting through the port shown in picture 7, based on the way the light is inside. So there is no port directly opposite the bad tiles. There are 5 ports, one partway up the sphere, shown in picture 1. From the perspective of the interior shot, the 5th port is up, to the left, opposite the camera, so it would not be facing the visible bad tiles. The other 4 ports face each other across the equator. Also, in the interior shot, you can see that there are bad tiles behind the camera, based on the fact that there are points of light scattered across the foreground.
They do at first look worn, but I’m fairly sure those are just castings that have been imperfectly poured - either incompletely-filled moulds, or too-rapid cooling causing shrinkage across the top surface of the casting.
Look at the bottom right of the interior shot and zoom in a bit. The most rounded of all the tiles is there, right underneath one that looks perfect or brand new. In the far corner is a plate covering at least three tiles. It really looks like worn/damaged tiles were being replaced. Which explains an awful lot about the design of this thing.
ETA: It’s also possible that they were filed to make them fit. I just can’t understand why a partially filled mold wouldn’t result in a perfect square that was shallower than the others? Why would the center be raised to the correct level, but all four corners equally rounded?
EATA: Then again, why would all four corners be worn but not the centers?
All sorts of flaws can occur in casting - ideally, the mould cavity is topped with a funnel-shaped inlet which is topped right up - as the metal in the main cavity cools slowly from the outside in, more liquid metal funnels in to keep it topped up.
If you only fill the main mould cavity, you may get a casting with voids or a concave top (due to cooling and shrinking), but if you don’t even completely fill the main cavity, you can get a convex top - because the surface tension on the molten metal forms it that way.
Or it could just be that this particular group of castings was really rough - maybe the sand moulds weren’t properly compressed - so the metal would have flowed out into many small cracks and holes, needing to be ground back to shape (which grinding may have been done over-zealously.
ETA: another really easy way to get voids at the top corners is just by failing to have any way for air to vent there.
No, that is not a replacement for damaged tiles, it is port #6: it is the same size and placement as the upper port and I can just see a glimmer of light where the edge of the port would be. NitroPress can verify this.
Yes, I have another interior shot and there’s an empty port plate down there. Along with quite a few more rounded-back tiles.
I really think it’s just a casting quality issue. The artist/constructor used the best tiles first, making most of it with tight square backs, and then ran out of casting time or money or something and used previously passed-over tiles to complete the last eighth or so of the sphere.