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the horrible things that had happened. The floats included a coal fire with
severed hands being roated above it, a member of the Force Publique beating a forced laborer,
and several others. As part of a class project, we split up into teams that were to design the
mechanisms used to animate the floats. The first of the two floats that were assigned to my team
was a tree formed out of metal tubing with a with several vultures on it, with the top one flapping
its wings. The second was much more involved: it was a paddlboat with working paddle, steam coming
out of the smoke stack, and a guard who stood at the front of the boat continually rotating 180 degrees.
 The paddleboat float was more challenging to design. The paddle was relatively easy, a low RPM motor
linked to a chain that turned the paddle. The steam and oscillating figure were more difficult to
figure out. The steam went through many different concepts, from areosol fog cans with a timed solenoid
A rendering of the concept for the swivel mechanism  The swivel mechanism as it was actually built |
The vulture float was relatively straightforward. The designer wanted the mechanisms to be exposed as
much as possible as a metaphor for the control that the Belgians had over these people. After going
through a few different ideas we settled on a relatively simple scheme to create the motion
that was needed. We used a
low RPM motor with a cam that we made out of a peice of steel bar, and 2 arms that pushed the wings
up and pulled them down with each rotation.
The movement was not extremely realistic, but because of the stylized form of this production, it
worked to support the concept very effectively.
to baby powder and a fan. What we finally came up with was a model train steam unit that with a modefied
method of loading the fluid that produced a higher than normal volume. The swiveling guard went through
dozens of ideas before we settled on one. The principal is rather simple, but it took quite a while to
develop. The man is set on top of a steel rod just above the deck of the boat. Below the deck, the rod is
directly connected to the motor. There is a wooden disc attached to the rod below the deck that has a bolt
going through either side of it. Below the disc, ther is a box with a switch attached that when toggled,
is wired in such a way that it reverses the polarity of electricity flowing to the motor thereby changing
the direction in which the motor rotates. The bolts through the disc alternately toggele the switch as they
rotate, acting as limit switches, which allowed us to choose the amound of rotation by simply changing where
on the disc the bolts were placed.