The Art of Noises

One aspect of this site that has been sorely lacking is discussion of sound. I became interested in sounds/noise/non-music many years ago just messing around with electric guitars and such, sometimes with a friend or two involved as well. Often, they just wanted to be loud, which with modern amplifiers is not difficult. I frequently tried to create cascading walls of dense sounds, or small intricate nonmusical sounds. This is long before I'd found out others had beaten me to this particular field of interest.

Luigi Russolo was a futurist painter, who also composed music. He is also the author of the noise manifesto " The Art of Noises". In it, he suggests that noisesound must be as fully explored as musical sound had already been. He even went so far as to design and build noise instruments, which he called " Intonarumori", or "Intoners".

Some other pioneers in experimental music were Lou Reed with his 1975 album " Metal Machine Music". It was a double LP, and featured only guitar sounds and effects. No normal chord progressions or "songs". Loud, sometimes dissonant, and completely void of beats or Reed's trademark voice or lyrics. It is his best album to me. :)

Brian Eno was a member of Roxy Music, but was a self-professed "non-musician" in the group. He mixed, processed and otherwise messed about with the sound of the band at live shows and in the studio. For the purposes of this article, I will only mention one of his many recordings: " Ambient 1/Music for Airports " (1978). This record was one of, if not the first to be use the term " ambient " in regard to music or sound specifically recorded to be "as ignorable as it is interesting."(from the liner notes of "Ambient 1"). He went on to record many other albums with ambient aspects, and is still active today, and still experimenting with sounds.

Noise music is still being made and expanded upon decades after Russolo's early projects. Much of it is done with software now, but one interesting descendant of the mechanical school of noise, is Matt Heckert and his Mechanical Sound Orchestra . Heckert was a member of Survival Research Labs , a giant machine/robot/noise/performance art group doing background sound work for performances. After splitting off from the group, he began building machines *specifically* for the sounds they could produce.

VOTOMS / Gasaraki

VOTOMS and Gasaraki both feature smaller-sized, relatively more realistic armor suits. This may have something to do with the fact that they were both created/directed by the same man: Takahashi Ryuosuke . He has done other shows with "realish" mecha (see: Blue Gender , for one). But these two shows are his most realistic, and despite having different mecha designers on staff, they both have very believable mecha.

The main designer on VOTOMS was Okawara Kunio , famous for being the designer that ushered in the "Real Robot" era by being the designer of all the Mobile Suits from "First Gundam" (1979). He has long been associated with the Gundam series, but I think his work on VOTOMS is some of his best.

There were two main designers on Gasaraki, Izubuchi Yutaka , and Aramaki Shinji . Izubuchi has done other realistic designs in shows such as Patlabor . Aramaki is well known for Megazone 23 and Bubblegum Crisis among others.

Many of the design features from the earlier VOTOMS suits were carried over to the Tactical Armors of Gasaraki . The variations on the Turnpick, the indirect pilot view, synthetic muscle/hydraulics, as well as the "Down" mode for maintenance are all shared between the Votoms/Gasaraki designs, among other things. Compare the images in the last couple entries here with the images in this one, and keep in mind the 2 shows in question were made about 15 years apart.

VOTOMS (more)

The Scopedog gets the "scope" part of its name from the sensor suite located on the head. There are 3 main lenses, as well as other passive sensors (metal sensor, elctromagnetic sensor, audio pickup, etc) located elsewhere in the head. The AT pilot does not have any windows to see through, thus all outside vision is via the 'scopes. This is also the reason AT pilots wear the helmet and goggle setup. The goggles/helmet speakers pipe in the info coming from the cameras and other sensors. There is no direct view out of the AT unit without a hatch open.

The feet contain "Gliding Wheels" which allow high-speed dashes over many solid surfaces. On the outside of each foot is the Pile Gun and Turnpick assembly. This allows very rapid braking during a roller dash. If only one set of Pile Gun/Turnpick is used, very sharp turns (either standing or rolling) can be made.

Many ATs also feature a so-called "Down Mode". This is a sort of leg folding technique that allows easier entrance and exit from an AT. This position may also be used during maintenance. One other use is as a bit of extra shock absorbstion during drops and parachute landings.

Vertical One-man Tank for Offense and Maneuvers

Armored Trooper VOTOMS is a 52 episode animated TV show, originally aired in 1983-4. Here I will discuss some of the tech details of the fictional armored suits.

The unit used by the main character is the Scopedog , but this is not the first of the suits in the overall storyline. Although not mentioned much in the actual show, there were of course intermediate steps between regular infantry soldiers and the more advanced Armored Trooper suits.

The first powered-armor walking machines were created by the Gilgamesh Army. They were named Machine Troopers, and were quite effective despite some drawbacks: some mechanical components were exposed, the Muscle Cylinders (the VOTOMS term for a futuristic hydraulic systems central to all AT movement) were not all that strong , and the onboard computers needed frequent upgrades.

Nevertheless, development of the suits continued. The first full-on AT was the ATM-01 Clever Camel. But the suit that was to be the deciding factor in the 100 Years War was the ATM-09 Scopedog (and variants). The Scopedog was found to be sturdy, capable and easily adaptable to various combat roles and equipment setups.

Go for baroque! Ornate humanoid mecha.

I personally prefer "realistic" (and smaller-scale) humanoid mecha, more than the things often seen in SF animation and manga such as Mobile Suit Gundam or the like. Now don't get me wrong, often these shows/manga have great stories, etc. It just doesn't make much sense to have a human-shaped robot or armor of that size, to me. Anyhow, what about other large humanoid mecha that throw "realism" or practicality out the window? SOme of those I actually like even better than the "in-betweens" like Gundam, et al. (Although MS Gundam has some good less-human shaped stuff as well, see the Zeong , Neue Ziel , and S-Gundam with Booster Unit for good examples.)

Some of my particular favorites in the category of "Baroque mecha" would have to be the sentient war robot "Shaian" from Dragon's Heaven , a single 30min OVA from 1988. There was also a manga, although I have not seen it myself. As you may notice, the designs and art style in this animation were heavily influenced by the art of legendary French comicker/illustrator Jean "Moebius" Giraud.

Probably the champo as far as baroque mecha goes is Nagano Mamoru . He is the fellow who designed the mecha in Heavy Metal L-Gaim . He reused (and fancied-up) a few of the L-Gaim mecha in his own long-running manga serial Five Star Stories This manga, to me, is the undisputed champ of pretty robots. He also did the designs on another show with pretty robots, Brain Powered . BP is quite different from many other "mecha shows", which resulted in many unfavorable reviews. Personally, I like the BP show quite a bit, and Nagano's designs help too. :)

Simple machine

How do you throw a spear? Just hold it up and throw, right? Well, ancient peoples of various parts of the world figured out that using a notched lever called an atlatl or spear thrower, to throw spears made it travel farther and hit harder than it would if thrown by arm-power alone. This was due to the mechanical advantage of using the lever as an extension of the throwing arm.

Mech. Adv. of a lever= length of effort arm ÷ length of resistance arm

In this case, arm(including atlatl) ÷ spear

The word "atlatl" is from Nahuatl, the language used by the Aztec people of what is today part of North and South America.

This tech dates back to prehistory, and has been found all over the world in different variations. Including large dartlike spears nearly 2m long, and smaller spears with rope attached for fishing. The spear thrower predates the bow and arrow by many thousands of years, and the mechanical principles still apply, of course. So if you ever find yourself with the need to throw a spear or large dart, remember the atlatl.

Wings, air, ground.

The ground effect in flying vehicles is sometimes callled "wing in ground effect". Simply put, for most winged vehicles the closer they fly to a surface, the greater lift they can achieve. The surface in question can be the ground (hence the name) or even the ocean. In fact
the ocean is often thought to be a better option due to the relative lack of obstructions
(buildings, mountains). Some of the first large-scale attempts to make WIG craft, were the Russian "Ekranoplan" military transport projects. Including probably the most well-known (now,anyway) WIG craft to date, the "Caspian Monster". So named by US military intelligence, due to repeated sightings of bizarre short-winged seaplanes, primarliy operating out of the Caspian Sea. WIG craft have not ben used too much to date in actual aplications. They are mostly now recreational and resaerch craft, although various US and world civil/military plane contractors have proposed variations on the Ekranoplan-style large military transport over the years. At present it doens't seem as if any WIG craft will enter wide use any time soon.

More car/air

Another car and air problem is reducing aerodynamic drag . Now, even non-racing cars are generally designed to be aerodynamic, because reducing wind resistance can improve efficiency. In higher-performance cars, much work is done to reduce drag and lower weight (to reduce rolling resistance). An very clever solution to "front-on" drag, induced by the large tires of F1 cars, was used in the Tyrrell P34 F1 car, introdused in 1976 . Instead of the two regular large front tires, the decision to use *four* smaller front tires was made. Thus, the same total road surface area would still be in contact with the front tires, but it would be split 4 ways rather than 2. The benefit of this was the much lower height of the smaller tires . The design was not trouble free, and many drivers did not care for the handling characteristics. The P34's radical design was no longer used by the Tyrrell team after the 1977 season. It was not the first, or last of the six-wheeled F1 cars , however.

Anyhow, here are some great pics of the P34.

Cars and air.

When driving cars, especially at high speed while cornering, you want to be sure that your car will remain stuck to the ground. Of course, the tires are doing thier best to help out in that regard, but when you need more "stick", and wider/softer tires just *aren't* enough, you can resort to using a wing. Now, a wing as used on a car, is not used in the same manner as an airplane. In fact, the wings (sometimes called spoilers or airfoils/aerofoils) are attached exactly opposite to the way they are on planes. Instead of providing aerodynamic lift , the press down on the car at speed, helping to hold the car tighter to the ground. This is called downforce .

An interesting solution to the grip/downforce problem was the use of a Lexan skirt attached to the bottom edge and two powerful fans attached to the rear of a car. This was used in the Chaparral 2J . The fans pulled air out from beneath teh car, and vented thm behind. This pulled the car tightly to the ground, and improved grip and corner speed by quite a bit. This innovation in racing cars was imitated by some other groups, but almost all racing federations now disallow this sort of aerodynamic augmentation.