‘Weird little creations’: bringing together engineering and art

A songbird lies on bare concrete, its golden feathers askew. It twitches, chirps weakly. After several seconds, it falls silent and goes still.

This tragic scene doesn’t play out on a sidewalk. The bird’s feathers are plastic and its body constructed of wire and copper tubing. Microcontrollers and tiny motors drive its choreographed death throes.

The dying bird, one of a series of automata created by Jason Nuttle, a Yale College senior who is double majoring in art and engineering, subverts the typical goal of these mechanisms — to mimic life.

“I like this piece because people empathize with it,” Nuttle said. “They feel really awful about watching this robotic bird die. It’s a special thing that we as humans can empathize, even with robotic beings. It’s something that makes us human.”

The piece was one of five examples of Nuttle’s artwork that were exhibited recently during an open house at Yale’s Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (CCAM) — an interdisciplinary campus center for research that combines creative approaches drawn from the arts, architecture, engineering, and the sciences. The young artist was a studio fellow there during the 2023-24 academic year.

Three of Nuttle’s other automata were displayed: a computer keyboard that types on its own, a recreation of a car crash, and a robotic arm that performs random — occasionally obscene — gestures. Once activated, each one follows a set of coded instructions to enact their movements.

A fifth artwork, “Signal Symphony,” is composed of a network of 50 small identical black cars, each about the size of a bar of soap, whose amber turn signals blink and click at varying rates. Nuttle created the piece, which is not an automaton, during his CCAM fellowship.

“Our Studio Fellowship allows participants to create something they might not otherwise be able to,” says CCAM Assistant Director Lauren Dubowski, who oversees the program and, with the center’s staff, guides fellows in developing their projects. “Jason’s enthusiasm for realizing his vision was infectious, and he saw it through with remarkable dedication.”  

Nuttle’s work, largely produced in his spare time, demonstrates the many resources available to help Yale College students develop their talents and pursue their interests outside of the classroom. He made his automata with funding from Yale College’s Creative and Performing Arts Grants, which are awarded through the residential colleges each semester to support on-campus artistic endeavors.

“The grants are important because the costs of motors and microcontrollers adds up pretty quickly,” said Nuttle, a resident of Ezra Stiles College.

While building the automata, he often made use of the Center for Engineering Innovation & Design (CEID), a campus maker space that provides students with tools and resources for design projects.

CCAM, where he has taken center-sponsored courses on 3D modeling and the use of sound as a medium, seemed to Nuttle a natural fit for his technology-driven artistic practice, he said.

“Using technology to create artistic pieces is really important, especially as we have so much new technology coming out, such as generative AI platforms, large language models,” he said. “I think it’s good to use art to push technology forward and bring it in front of people so we can start really grappling with what these new innovations mean to us and how we can learn from them.”

Embracing life’s absurdities

Nuttle, who is from Rogers, Arkansas, says he has always had an appreciation for STEM-related fields. In high school, he participated in competitive robotics, devising design mechanisms to produce high-scoring robots. A shop class he took was taught by an artist whose work involved casting bronze, which helped spark Nuttle’s artistic interests.

“I took aspects of robotics and art and began mashing them together into these weird little creations,” he said.

He hopes to make a career of his art. This past summer, he completed an internship with Creative Machines, a design and fabrication firm based in Tucson, Arizona, that builds interactive installations and human-scale sculptures.

He cites the late American sculptor Alexander Calder, known for his intricate mobiles, as a primary influence. 

Nuttle’s work is also colored by his appreciation of absurdist humor, such as that deployed by the famed comedy troupe Monty Python and Douglas Adams in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” novels.

“Being human can be a weird experience,” he said. “And I think we sometimes take that absurdity for granted. I enjoy finding ways to remind people of it.”

Theatrical productions

Nuttle’s affection for life’s little absurdities imbues “Player Keyboard,” an automaton inspired by player pianos, which self-play through mechanical mechanisms. The automaton consists of a black computer keyboard atop a mechanism of gears, cams, and levers that manipulates the keys from below. When turned on — all the automata are activated by foot pedals — the mechanism types “Hey,” then deletes it before typing “Hi,” mimicking the indecisiveness people often experience when starting an email.

“Dream Car,” another of his automatons, recreates a recurring dream of Nuttle’s, in which he’s involved in a car crash. Metal arms suspend a sleek yellow toy sportscar over a spinning drum studded with bumps. The car flips whenever it strikes a bump. A little microphone amplifies the sounds of the crash.

“To me, each automaton is like a little theatrical production,” said Nuttle. “They’re all characters on a stage, which is the table in front of you. I’ve programmed out how they move on the stage and perform for people.” 

“Hand,” the robotic arm, is programmed to make random gestures when its foot pedal is engaged. In creating it, Nuttle says he was thinking about the ways in which people communicate with their hands. In one sequence, the robot extends its middle finger.

“I had to do it,” he said. “This one sometimes seems to hate me. It’ll flip me off five times in a row. I don’t know if that’s bad luck or it realizes I created it.”

“A Clear Sheet of Glass,” the doomed songbird, was inspired, he explained, by friends who volunteer for the Yale Bird-Friendly Building Initiative to identify and count birds that had died from striking windows.

A close look at the automaton reveals that a bellows inside its wire frame is made with a dollar bill — a trick Nuttle learned through an internet forum for clockmakers.

“These guys who repair cuckoo clocks in their spare time advised me to do that,” he said. “Dollar bills are made to withstand being folded over and over again.”

He produced “Signal Symphony” after taking the class at CCAM on sound as a medium, which was taught by Ross Wightman, the center’s technical manager and curator of its Sound Art Series. The piece is inspired by the experience of sitting in a line of traffic at a red light, as cars’ turn-signals flash at slightly different beats per minute, Nuttle said.

“They phase in and out of sync, which is such a fun effect,” he said.

For the piece, he fabricated 50 cars from sheet metal at the Advanced Prototyping Center at Yale’s Wright Lab. When exhibited, the turn signals clicking at different rates create a cacophony.

“If you close your eyes, it almost sounds like popcorn popping,” he said. “And seeing the lights flickering like little stars all across the floor is pleasing in some way.”

“Signal Symphony” was first presented at the culminating Studio Fellowship Exhibition at CCAM last April.

“Jason and I decided to install his piece in our computer lab,” said Dubowski. “It transformed this space, ordinarily used for classes and student work, into a living landscape.”

This academic year, Nuttle is pursuing an independent study project focused on incorporating AI into his work. He’ll be experimenting with machine vision — technology that allows a computer to see.

“Machine vision is fun because it allows you to create pieces that will look at you when you enter a room,” he said. “That kind of connection is an important way to demonstrate life. I mean, a newborn puppy can look you in the eyes.”