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Comment by datadrivenangel | Hacker News Reader

He's on his third iteration of the machine because he keeps over engineering parts and starting over, in a way which is simultaneously impressive and heartbreaking.

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I follow him and coincidentally (or not, maybe there's some correlation with this coming back to HN?) he posted a video last week with sort of an epiphany.

According to him, he realized he's been trying to engineer a functionally perfect machine this whole time, and that's pointless, because it's never been about the machine function, but about the artistic expression of creating such machine.

From this, he derived that instead of optimizing the machine for function, he'll begin optimizing for fun, looks and generally the "cool" of the machine. I'm excited to see what's going to happen from now on.

> he posted a video last week with sort of an epiphany

He does this every year or so. He always has some big takeaway – engineering for fun, getting back to enjoying his work, getting anything finished so he can go on tour which he enjoys...

I followed the channel for a few years because I wanted to see a machine come together, but I realised over time that the machine is not the point. It's a self-help channel, it's about productivity, burnout, and the process of engineering and design.

If that's what you want, great. But I get enough pontificating about engineering process in my job, and I was there for the machine, so I gave up. If he ever goes on tour I'll be there, but I'm not holding my breath.

The best time period was when the entire YouTube maker community was building parts for it and making their own videos for the process - felt like something really special.

Yeah this was good, which then made it even more sad when each part got cast aside as having been the wrong solution in some way. I'm sad to think of all the effort that went into the project from others. It seemed like a team came in to support him at one point, but then he dropped off YouTube in favour of live streaming (at inappropriate times for many), only to return later, without the team.

That was when ToT made some part, right?

I've lost count of the number of "epiphanies" he's had.

Funny that he’s only realising this now when he’s had comments telling him for years pretty much exactly this.

I'm happy to hear he is finally realizing the error of his previous decision, but this should not be an epiphany. So many of us that followed the project told him exactly that when he decided to throw out the MMX and start over. I still worry that he hasn't learned the lesson that "perfection is the enemy of good" and will use yet another change of direction/method to avoid actually finishing something.

I remember him saying something similar like a year ago or more.

I like his pursuits. I would personally rather he make more music though

IMO over-engineering is the actual goal here.

The goal is not to make music, or even to have a musical instrument. The goal is to have a music machine that is visually impressive *because* of its complexity.

Some people already mentioned he could use computers for this. Well, sure! He could even use off-the-shelf mechanical triggers if he wanted to keep it using 100% acoustic instruments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvQ0UXOyh7A

But even if he wanted to stay in the mechanical realm and have reliability for touring, he could just build something centered on music boxes or piano players, which people have been doing for hundreds of years. Bjork toured with music boxes in the past! Those things could just trigger the vibraphone, bass and drums directly via hammers, instead of needing marbles to do the job... Heck, even if he still wants marbles, he could just have a music machine trigger marbles, and buy LOTS of marbles at the top just to avoid that "marble recycling" mechanism.

But a traditional music box is established technology, so it wouldn't be as impressive. And the marbles need to go up and down for drama, if you just have a giant bucket full of them, it's not that impressive anymore... the marbles must be integrated into the "memory" mechanism, etc etc...

So his goal is to have something that is impossibly complicated like a Rube Goldberg Machine. It has to be large and impressive, and each part has to be bespoke and interesting by itself.

Sure it's not the best engineering, but this is what made the first video viral after all :/

I think of it as an art project rather than an engineering project. His medium is CAD software and CNC, and the purpose of the machine is to make more art. There should be more engineering-heavy art in the world like this.

The first one definitely. The viral video was multiple passes, heavily edited.

The second and third ones actually had engineering concerns regarding reliability, as he wanted it to be safely transportable for tours.

There is that one shot where his marble divider tips over and 100 marbles fall out. You can see the tears welling up in his eyes... my guess is that he was at the brink of depression if not full on depressive at that point.

He addresses that in a later video, but that shot really hit too close too home for me.

Do you have a link? I've been watching the channel on and off but never seen that. Sounds heartbreaking.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YqWApMqD4h4

1:40

[heartbreaking] It really is ... just watched it again after child poster posted the link to the (newer) video containing the clip.

This is why I can't watch him anymore. He has really painted himself into a corner and allowed this to become an obsession. He would have been happier if he had just given it the three months he initially thought the MMX project would take, and when that got out of hand cut his losses and dumped the project. He's a good composer and musician. He has hardly made any music for years and his band members are probably not going to wait around.

Sure, he might actually get there in the end, but at what cost? Both monetary and in terms of mental health.

Yeah, it has been fascinating, I've learned a lot from watching him, and I really want him to succeed, but this is painful to watch.

Is there something inherently more meaningful about composing music? It's all futile and pointless, so if the dude likes making little Dr Suess machines and then destroying them to make new ones, who's to say it's not worthwhile? He's just raking patterns in his own personal sand garden.

From a mental health perspective, I'm worried. Martin used to compose, record with his band and perform live. And Wintergatan are great live.

Spending 5 years failing to build MMX and then starting over to spend...what, another 2,3,5 years building a machine that at this point isn't terribly interesting anymore seems more like painful sisyphean obsession than fun. And if he were to succeed this time, he will still have pissed away a decade he could have spent doing something he is actually good at.

Sure, it was entertaining to watch and I learned quite a few interesting things along the way. But towards the end, it became painful and disturbing to watch as the project seemed to consume him.

I'm not going to argue that one activity is more meaningful than another, but wasting a decade doing something you're clearly not good at and failing doesn't seem like a good place to be.

Watching him has been watching the second system effect in real time.

It got a bit strange when he suddenly got into web 3.0. Not sure what happened to that but I don't hear much about it anymore fortunately.

That's most people's web 3.0 experience lol.

I literally can not watch another video about the gate mechanism. I'll still watch one of his videos here or there, but the instant any gate discussion comes up I have to close it.

Pain is temporary. Glory is forever.

*bittersweet angle grinder noises*

I love his mad scientist project (I liked the characterization from some comments below "slow descent to madness") and I'm glad he got enough funding from patrons

Is it practical? No, but he had real progress (he's not just walking in circles) and he has acquired real engineering chops in meantime

Also there are other marble engineers in Youtube and he checks out their progress as well, see this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLD_Nl12oacv he left a comment. I think this kind of cross-polination is important

So I think he will eventually ship something (and this something might mean a music video on Youtube but I hope it also mean a live concert)

edit: if I had to criticize him, it would be only about his worship of the likes of Elon Musk. But, it's pretty tame/harmless (if a bit cringe) and if it inspires him to do better engineering, all the better

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