Bing-shen year of Formosan macaques

In Chinese Zodiac, the year of the Monkey is in Feb. 8, 2016-Jan. 27, 2017. I designed Bing-shen year of Formosan macaques to celebrate the coming of a new year, and I hope to use this opportunity to draw attention for Formosan macaques in Taiwan.

Formosan macaques, Macaca cyclopis, have been inhabiting in Mountain Shou-shan in Taiwan for many years. In recent years, tourists or local residents involving in feeding macaques have been raising a controversial issue. The foraging behavior of these macaques have been changing, and the macaques have becoming dependent upon handouts increasingly. In addition, the intense monkey-human conflict have been occurred. Some of macaques snatched the food from tourists, and some even invaded into local houses. In response to these threat, the tourists or local residents around villages started to attack macaques. Some of macaques were found being poisoned and attacked by human as their body appeared with wounds. The conflict around villages were intense against the species and its protected status. Scientists reported that 200 of the species were missing. These were the worst environment for Formosan macaques habitation. Scientists started working on conservation measures to reduce the conflict, they tried to provide a less disturbed habitats for macaques. They suggested the best way to resolve the conflict is to stop feeding, disturbing and touching macaques, so that macaques can stop dependent on human and start back to their habitats.

As I designed Bing-shen year of Formosan macaques, I tried to left an imprint of time on their body. Thus, the foot of Bing-shen year of Formosan macaques are imprinted with Chinese words of Bing-shen.

Chinese sexagenary cycle is a means of recording days or years. Most of people believe that the year of the Monkey will be back in the period of 12 years. In fact, the same year of the Monkey will be back in a circulation of 60 years, that is, it takes 60 years to wait for the next the year of Bing-shen of the Monkey. I designed 24 of nodes on macaques’ body, and each of nodes are rotatable and adjustable, which permits the macaques to show variable dynamics and expressions. Each of rotatable nodes are representing each of 24 solar terms, climate changes of weather in a year, in Chinese Lunar calendar. As a full circulation of 24 solar terms completed, that means a new year is coming again. I looked forward this design of Bing-shen year of Formosan macaques would remind ourselves of precious time and hopes we can use the time in a meaningful way.

PS.

1. If the one piece model of monkey tail is not easy to bend, we suggest to print the composed tail model.
2. Don't printing all models are small then 86% of original model size, and set up 0.15mm layer resolution.

Design Software - SketchUp
my settings
ABS
support angle 30 deg
z resolution 0.2mm
scale 100%
https://www.facebook.com/paperworkers
https://www.facebook.com/automata.create

丙申年台灣獼猴

2016/2/8到2017/1/27是華人世界的猴年，於是我設計了(丙申年台灣獼猴)用以慶祝一個新的年度來臨，並希望利用這個機會來提醒人們關注生活在台灣的獼猴與人的緊張關係。

生活在高雄壽山的野生台灣獼猴群由於人類長期餵食，改變了牠們的自然覓食習性。當獼猴把人類當成提供食物的來源之一時，人猴衝突也因此發生。有一些獼猴會搶行人食物及入侵民宅偷食。不勝其擾的居民疑似也回頭傷害這些獼猴，已經發現了多件疑似毒殺獼猴的案例，有些獼猴身上甚至有明顯人為攻擊傷痕。有專家說已有超過200隻獼猴失蹤。這是人與自然相處最不好的狀況。生物學家建議的解決衝突最佳方法就是停止餵食獼猴，別再帶食物上山、不干擾、不接觸牠們，讓獼猴停止依賴人類，久之這些獼猴就會重新回到野生棲地。

設計丙申年台灣獼猴時，我希望能在牠的身上標註出時間的印記，所以腳底下我幫他寫下(丙申)二字。天干地支是中國古代用以記錄時間的一種方式，一般人都認為12年後猴年又將回來，事實上相同的猴年在60年後才會循環回來，也就是今年的新生兒在遇到下個丙申年時他已經是60歲的人了。我在獼猴的身上設計了24個可轉動的節點，調整每一個節點都會影響到整體的動態與表情，這正代表傳統農曆24個(節氣)，每一小段的節氣都是一年當中氣候小轉折，每個節氣就像是一年當中天氣不同的表情。當24個節氣循環完成，新的一年又將來臨。我期望以這樣的設計來提示自己時間珍貴，並且期許自己能夠更有意義的利用時間。

ps.
1.若是打印機列印品質不佳時可能會造成一體成型的尾巴無法成功彎折，此時可以另選分離式尾巴套件列印。
2.縮小列印時請別小於0.86，並提高列印解析度到0.15mm。

同樣的檔案我也分享於
http://fastlab.tw/ 這是台灣資訊策進會剛剛成立的3D分享網頁，因為才剛建立所以作品不多，希望各位3D玩家也能慢慢豐富這個地方。

配色建議
身體-灰或土黃
腹部-白
手指和腳指-深灰或黑
面部-橘色或粉紅