Tue 12 Jun 2007
My Blue Flower was featured in the Art Work column in MAKE Issue 10. The article is called Illuminated Circuits and focuses on artists who use electronic circuits for both their form and function. I’m in there along with Peter Vogel (one of my personal heroes).
Wed 11 Apr 2007
I started a page detailing some of the projects I’ve worked on since starting ITP. Also I’m really starting to dig DokuWiki.
Wed 7 Feb 2007
The mission of Habana Labs in Brooklyn is to research, develop and apply technology related to ecology and sustainable energy. Their focus is on empowering local communities to take part and their approach is very hands on. At their third in a series of workshops on wind power the focus was on the electronics needed to convert kinetic motion (e.g. from a wind turbine) into useable electrical energy. Using mostly scavenged motors about 40 people were able to build small generators to convert rotary motion into electricity. Felt really good to see people getting their hands dirty and sustainable energy becoming less abstract.
There were a lot people taking pictures, including a video crew from ITP. There should be more documentation documentation up on their site soon.
Sat 3 Feb 2007
Mon 13 Nov 2006
ITP students are a rather eager bunch. Not content with just taking classes, the actually teach other classes/workshops called DriveBys as well. Normally they are on Thursday nights, but there is such an excess of keen that they happen on Monday nights now as well.
This Monday, November 12 at 9:15pm at ITP, Nick Sears and myself will teach a drive-by on how to make a printed circuit board for your electronics projects. Moving your circuit to a soldered board will make it much more reliable and rugged than if it stays on a breadboard. Anything you intend to transport or keep running without your continued Tender Loving Care should end up soldered. (Some would say wirewrap is also acceptable, but I’ve never gotten good at that.) Creating a schematic of your circuit will help you create the circuit in the first place and is useful for debugging and communicating your design (for example, to your future self).
We will cover how to create schematics in Eagle PCB, lay out a board and get it fabricated. We will also briefly discuss making your own boards using homebrew techniques, and give an introduction to surface-mount soldering.
Here are some relevant links:
Advanced links:
There should be a video up sometime after the event (thanks Tikva!)
Tue 12 Sep 2006
The descriptions and schedule for fall classes at the LEMURplex are now available. I’m teaching Electronics for Poets which is an introduction to electronics and circuit design.
Mondays, September 25, October 2 & October 16, 6:30-9:30 pm
INTRO TO JITTER
Cycling ‘74 Jitter
Tuesdays, September 26, October 3 & October 10, 6:30-9:30 pm
INTRO TO MAX
A Multifaceted, Multimedia Approach
Wednesdays, September 27, October 4 & October 11, 6:30-9:30 pm
ELECTRONICS FOR POETS
Basic Circuitry for Arts & Multimedia
Thursdays, September 28, October 5 & October 12, 6:30-9:30 pm
DSP FOR DUMMIES
Audio Processing in MSP
Tue 8 Aug 2006
Opening night of open studios at the Megashear Ranch was last night. Lots of great works on display. I made an installation of my Dance Loop that I used for a dance performance with the NYU-ITP dance collaboration and I have an Inverse Parasol kicking around (works great with the video installation). At the opening a bunch of small extremely active humans were really into the installation and just going totally nuts and running around non-stop. The kids could be coaxed to stop and move slowly, but I literally had to take them by the hand 
The second night is this Thursday. We have two bands playing!
Two Fabulous Nites! Two Fabulous Floors of cATacLySmIc Creation!
Come to the Cataclysmic Megashear Ranch to meet the Ranch Hands and view their Art.
CMR, nestled in the heart of scenic Bayview, has long been home to shady characters and dubious activities. This is your chance to see the latest crop of manufactured handiwork from the artists currently in residence.
Opening Day:
Sunday, August 6th, 3p - 9p
Closing Night:
Thursday, August 10th, 6pm - Midnight
Live Bands: SF Cattle Company and Babyshakers
1433 Van Dyke Ave, Bayview, SF
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Artists - Exhibition Catalog (updated):
NEWLY ADDED/AMENDED:
Dave Cherry - Comic Art
Kiki Pettit Jewell - Neon and plasma sculptures
Scott Bartlett Jewell - Turbo jet engine: Turbo from a car, metal, and ingenuity
Paba Free - Interactive Sound Installation
Dominique Hatt - “Floating dream light device” 2000-2006
Elizabeth Dougherty - birdbath, candlestick, fountain and copper framed photo.
Dodger - Fire pendulum
PREVIOUSLY LISTED:
Nick Thompson - “You are Here” Installation
Mike McCabe - Time Lapse Animation of Atmospheric Strata
Nurse Sara - Gorilla video
John Doe - “Video Feedback - Realtime interactive video kaleidoscope surprises and briefly entrances most hipsters”.
Barbobot - “Creature” An installation of lightbulbs and feedback sensors which create an intimate environment for the viewer.
Furry - “Garden Tub and Environs” Glowy lights, silk plants and clawfoot.
Michael Ang - “Dance Loop” Interactive video installation, “Inverse Parasol” Electronic carryable
Hillary Seidner - “LED chandelier”
Nurse Saz - Stories and microbial organisms from the Congo
Uncle Kruddy - Mixed Media
Kathryn Arnold - Collection of Paintings
Lisa Pimental - Mixed Media
Pernilla Persson - Mixed Media Photos
Mauricia Gandara - Mixed Media
Mon 22 May 2006
I decided to learn SolidWorks since it’s designed for solids modelling and seems a perfect match for the 3D printer. Brian (another 3D intern) and Michael (the R&D Tech Director) tend towards Maya. Maya seems like the tool to use for dealing with characters and geometry captured from graphics-oriented programs (using the incomparable OpenLab creation OGLE of course), and SolidWorks is stronger on the mechanical engineering side and designing parts from scratch.
SolidWorks seems awesome so far. You build parts by choosing an operation (e.g. extrude), drawing a sketch, then choosing the parameters for the operation. The complete list of operations and sketches is stored as a graph, and you can go back and change the parameters at any time. So for example if you design a box with filleted corners and an inset lip, you can go back and change the xy dimensions of the box and hey presto the box is rebuilt This was something that really frustrated me about SketchUp — once you extruded a circle, for example, you couldn’t go back and change the radius of the circle at all.
To test the accuracy of the printer and the properties of the ABS plastic it prints in I created a 1″x1″x”0.5″ box with two mating halves that holds a colour-changing LED. On one half there’s an extruded circle that holds the coin battery (with a slot cut out to pass one of the leads from the LED). The two halves fit together very snugly — I used “best vertical quality” in the Catalyst settings and this gives ridges along the vertical faces that seem to help. I put in a small tab to try to hold the battery in, but it was too small and broke off when I removed the support material. The battery stays in well by friction fit anyway.
The walls of the box are 0.06in thick, and the LED light shows up nicely through them. The thin walls where the halves mate are only 0.03in thick and there are some gaps in the printed plastic where the thin walls meet the thicker walls below (Catalyst says the minimum wall thickness is 0.04in, so this may be past the ability of the printer).
The Blinky Box feels nice in the hand and there’s something about the translucent-white-plastic-yness of it that’s kind of compelling. The 3D printer is dirt simple to operate and there’s something empowering about being able to create the kind of compound curves in plastic that once seemed the exclusive domain of designers at huge companies. The 3D printer at the OpenLab seems well-suited to making portable/wearable devices since it can make relatively sturdy/lightweight 3D forms (square boxes in the hand or against the body are lame). Definitely need to do experiment along those lines!
Pictures of LED Blinky Box design and reality (time from finished design to reality = 30 minutes!)
Tue 2 May 2006
Hydrobot Mark I is a robot that makes music using water. Mark I sprays water pressurized by a pump onto metal resonator plates that are attached to a contact microphone. Laser-cut acrylic disks mounted to waterproofed motors spin and interrupt the flow of water to create rhythm. The sound of the contact microphone is amplified and broadcast to the audience.
Hydrobot Mark I made his debut performance at the ITP TOOL show at Tonic Saturday night. Everything worked great though in the final sound check I turned the water pressure down just a tad too much so the effect was a little more subtle than I had wanted. Mark II will have greater (and dynamically controllable) dynamics!
Video exists, but hasn’t been captured yet, so here are the pictures from final construction at ITP and setup at Tonic. The show was great, with many fantastic performances and installations.
Pictures from Hydrobot Mark I debut peformance at Tonic NYC
Mon 1 May 2006
The show at Tonic was a success! Hydrobot Mark I presented a short piece and nobody was electrocuted. Video hopefully soon!
The Materials and Building Strategies class at ITP had some great final projects. Also check out the great new Materials for New Media website.
Pictures from ITP Materials Final Spring 2006
Blue Flower by mangtronix as presented at ITP Materials Final
