Michael Ang

I made two short videos of the HydroBot for my NIME midterm presentation. (Need the latest QuickTime for the videos… sorry.)

Walkthrough video (high quality .mov 28MB)
Demo with sound from contact mic (high quality .mov 9.5MB)
Walkthrough and demo together (medium quality 14MB .mov)

Here is a sketch for what one of the nozzle arrays will look like. Right now I’m thinking two sets of these for 8 nozzles total.

And here’s a pic of a commercial valve manifold:

Some progress on the Hydro/SquidBot. I’m trying out different mounting techniques for getting the water spray to hit the bar perpendicularly. The bar wants to hang vertically, so that means the nozzle has to be parallel to the ground. The bar gets pushed around from side to side when the water is flowing, so I may need a more rigid mount. It seems like putting the bar on a pivot would work, or possibly I can make an arrangement more like a marimba/xylophone, where the bar is sitting on top of a support.

Since the water jet hits the bar perpendicularly there is a lot of spray. I kind of like the effect, but I need to figure out some way to contain the spray if this will ever be an indoor instrument! Or maybe SquidBot needs some pontoons and an outdoor pond!

I had considered trying to modulate the water stream using the solenoid valves to achieve different tones, but it looks like it will be more of an on/off kind of thing. Once I hack the valves for microcontroller control I can experiment, but they seem pretty slow.

The sound from the bar is still quiet relative to the pump, so I’m going to try using a contact mic to amplify it. Also I’m going to try connecting the bar to a low impedance metal resonator (sheet metal) to make a physical amplifier. The tone is also much higher than the fundamental of the bar. I may want to include some heavier bars (probably steel).

I’m trying to figure out how to move the nozzles to vary the tone. Ideally, the nozzles will still be perpendicular to the bar while they move. I considered hydraulics/pneumatics but possibly I can get away with servo motors and pushrods.

SquidBot testing pictures

UPDATE: More testing pictures

I went to Philadelphia yesterday with Chrysanthi (one of the choreographers/dancers from the ITP-Dance Collaboration). Nice town. It was nice to see the sky for a change, and the place was palpably at a much slower pace. Nice and relaxing. Had a nice dinner and hookah session at Shouk just south of South Street. You can see why some New Yorkers would move out here. Cheaper and still spitting distance to NYC.

Philly pictures

The ride on the Chinatown Bus was interesting as always. The chitown bus is remarkably cheap (e.g. NYC to Philly return is $20) but it definitely isn’t Greyhound. So far on every trip I’ve taken the driver has stopped for gas in the middle of the trip (and NYC->Philly is only 1.5 hours). I’ve heard tales of gang warfare between the bus lines and drivers getting shot. The price is certainly right if you’re in an adventurous mood.

My friend Spot was in NYC last week promoting his new projects Dreams in High Fidelity and Moments in Genetic Time. He gave a talk at ITP that was very well received (and Dreams on a high-def projector is gorgeous). These new projects are marker points of his work with generative systems that has been going on for more than 10 years.

For Dreams and Moments Scott has curated the “best” of the Electric Sheep and rendered them at a much higher resolution. Each “sheep” is the seed for a fractal frame algorithm, and the sheep are evolved using a combination of genetic algorithms, direct human creation, and human voting. The sheep in these new projects represent the culmination of years of human labour and collaboration, and at hundreds of millions of hours of computation.

The premiere of Ballet Mécanique at the National Gallery of Art was incredible. The performance went flawlessly and there was a good crowd and good reaction. The setting was fantastic — smack dab in the mezzanine of the East Building along with works by greats like Calder, Max Ernst, and Andy Goldsworthy.

At some point a recording will made and probably a video too, but if you can check it out in person you definitely should. It runs through March 29 with performances at 1 and 4pm on weekends, and only 1pm on weekends. Apparently there are some politics involved with shaking up the gallery on weekends with some cacophonous noise! The performance was fantastic — definitely felt like people were woken up with some live Dada energy.

Pictures of the Ballet Mécanique premiere in Washington, DC

On the drive back with Eric we talked about Hydrobot, sprinkler valves, and basic tenets of interactive art. Hopefully there will be a Hydrobot update soon

There were some really fantastic pieces presented at the Living Art (generative art combined with physical computing) midterm. Here are the pictures. Kind of hard to tell what’s going on in those unless you’re in the class (video documentation would be better).

For my piece I continued my work with the blue flowers and created a vase for them. They are now powered by a battery which fades over a period of several days. The electronic flowers are inspired by living ones, and die as quickly.

(Sorry for not writing about this before it happened… too busy making it happen!)

The ITP-Dance performance at the NYU Tisch Graduate Student Organization Spring Festival was a success! Last few days have been even more hectic than usual, so only writing about it now.

Our theme is the city and this piece explores the idea of crowds, compression/decompression and repetition. The inspiration comes from the New York subway experience. The setting (Kimmel Center) was great, with a massive projection screen behind the dancers.

Here is our rough cut video (9MB .mov).

One issue I’ve been struggling with when combining dance and video is where the audience should direct their attention. There is definitely the tendency to switch back and forth between the dancers and video. I find the ending the most satisfying, in part because of the contrast between the stillness on the stage and the frenetic video.

We’re not sure what our next step will be yet. We’re taking a short break then setting our next target!

I’m about to take the Chinatown bus to DC for the premiere of Ballet mécanique tomorrow at the National Gallery of Art. Incredible what you can do in two short months with a lot of people helping and a single visionary at the helm!

The show runs from March 12 through 28 with shows at 1 and 5pm daily. Should be quite the racket!

Push The Button - Simnuke and 60 Years of the Atomic Bomb

On July 16, 1945 the beginning of the Atomic Age was marked by the successful detonation of the first nuclear device at the Trinity test in New Mexico. On July 16, 2005 a group of artists and engineers recreated the look and feel of the Trinity test in an attempt to portray and experience the Trinity test and reclaim the destructive power of nuclear weapons.

The Simnuke Project has three parts: the simulated nuclear event in the Nevada desert, a gallery show exploring 60 years of the Atomic Age, and a tree planting (to be held in New Mexico on July 16, 2006) commemorating the Trinity test.

One of the goals of Simnuke was to give people a simulated personal experience of a nuclear weapon. As part of the documentation team I collected camera footage of the mushroom cloud from multiple angles. Push The Button will recombine this footage in a video installation which will give participants the opportunity to “push the button” and experience the Simnuke Trinity event.

The installation will consist of a podium with a controller (similar to the Simnuke event controller) that serves as the interface into the projected video.

Links:

• Simnuke project site
• Simnuke images
• Photo of controller (”Nuclear Football”) used for the Simnuke event