learning the ropes

In order to document the sensor apparatus for students to understand, I had planned to draw a schematic in Eagle. Last night, I ran across Fritzing, though, and thought I would give that a try. The results are edited a bit. Fritzing didn’t have a part for the magnetopots, so I drew one — hoping to create a part out of it. Unfortunately, when I tried to follow the part creation procedure, I found that the Fritzing part template file appeared to have slightly less that 1 mil hole spacing, so it wasn’t compatible with the part I drew. Bummer, but maybe it saved me some time in the end?

I wrote two programs which demonstrate the basic workflow necessary to create a movie with a transparent background.

transparent_png_writer_bare.zip contains a Processing sketch which writes out a variable sequences of .png files with a transparent background.

framewriter is a Max patch that loads all of the .png files in a specified directory and dumps them frame-by-frame into a .mov file encoded using the “Animation” codec (which supports transparent backgrounds).

Quick visual documentation of drawer sensor build process.

MagnetoPots from SpectraSymbol

I received word that 4MP (a reincarnation of my rope&pulley system) has been accepted for exhibition at Maker Faire New York.  Come out and join me for some improvised dance music.

[download .pdf]

The catalog of the Overheard Installation is complete and available for purchase.  It is a great feeling to have an artifact of an experience to hold in your hand– something that is a tangible reminder of hard work and good results.

The team at Calit2 did a lovely job in producing it.

An interview done by Alex Matthews at Calit2:

Today was the first day of setup for “Overheard” at gallery@calit2 at the University of California – San Diego.

Our load-in went smoothly and by the end of the day, we had all of the technical elements in place: conversations loaded on 20 LCD panels, custom software driving a continuous images spanning across 3 projectors, 2 rope&pulley units installed, and custom software driving 6 channels of simultaneous audio.

Tomorrow we will begin by taking the time to observe the combination of the technical elements with the content in the gallery space and from there, decide how to shape those elements.

I’m feeling good.  Wendy is feeling good.  Many thanks to fine staff at the gallery for all of their assistance in getting us up and running.

We’re getting close.  Overheard opens on Jan. 15, 2010 at gallery@calit2.

Most of the prototyping work I do is “non-precious,” and for some time I felt like the rope&pulley assemblies belonged in this category.  Once we started sorting out the details of how to get our equipment to the gallery for installation, I realized that these pieces I have fabricated, while still prototypes in many ways, no longer qualify as “non-precious.”  Now that they will take part in a public art installation, I must treat them as valuable.  They have to arrive at the gallery site in January in working order and need to return to me in March in the same condition, so I’m packing accordingly.

I’ve built LCDs and computers into rugged equipment cases for clients in the past, but this is the first time I’m preparing to ship something I made across the country.