learning the ropes

April 25, 2008 [tex|ges]ture Drawing – compressed charcoal, oil pastel on butcher paper (96-inch x 36-inch). While listening to SoundGarden (“Boot Camp”) and Bjork (“Pagan Poetry”) and trying to map out my final thesis performance, the drawing disintegrated into another gestural exploration.

All of the pieces for a single assembly are together. I’m happy with the way the unit looks and feels. I’m a little dissatisfied with the way it turns, though, so I’ll need to do a bit more sanding to make sure the wheel spins as freely as possible.

Today I etched two test boards for the pulley encoders: the RJ-45 breakout board and the emitter/detector pair board. I wanted to make sure that the board design worked correctly before ordering multiple copies of the boards. After soldering the components onto the boards, I connected a CAT-5 cable between the newly fabricated boards and the interface board I made last week. Before plugging anything in, I checked continuity on the various traces to make sure things were wired properly — or so I thought. When I plugged in the unit after testing, I found that it didn’t detect rotation. I inspected the infrared LED on the detector and found that it wasn’t glowing (I used my digital camera to check). I wasn’t completely surprised; when I hacked apart the mouse circuit board, I found that the X- and Y-axis LEDs were wired together. To fix this problem, I soldered the second IR LED onto the bottom of my interface board. Still no luck. Double checking things, I found that copper traces were bridged on one of the the circuit board I etched. After fixing the bridged traces, I found that the circuit still didn’t work. From prior experience, I figured that either the LEDs, the phototransistors, or both were probably blown, so I decided to try again with another mouse.

Uses sound, physical performance, and the visceral tension of the Rope&Pulley instrument to explore the cycles of one man’s life.

“rope&pulley” is a performance tool which combines media playback with large expressive gestures in physical space.

This afternoon I returned to Glide Design to have my pulley parts fabricated on a CNC milling machine. David Liatti tweaked my designs to make sure the mill produced the best results. The sounds of machinery running, the smell of sawdust, and the opportunity to spend the afternoon watching and learning from a man who practices the art of converting ideas into physical objects was inspiring. Thank you, David!

Yesterday as I was looking for inspiration, I found an Erhu recording from the subway platform last November. I liked that I could use my rope to “bow” the sound as I applied granular synthesis to it. I used this sample yesterday for my first drawing with the Rope&Pulley. Today, I made a larger drawing. One of the ropes controls the location of the sampling “window” (ie, the area of the sample the granular synthesis engine looks at) and the other controls the output volume. This was a fairly crude demo.

So I goofed — maybe. When I modeled the pulleys earlier this week, I somehow messed up the dimensions. I drew the model too small — and only caught the mistake after I purchased my materials. Remember measure twice — cut once? Well, I didn’t cut yet, but I definitely didn’t measure twice.

I was not thrilled about correcting my mistake, as it will take some time to correct it. Further complicating matters is that obtaining the correct material dimensions will become more difficult, too. I will need to go to Dimension Lumber to get a custom piece milled — and I prefer not to do that now because of the time involved. I was also somewhat concerned about the aesthetics of the pulleys, but maybe the smaller pulley looks nicer. It’s going to be hard to say without seeing it build. The point of these remaining weeks is to develop my performance — not to sweat mechanical details.

I’m going to sleep on it, consider the feedback I’ve received from friends, and then decide in the morning.

April 4, 2008 [tex|ges]ture – pilot G6 gel pen, graphite stick on drawing paper (54-inch x 12-inch) – 15 minute (appx.) timed drawing, video-recorded.

I did this drawing at home after returning from school on Thursday night. I’m trying to explore the transition point between the ordered, methodical, similar shape drawing and the freer, expressive, gestural drawing.