EVAN/D/MARNOCH

Term 2 - Braunstein Meats

2008-07-11T17:23:00.000-07:00

Dedale Studio - Term 2 Portfolio - Upload a Document to Scribd

Term 1 - Amanuensis - Portfolio

2008-07-11T17:04:00.000-07:00

Dedale Studio - Term 1 Portfolio - Upload a Document to Scribd

Blackbook - "Decant" / "Cant"

2008-04-09T00:42:00.001-07:00

Blackbook

2008-04-08T20:44:00.000-07:00

Bulwark / Porte-Acid - Act 1, Scene 1

2008-04-08T18:18:00.000-07:00

Framework / Existing Building

2008-04-08T18:13:00.001-07:00

Process / Framework

2008-04-08T16:57:00.000-07:00

The First Gate...

2008-04-07T09:05:00.000-07:00

I have added a supplementary blog for the development of my narrative. You can see it here:

The First Gate...

Roussel's Method

2008-03-26T22:46:00.000-07:00

Roussel's most famous works are Impressions of Africa and Locus Solus, both written according to formal constraints based on homonymic puns. Roussel kept this compositional method a secret until the publication of his posthumous text, How I Wrote Certain of My Books, where he describes it as follows: "I chose two similar words. For example billiards and pilliards (looter). Then I added to it words similar but taken in two different directions, and I obtained two almost identical sentences thus. The two sentences found, it was a question of writing a tale which can start with the first and finish by the second. Amplifying the process then, I sought new words reporting itself to the word billiards, always to take them in a different direction than that which was presented first of all, and that provided me each time a creation moreover. The process evolved/moved and I was led to take an unspecified sentence, of which I drew from the images by dislocating it, a little as if it had been a question of extracting some from the drawings of rebus." For example, Les lettres du blanc sur les bandes du vieux billard/The white letters on the cushions of the old billiard table… must somehow reach the phrase, …les lettres du blanc sur les bandes du vieux pillard/letters [written by] a white man about the hordes of the old plunderer.

Hopper

2008-03-26T21:04:00.000-07:00

A pneumatic artificial muscle is, in essence, a membrane that will expand radially and contract axially when inflated, while generating high pulling forces along the longitudinal axis. Different designs have been developed. The best known is the so called McKibben muscle (example is the Air Muscle of the Schadow Robot Company). This muscle contains a rubber tube which will expand when inflated, while a surrounding netting transfers tension. Hysteresis, due to dry friction between the netting and the rubber tube, makes control of such a device rather complicated. Typical of this type of muscles is a threshold level of pressure before any action can take place. The main goal of the new design was to avoid both friction and hysteresis, thus making control easier while avoiding the threshold. This was achieved by arranging the membrane into radially laid out folds that can unfurl free of radial stress when inflated. The membrane's stiff longitudinal fibres transfer tension. The inflated and deflated state of the Pleated Pneumatic Artificial Muscle are illustrated below.

These artificial muscles have specific properties that are of special interest in the field of legged robots:

High torque/weight and power/weight ratios
Muscles’ natural compliance
The actuator can be positioned at the joint without complex gearing mechanisms
Adaptable passive behaviour suited for energy storage >
Shock absorbance during impact.>

The generated force is highly non-linear and proportional to the applied gauge pressure in the muscle. At a pressure of 300 kPa the force can be as high as 4000N for a device with initial length of 10cm, weighing only 100g.
Pneumatic artificial muscles only generate force when they shorten. To have a bi-directional working joint one has to couple two muscles antagonistically. At each joint the muscles are attached in a leverage mechanism by pulling rods. The points of attachment are essential in the design since they determine torque characteristics.

In an antagonistic setup without external load, position will be determined by the ratio of pressures in both muscles. In previous work (Daerden) a revolute joint was build for rotations between -30° and 30°. A step response from 0° to 10° was achieved with end error within 0.1° and overshoot less than 1° making use of proportional valves to control both pressures.

The artificial muscle is inherently compliant due to gas compressibility and the dropping force-contraction curve. In an antagonistic setup compliance is determined by the sum of the pressures in both muscles, therefore both position and stiffness can be controlled.

To investigate this, a hopping mechanism (see picture above) composed of a lower leg, upper leg, hip and body sliding along a guide shaft was built. Only the knee is actuated by a pair of artificial muscles. During experiments the leg was dropped from a fixed height while both muscles were kept closed. During stance, the leg will bend and stretch the extensor muscle. In this muscle, pressure and forces will increase as it extends, which implies that the extensor muscle stores motion energy that will be released as soon as the leg starts straightening. During these tests energy recuperation of up to 30% is registered.

More information on this topic can be found in (Verrelst e.a. clawar 2000)

(movie 23Mb Avi)

Metagrams

2008-03-22T10:51:00.000-07:00

"Fort Douglas"

Fort (from www.dictionary.com)

–noun

1.	a strong or fortified place occupied by troops and usually surrounded by walls, ditches, and other defensive works; a fortress; fortification.

2.	any permanent army post.

3.	(formerly) a trading post.

—Idiom

hold the fort,

a.	to defend one's position against attack or criticism.

b.	to maintain the existing state of affairs.

-- noun
1.	a fortified military post where troops are stationed [syn: garrison]
2.	a fortified defensive structure [syn: fortress]
verb
1.	gather in, or as if in, a fort, as for protection or defense
2.	enclose by or as if by a fortification [syn: fortify]
3.	station (troops) in a fort

from the Oxford English Dictionary:

Noun 1

1. Mil. A fortified place; a position fortified for defensive or protective purposes, usually surrounded with a ditch, rampart, and parapet, and garrisoned with troops; a fortress.
b. fig. A strong position, stronghold. Phr. to hold the fort: to act as a temporary substitute; also, to remain at one's post, to maintain one's position, to ‘cope’.
c. In British North America and parts of the U.S.: A trading station (originally fortified).

2. The place of security (of a wild animal).

3. Astrol. Obs.

4. Strong part or point. Now written FORTE, q.v.

--

Noun 2

1867 FRY Playing-Card Terms in Philol. Soc. Trans. 56 Fort, an oiled sheet, (usually large enough for twenty cards) formerly used in making the stencilling-plate for stencilling the colors of the court-cards or the pips of the other cards.

Technology Absurdity... Absurdity of Technology

2008-02-02T21:20:00.000-08:00

I am tentatively calling my project for this term Technology Absurdity... Absurdity of Technology.

Dwarves that sweat blood. Inflatable devices which utilize the magnetic properties of mysterious alloys to extract loose teeth. 20 seconds of resurrection.

These are the absurdities which Raymond Roussel creates in Locus Solus. But they become believable absurdities. Roussel confronts technology and reality through, seemingly, nonsensical stories. Technology is used to explain or justify his tales - although the technology is just as absurd as the stories. But is it? Every object and consequence depicted throughout the novel is riddled with layers of complex history and Roussel's mythology. But is it? What is real and what is not? What is possible and what is not?

Roussel's construction of language is extremely puzzling at first. It is as if you are reading an extremely bizarre, vivid and rich dream sequence. That is probably the best way I can try to explain it. His method in presenting each story is what I propose to adopt for my method of working for the term. As mentioned, he sets up each story in a manner of which the reader is experiencing it for the first time with no context or history. Roussel then retraces the absurdity and vivisects every layer of history and every consequence within. This makes for a very rich way of construcing a myth.

It would probably help here to have an example of what I am describing. I will scan a few pages and post them up to give you a better idea.

My site for the term will be the Kings Hotel and / or the Fort Douglas building in Point Douglas.

Both sites offer a lot of potential for "myth making". The Kings hotel with its temporary residents and Fort Douglas with its interesting context.

I will post more later to expand on these thoughts.

The Bride Stripped Bare

2008-01-29T19:18:00.002-08:00

From Linda Dalryple Henderson's Marcel Duchamp's The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes (1912) and the Invisible World of Electrons. Found here.

In The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, even Duchamp sought to create a humorous "reality which would be possible by slightly distending the laws of physics and chemistry," as he described it in one of his notes (Writings 71). For this elaborate allegory of quest, Duchamp drew on science and technology as well as geometry to create the "collisions" between the incommensurable realms of the three-dimensional, gravity bound Bachelors below and a four-dimensional etherial Bride above. The complex scenario of the Large Glass is filled with ballistic collisions at all scales--from subatomic and molecular to the impact of the Nine Shots aimed at the "target" in the Bride's realm. In contemporary work on the kinetic theory of gases, for example, Duchamp would have found both a scientific analogue for his own growing interest in chance and a model of incessant collision, documented convincingly in this period by the work of Jean Perrin on Brownian motion. Like the molecular drama he enacts in the context of the liquefaction of the Bachelors' semen-like "Illuminating Gas," many of the events of the "Playful Physics" of the Glass are scientific metaphors for the overarching collision between the desire of the Bachelors and the position of the Bride, high above them and forever beyond their reach.

hanabi

2008-01-28T07:51:00.001-08:00

Thanks Zach for the link. Really cool piece of design. I wonder, though, how this is able to maintain open? Memory alloy is, typically, only able to be "pulsed" with heat and thus can only really actuate for a second or so. I'd be interested to see this lamp in action.

From the website:
The heat of the bulb makes this shape-memory alloy lamp "bloom" whenever the light is turned on. "hanabi", the Japanese word for “fireworks”, literally means "flower + fire." Both flowers and fire fade away so quickly and easily. Like its namesake, this light flickers between beauty and disappearance.

2008-01-13T20:18:00.001-08:00

Some potential sites for the term.

Site #1.

Site #2.

AMANUENSIS -- operation.

2007-12-16T02:22:00.000-08:00

This is more of a proof of concept video. My intentions were to have the pincers triggered by contact mics on a door, but instead I am controlling them manually here. I hope to figure out the code in the next term and have the system fully operational.

Amanuensis: Dictation & Exploitation

2007-12-03T07:37:00.001-08:00

It has taken me a while to derive a direction that I am confident in, but I think I have finally arrived at that point. It has come through much frustrations and discussions with numerous people (thanks Patrick, Candace and Gregory). I have been thinking for the past couple of weeks that my Amanuensis device should observe and record something very technical and complex - with the thought that it would somehow make my project more meaningful... I got caught up in the technology. I now realize that that was the main source of my frustration and confusion over the past few weeks. It was a small group discussion with Gregory and Candace where it hit me that I need to focus on a simple, already establish system and pattern within the building.

This is when I began to take a look at some of the work I had done earlier in the term and it all started to come together. The drawings I had started to produce with my typewriter at the beginning of the term really embodied a lot of the ideas and potential that my project has started to take on. The repeating bracket drawing, for instance, was really about the exploitation of the typewriter as a machine capable of reproducing consistent characters over and over... and over again. The typewriter's ability to do so enables simple systems to take on new meaning. A bracket when used in a sentence might just be a bracket, but when repeated, flipped, and layered on top of itself it begins to express a new language. It takes on a new potential in the form of a self-producing pattern. This simple character becomes something more meaningful.

Similarly, if we take an existing system within a building - for example a door - might we be able to find an embodied potential within its established constraints? I remember walking to a used book store in Halifax and talking with Darcy and Candace about the idea of "interactivity" in architecture. I can't recall his name, but an architect we had just finished seeing lecture had so eloquently described his idea of interactivity as a series of LED's within the ceiling of a building which would fade in and out slowly as people entered the space. To me this is no different from a bell on the door of a small corner store. As we were entering the building Darcy said that his idea of interactivity was the opening and closing of the door - to which I agreed. This is part of my reasoning for choosing a door for my system to be observed and to, essentially, become the dictator to my amanuensis. The idea is that the door takes on the role of the bracket from my previous drawing. A system that might be taken for granted but has a potential which resides within it. By monitoring the different components of this system - for example the hinge, the handle, the latch, and the stop - does a pattern begin to reveal itself? I believe that it will. This will be the basis and goal for my experiment over then next 2 weeks.

PIEZO + ARDUINO

2007-12-03T07:27:00.001-08:00

This video shows how to connect a piezo strip to an arduino for use in detecting and quantifying vibrations.

Piezo strip and arduino demo

Muscle Wire Fun.

2007-11-29T22:53:00.000-08:00

Found this funny little video... it cheered me up... a bit.

Amaneunsis: Behavioural Drawing (in progress)

2007-11-26T15:46:00.000-08:00

I am in the process of re-drawing the top connection point for the shape memory alloy - which will allow for a much long piece than the previous version of the pincer allowed for. This will ensure a longer and more accurate throw of the pinching arm.

The drawing is also attempting to capture the behavioural patterns of the amaneunis.

"I, For One, Welcome Our New Robotic Calligraphers"

2007-11-25T09:34:00.000-08:00

From ministryoftype.co.uk:

This robot has been programmed to write out the entire Martin Luther bible in a calligraphic style on a long roll of paper. I wonder if they’re going to bind the pages up and publish it? What the robot does is a step up from print in reproducing the manuscripts made by monks, which is great, though it doesn’t say (though my German isn’t good enough to read the product page) whether the robot arm applies differential pressure and angle of stroke depending on the previous letters, or how far across the line it is, or how far down the page, like a human being would. If it did, then that would in my mind give the work a magical, delicate quality of something written. I don’t want to get all tedious and mystical about some missing innate human or animistic quality, but I like the idea of a robot arm having to stretch a bit at the edges of the page, altering its stroke weight after a particularly arduous cadel previously, all that kind of stuff. I can imagine a whole series of publications that could be given this ‘hand done’ treatment. We could have special editions of books made by one-time-only robot arms, ones that get tired after a number of copies and can’t be made to write any more, books made by robots with a signature style, with minds of their own. All eventually of course leading to original works created by machines so advanced we have to refer to them as human (or post-human) too…

PAJA - Technology for Music, Art and Design

2007-11-23T23:11:00.000-08:00

Here is a nice blog worth checking out - Paja. It has a lot of good and useful stuff, including downloadable schematic diagrams, and data sheets for a lot of different sensors. It seems they use primarily PBasic Stamp though... which is fine. A lot of the stuff is still very relevant and they do offer the PBasic Stamp code in the case that anyone gets into that. There are also some really nice links along the right hand side. Most notably this link to a resistance calculator widget for Mac users - very handy for quickly identifying resistors.

AMANEUNSIS - installation at the Black Box

2007-11-22T20:54:00.001-08:00

Dedale/Montreal Studio Trip

2007-11-18T21:19:00.001-08:00

So I flew in to Montreal on Saturday, November 3rd. After a long taxi ride due to construction along St. Laurent as well as - as I would later learn - getting duped by my taxi driver for $48 when it should have been a flat rate of $35... I got to my friend John's place - an awesome little apartment on St. Laurent right above a really authentic Mexican food stand. I stayed with John for a couple days and got to catch up with him, Candace, Nathan and Todd - all whom I'd gone through undergrad with and are now attending McGill. Good times. John also took me for Schwartz's - Montreal smoked meat... it was delicious, sorry Patrick! Ha. Saturday and Sunday were really nice though. Walked a lot.. saw a lot of St. Laurent, St. Denis, McGill campus and walked St. Catherine as well... and ate good food. It was good that I got 2 nice days to explore a little as the rest of the week was to be one of the more intense work weeks of my academic career... and probably the whole studio's.

A shot of flying into Montreal.

This is a photograph of the Black Box at Concordia. It is part of Hexagram - an institute for research/creation in media arts and technologies. This was our workspace for the week in which we basically spent all day/night in. It was an amazing space. I'd also like to thank all the people at Hexagram for all of their hard work and help throughout the week. All of your expertise, and your willingness to share it, was amazing.

The Black Box was our blank canvas. We had no idea what to totally expect getting there. It really was a process of collaborating and making... a great experience.

AMANEUNSIS - Process: Pincer Prototype B & Clip

2007-11-18T20:39:00.000-08:00

Pincer prototype A was far too rigid and bulky. It portrayed the correct idea of the function in which the device is supposed to perform, however it satisfied neither total functional needs nor aesthetic. Prototype A was derived with the thought that a separate pincer would be built for each of the different elevations of keys that needed to be contacted on the keyboard circuit. It was fixed upon the frame. This would have meant 4 different iterations of the pincer when only one would be necessary if made adjustable. Prototype B was an attempt at satisfying both of the previous shortcomings.

Before: Prototype A

After: Prototype B - Drawn with adjustable clip attached to frame.

The clip, which would allow for the pincer to be height adjustable and reach any row of keys on the keyboard circuit. The Pincer would be secured in place by means of a bolt and wingnut for ease of adjustment.

The vector / Adobe Illustrator files used for laser cutting the pincer pieces, clips, as well as a platform or rack to support the typewriter's (not the keyboard's) circuit board.

AMANEUNSIS - Process: Pincer Prototype A & Keyboard Framing

2007-11-16T13:49:00.000-08:00

Continuing on with my interest in this idea of a sort of amaneunsis; the notion of dictating drawing (or mark making) rather than drawing by hand in the manner that many authors and writers once did - I began to create my own amaneunsis.

Schematic Sketch for the TML

2007-11-01T22:26:00.000-07:00

Please let me know if this all makes sense (I hope it does). Basically the typewriter keyboard circuit is suspended within a framework. Off of that framework a series of pincers are supported which, when activated by differentiating sound densities, begin to complete a number of pre-determined circuits. That information is sent to the typewriter which then begins to draw or type onto a looped length of paper suspended from the ceiling. A piezo microphone is attached to the hammer of the print head which would record and loop sound data from the typewriter. Here is the sketch:

AMANUENSIS

2007-10-23T14:34:00.000-07:00

AMANUENSIS: [L. (in Suetonius) adj. used subst., f. denominative phrase a manu a secretary, short for servus a manu + -ensis belonging to.] One who copies or writes from the dictation of another.

So, it has been a while. Too long, actually. But alas, here I am to update my status (or at least my intentions for tonite... I need sleep). I will update my blog to a greater extent over the weekend once I am in Montreal. For now I need to produce the pieces I will be using over the next week.

As for my intentions with this project, I want to begin to question the notion of drawing, technology and authorship. I will be constructing my own amanuensis using a typewriter and both physically and digitally adapting it in order to begin to experiment. Can we dictate drawings just as authors, writers and poets did with the introduction of the typewriter? If we may start to do this what then becomes the implications on authorship? A translation begins to emerge between author (drawer), technology and amanuensis in which information may be misunderstood and transformed... or maybe not?

Flexinol Demo

2007-10-22T21:40:00.000-07:00

Here is a really good simple sampling of the possibilities for exaggerating the slight movement of muscle wire: http://www.mrsec.wisc.edu/Edetc/cineplex/OHP_NiTi/index.html The example shown on the website uses Flexino NiTi memory wire available at Dynalloy, Inc.

NiTi actuator wires contract like muscle fiber when electrically driven. Batteries resistively heat the wire, causing it to shorten while exerting considerable force. NiTi can be incorporated into devices that are smaller, lighter, and easier to use than motors or solenoids. This demonstration shows some basic ways actuator wires may be used.

This FLEXINOL NiTi memory metal overhead projector demonstration is based on materials in the Sample Kit available from Dynalloy, Inc. The description provided here is adapted from the accompanying Dynalloy documentation. The overhead projector demonstration was developed by Eric J. Voss.

Youtube & Typewriters

2007-10-21T10:30:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Rachelle to sending me the first link. Pretty amazing the level of detail that he gets out of a typewriter. Jorge Castillo:

This one is kind of funny. I don't quite understand the point of it, but coinedentally, they've made some finger-like extensions from the typewriter to the computer keyboard which are sort of similar to the pincer objects that I am starting to construct.

I don't know what this one is about, but that mechanism is huge and it looks really interesting.

This one was too weird not to put up here... more funny than anything. What the?

Living Glass

2007-10-20T15:08:00.000-07:00

Came across this nice little project that uses muscle wire while searching for some resources regarding Arduino and muscle wire. Here it is... from the Make Blog.

Ever since I bought the Muscle Wire Project Book in the mid '90s and experimented with the "Flexinol" shape memory alloy I bought with it, I've been fascinated by this material. I've also been amazed at how few applications SMA has enjoyed in the real world since then. There appears to be a recent growth in real-world applications, in fields like medicine and aviation. New York-based architecture firm, The Living, have been demoing their concept for using SMA to create "living glass," breathable surfaces that open up like fish gills using MCU-controlled SMA. Their presentation documents, in decent detail, how they went about the process. While this may or may not be a workable idea for walls and windows, hopefully it'll get people thinking. SMA continues to seem like a really cool, futuristic technology in search of worthy apps. I mean, look at Flexon...

Living Glass presentation - [via] Link

Arduino Day One

2007-10-19T14:27:00.001-07:00

So I started playing with the Arduino board today. Darcy has kindly lent me his Arduino NG board so that I can start to learn the interface and some circuitry before we head out to Montreal. I started by following this tutorial, which I had posted a while back.

The tutorial started with a very basic circuit, controlling one LED... basically following a very simple example in the Arduino software and turning the LED on and off. Here is that result:

I then added a second LED to the circuit, and modified the sample code in Arduino to change up the pattern of the 2 blinking LED's:

Here is the code written in Arduino.

Video of the 2 blinking LED's.

Next I added a third LED. Modified the code again and started to play with different patterns. Here it is:

The new code, written in Arduino:

Next, Walter had the idea to hook up a speaker in place of one LED. The first video is pulsing the speaker for 25ms (milliseconds).

This second video is pulsing the speaker for only 1ms. You can start to notice the different "beats" that it creates.

Lastly, my circuit was a bit messy I thought... so I decided to clean it up and make it more legible. I feel better now.

Tomorrow I'll be on to some more complicated stuff. Arduino is fun.

Worms!

2007-10-19T07:40:00.001-07:00

I stumbled across this and thought it was too weird not to post up. Interesting and repulsive all at once!

Performative Ecologies

2007-10-18T22:22:00.000-07:00

Here is some work by Ruairi Glynn that we were lucky enough to meet in Halifax. Ruairi runs the blog: http://www.interactivearchitecture.org. Do check out his blog and while you're there check out his portfolio of work. It is inspiring stuff. Here is the link to this specific project where you can download videos of the work. Here are Ruairi's words:

“The role of the architect... I think, is not so much to design a building
or city, as to catalyse them: to act that they may evolve.” Gordon Pask

'Performative Ecologies' examines the potential of responsive environments to engage in gestural and performative forms of non-verbal communication and conversation. This explorative project based over a series of iterative installations considers how architecture could enter into a dialog with its inhabitants and surrounding built environment. How can we, with the aid of increasingly cheap and powerful responsive technologies, build an architecture capable of Interacting with rather than Reacting to, human and wider environmental activity?

Rather than pre-choreograph the actions of an interactive architecture, Performative Ecologies explores the role of the architect as a designer and builder of frameworks, rather than predefined events, in which responsive adaptive environments are able to not just react, but also propose. Often, through trial and error, these environments can suggest new gestural and spatial interactions and evolve their own expressive qualities while negotiating these actions with human inhabitants and other architectural systems.

These approaches to interactive design I believe hold exciting potential to generate interactions beyond the preconcieved visions of the original designers, and create systems able to evolve to changing contexts over the lifetime of an architecture. In my continuing investigation of approaches to building physically reconfigurable architecture, the final installation (Image Right) looks at how, with relatively simply computational systems, it is possible to build environments able to discover for themselves, ways of attracting and keeping the attention of its inhabitants. Through similar forms of adaptive learning, the wider implications for an interactive architecture suggest how our built environment could learn to provide more effective functional services such as environment control or security, beyond the preconceived visions of the original designers.

Max/MSP

2007-10-18T22:02:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to a Max/MSP/Jitter course offered through Columbia. Darcie Watson passed this along (Thanks Darcie!). You can download their "case study patches" and play around with them if you've got Max/MSP all set up. If you dont, go and download the trial from Cycling 74.

Unbrako

2007-10-18T21:37:00.000-07:00

I had mentioned in studio the other day about some really nice fasteners. I tracked down the link tonight and I thought it would be good to share it with everyone. The company is called Unbrako and I believe you can get their products through Adams A Supply here in Winnipeg.

The Museum of Unworkable Devices

2007-10-12T11:18:00.000-07:00

Zach also passed along this really quirky page (in which David Jones' work is featured) filled with devices that just don't function. Hey, who knows, a bunch of our studio projects might end up on this page by the end of the year... but hopefully not.

Description of the page:
This museum is a celebration of fascinating devices that don't work. It houses diverse examples of the perverse genius of inventors who refused to let their thinking be intimidated by the laws of nature, remaining optimistic in the face of repeated failures. Watch and be amazed as we bring to life eccentric and even intricate perpetual motion machines that have remained steadfastly unmoving since their inception. Marvel at the ingenuity of the human mind, as it reinvents the square wheel in all of its possible variations. Exercise your mind to puzzle out exactly why they don't work as the inventors intended.

The devious deceptions of David Jones

2007-10-12T11:09:00.000-07:00

Zach sent me a link to this. I think it is great.

David Jones is a true genius and a hero of the Athanasius Kircher Society. Between 1964 and 1996 he wrote the “Daedalus” column for New Scientist and later Nature. Each week he would propose a different completely implausible scheme based on entirely plausible scientific principles — like coating the moon in magnesium oxide to make it twenty times brighter. Those brilliant columns were collected in a now out-of-print book, The Further Inventions of Daedalus: A Compendium of Plausible Schemes (Last check: Amazon has 12 copies left) [[UPDATE: Amazon has only 1 very expensive copy left, but they also sell the original Inventions of Daedalus, which we trust is just as brilliant]]. Jones is also a serious chemist, best known for the modern theory of bicycle stability and for determining that there was arsenic in Napoleon’s wallpaper.

We recently stumbled upon the Museum of Unworkable Devices, a site dedicated to man’s quest to conquer perpetual motion, and were touched to find a short homage to our hero Jones:

David Jones has built a number of ingenious “fake” perpetual motion machines for museums and trade shows. These are beautifully made of bicycle wheels, sewing machine parts, plumbing hardware and other embellishments. They are displayed in glass or clear plastic cases with no obvious means for energy input. Observed by visitors daily, they slowly turn, day after day, without diminution of speed, over periods of a year or more, seemingly in defiance of the laws of physics. Sometimes a nice prize is offered to anyone who can puzzle out the precise secret of their operation. Jones once said that an analysis of the entries showed that many engineers thought that he really had discovered the secret of perpetual motion, while many physicists proposed methods of deception that couldn’t possibly work.

Thanks for passing that along, Zach.

Muscle Wire / Flexinol / Nitonol / Shape Memory Alloy ...

2007-10-12T00:09:00.000-07:00

Here is some information and the link to the manufacturer of the muscle wire demonstrated in the Fly Trap piece. Take a look.

From the Dynalloy, Inc. website:

Dynalloy, Inc. is a manufacturer of shape memory alloy specially made to be used as actuators. In other words made to provide movement much like a solenoid or motor would for many many cycles. The high repeatability of such applications requires a dependable, reliable and very repeatable material.

Dyalloy, Inc. manufactures these nickel titanium alloys as small wires under the trade name of Flexinol to differentiate them from other shape memory alloys which do not have theses same properties.

Flexinol actuator wires contract much like little muscles a distance of approxiamtely 4-5% when they are "on" and relax when they are "off".

Jean-Pierre Gauthier - Lecture & Arch II Gallery Opening

2007-10-11T23:48:00.001-07:00

Jean-Pierre Gauthier gave a very interesting lecture tonight at Centre Space of the J.A. Russell building which was basically an exposé of his works from the past few years. The majority of his work involves sound and, very basic, everyday objects. He often gives life - and a "voice" - to inanimate objects.

The lecture was followed by the gallery opening of his installation at the Arch II Gallery in the Architecture 2 Building - University of Manitoba. His installation consists of 3 drawing machines which lightly rub the gallery walls with graphite. The graphite will slowly build up throughout the duration of the installation to gradually reveal the subtleties in the structure of the wall - be it nail holes, drywall seams, or paint strokes. I look forward to checking back in on this to document its progress. I apologize for the poor quality of the video, it is hard to make out the gentle graphite markings on the wall, but I assure you, they are there.

ACADIA - Metabolic Workshop

2007-10-11T10:45:00.000-07:00

When we arrived in Halifax on Sept. 30 at about 2:00pm in the afternoon. After a 25 minute taxi ride from the airport we arrived at the Architecture Building of Dalhousie University. With it being a Sunday afternoon, the facilities were locked down - so we waited until a very trusting student kindly let us in with all of our bags and belongings. The entry way led us directly to the space in which the Metabolic Workshop was to be held - and there were already a number of people getting started on preparing all of the rope and electronics. This was to become our home for the next 3 days.

The workshop started with a group discussion and introductions of all participants. The brief for the workshop was basically that we were going to turning the mass of rope hanging from the ceiling into some kind of responsive textile environment installation - by impregnating it with motors, electronics, new materials and engineered pieces.

Once introductions and the initial explanations were through, we broke out into smaller groups in order to tackle all of the tasks that would be necessary to complete the installation.
The 3 groups consisted of a group dealing directly with the mass of rope already in place, another group working with servo motors and systems that were to be introduced into the rope-organism, and another group dealing with the electronics/electrical systems. I decided that I would throw myself into what I perceived to be the most difficult task (for myself as I knew basically nothing about circuitry and electronics). I felt it would be a good way to learn, especially having Alan Macy as our team leader. Alan is an electrical engineer from California and has incredible patience in helping people understand the very basics of electronics and circuitry.

In this smaller group I met a guy named Josh Cotten from SOM Chicago. Josh is a really talented guy and he specializes in parametric software and scripting (is that right Josh?). Throughout the day Christine Macy, one the Workshop organizers, began to develop some flower petals using LED's and conductive fabric. We were also introduced to "muscle wire" or Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) or Flexinol or Nitonol... or as I like to call it; "Happy Magic Wire" - an alloy which shrinks roughly 3-5% of its length as an electrical current is passed through it and returns to its original length as it cools.

Josh and I saw an interesting opportunity with the idea of the venus flytrap-like petal and the muscle wire. We took off in our own direction and began to draw up some leveraging systems, with the help of Alan, so that we could create the jaw of the flytrap. You can see (below) our first crude prototype of a scissor-like lever system made out of 3 pieces of stripped bamboo that was lying around. I wish I had better images of the original prototype, it was nice in a very primitive kind of way. It was fashioned together using tape, a bull clip, a nail, and the muscle wire - and it actually worked.

The next prototype was much nicer in materials and hardware (although we were still limited in what we had to work with. We quickly drew up some pieces in Illustrator and went down to the laser cutter to fabricate them. Emanuel, the Professor whom runs the fabrication equipment, was incredibly nice in helping us out and had a lot of interesting stories to tell us. It was both Josh and I's first experience with the laser cutter and we started with lexan - which Patrick tells me is extremely toxic and that I've probably cut 5 years or more off of my life in doing so. Awesome!

The idea here is a simple lever system in order to exaggerate the movement of the muscle wire - as it only actually shrinks about 4% of its length. The top-jaw and the stem are fixed in place and the bottom jaw is the only component which moves.

Here you see a detail of the construction of the fulcrum. We were limited in the hardware that we had to work with, so the bolt is obviously far too long for the overall width of the piece. You can also see the simple system for holding the top jaw in stasis - the top screw and piece of piano wire. Basically, a piece of piano wire ties in at two points, on the stem and on the top-jaw.

Here is a better view of how the muscle wire is tied to the apparatus. It is attached by screw to the stem and runs down to the bottom-jaw and is fixed as close to the fulcrum as possible in order to achieve maximum amplification of the 4% movement.

We worked out a couple of kinks in the design and then drew up the final pieces in illustrator to be laser cut. Here are the drawings.

And, just like that, we have all of these precisely cut pieces of acrylic ready to be assembled.

Josh and I took a quick walk to "Pizza Corner" and grabbed some donairs. They were delicious and I recommend anyone going to Halifax should get a donair from the King of Donairs (they also have really good and HUGE pizza). Here is Josh, happy from the donair.

Part of the final piece. We were able to get some better fitting hardware.

We ended up making 4 new pieces. Here are 3 of them as well as the start of the "hoods" or heads of the Fly Traps, in which Amanda Yakiwchuk devised. We didn't have much time to really develop the head and I think Amanda did an awesome job with them. They are constructed from silver conductive fabric.

Here are Josh and Amanda discussing something. Josh seems to be demonstrating the form and action of the Fly Trap.

This next image is the "tongue" of the Fly Trap. It is a piece of copper conductive fabric with LED's running around the perimeter - a continuation of the piece that Christine Macy started to play with earlier in the workshop. The way that this works is that one leg of the LED (anode or cathode) is taped to one piece of fabric with conductive fabric tape. That piece of fabric is then affixed to the acrylic tongue, which insulates the two pieces of fabric from each other. Another piece of conductive fabric is the affixed to the opposite side of the tongue and the other leg of the LED is the taped to that side. The conductive fabric is then able to distribute a charge from a single source to all LED's.

Here is Amanda assembling the tongues.

And, finally, an image of the final piece integrated (physically only...) into the installation. It is kind of unfortunate, but without the help of the software and wiring experts we were unable to get our piece to work within the context of the installation. But we do have video of the Fly Trap in action, just below. Even though we didn't have it completely integrated it was still an amazing experience. It was pretty interesting being thrown into a body of work that I was very unfamiliar with and to still be able to create and produce an object that actually worked.

Here is the video demonstration of the Fly Trap. Amanda is holding the Fly Trap and Josh is applying the electrical current in short pulses to the muscle wire. With the correct power applied and the right duration of application, the muscle wire can last about 1,000,000 cycles.

ACADIA Conference 2007 - Halifax

2007-10-10T19:39:00.000-07:00

Last week - Oct.1 to Oct.7 - we traveled to Halifax. By "we" I am referring to the Dedale grad students; Candace Fempel, Darcy Fraser Macdonald, Gregory Rubin, Marnie Gartrell and myself. We were joined by fellow graduate students Matthew McFetrick and Amanda Yakiwchuk. The trip consisted of a 3 day Workshop (more on that later) and a 4 day Conference. The emphasis was on interactive architectures. It was a very interesting trip that involved a lot of rope tangling & untangling, circuits, NITONOL, laser cutting, pub crawling, networking, hostel swapping, lobster eating, used bookstore-ing, hoodie discrimination (long story) and drunken flying.

Brother AX-18 Vivisection - Continued

2007-10-10T19:20:00.000-07:00

So I've had the typewriter in this state for a while now, but it was left gutted on my desk last week while we were gone to Halifax. Here are some more photographs of the vivisection.

More images of the printer carriage. This time completely removed from the plastic housing of the original body. The device is starting to take on a much more machine-like characteristic as its old skin becomes stripped away.

Closer side details of the printer head.

A shot of the underbelly of the print head. Here you can clearly see the stepper motor (the golden cylinder near the top of the image) which controls the hammer action of the print head.

Another shot of the underbelly. Pictured here is the stepper motor (the silver cylinders at the bottom of the image with wires extending from it) which controls the movement of the print head across the guide rail (across the page, essentially).

The circuit board removed.

Here is the bottom tray of the original casing. All that remains is the power supply. Yes, I did cut myself.

Detail of the power supply still in the bottom tray.

Couple of details of the power supply completely removed from the bottom tray.

Everything is now removed from the original casing.

Teh Tiperighter Revlooshun

2007-09-29T22:10:00.000-07:00

This is a poem from 1920 written by D.J. Enright. It comes from a book called The Typewriter Revolution & Other Poems. I actually came across this poem in another book called Grammophon Film Typewriter (which turned out to be all in German... blast!). It seems like it really has a lot of potential though so I am going to try and track down an English version. Anyway, here is the poem. I found it quite humorous, especially when taking into consideration that it comes from 1920.

I think that this poem is a very relevant commentary even today. Not necessarily related to typewriters anymore, but more-so in word processing technologies and software. I am also reading a book right now called The Electric Language by Michael Heim. One part that I recall that comes to mind talks about how, traditionally, intelligence was largely dependent on your level of literacy - you were considered less intelligent if you possessed a poor ability to spell and write. Word processing - which spurred on in part by the evolution of the typewriter - has eliminated the need for people to know how to spell correctly and properly.

With this being said, I find it interesting - and partly humorous - that because I am completely used to typing on screen through a word processor of some sort, I find the typewriter forces me to become much more conscious of every letter that I type. In this way, I become much more aware of any mistakes in grammar and spelling. They become much more offensive and troublesome as I cannot simply hit backspace, backspace, backspace... then re-type.

Arduino 101

2007-09-25T22:52:00.000-07:00

This comes from the Make blog. I figure with everyone moving along nicely with their objects and Patrick starting to talk about Arduino boards I should post this up. Do check it out (click this).

Words from the Make blog:

Wow! Adafruit dropped a MASSIVE amount of Arduino tutorials AND kits (beginner kits and shields). If you're interested in getting started with electronics this is one of the best ways and these tutorials are the most comprehensive online -

One of the nice things about the Arduino boards & software is they let people get started hacking electronics fast. However, I was looking for a good step-by-step tutorial that helped people with almost no experience through the first few steps of microcontroller programming and basic electronics design. At the same time, I'd been flipping through Parallax's excellent "What is a Microcontroller" workbook and decided to start writing something similar.
So check out my Arduino Tutorial page and give me feedback! Right now I've got 3 lessons up, and will try to get a another 3 out in the next week and a half.

Lesson 0. Pre-flight check...Is your Arduino and computer ready?
Lesson 1. The "Hello World!" of electronics, a simple blinking light
Lesson 2. Sketches, variables, procedures and hacking code
Lesson 3. Breadboards, resistors and LEDs, schematics, and basic RGB color-mixing. At the end of lesson three, you build a mood lamp!

Exploitation

2007-09-25T15:34:00.000-07:00

One thing that has definitely interested me for a while is pattern making - especially through repetition of letter forms and other characters found on the keyboard. The typewriter offers an interesting opportunity to manually (as opposed to on-screen) produce these patterns through the exploitation of individual characters. I think this is the beginning of how I can start to look at the typewriter as a tool for making rather than writing. Below are just a couple of experiments.

Below: A series of alternating brackets. Play with overlapping lines and manual linespacing.

More to come.

Obsession Statement - Pg 5 / ...

2007-09-25T14:30:00.000-07:00

So, here is my "obsession statement" - if I do have such a thing. I think the making of my obsession statement is more accurate in describing what my actual obsession (or rather compulsion?) is than what I ended up writing - but maybe the writing gets at it as well. The image posted is the 5th page / attempt at a perfect rendition of my obsession statement. As you can see there are errors within it. I have not yet been able to type a flawless page.

I've realized that with all of my talk, and thinking, about what I am obsessed with there is one major common factor across all of them: my propensity to want (or need) to do things perfectly. It is both a blessing and a curse and usually involves over-thinking things. The typewriter is a very fitting instrument for practicing the art of perfection. I find myself really having to concentrate on every letter being typed. There is no easy solution for a mistyped character (the delete button). There is no red line which magically appears underneath a misspelled word. It almost seems as if words have more personal value when they are manually typewritten.

I'll keep trying.

The Iron Whim - A Fragmented History of Typewriting

2007-09-25T14:02:00.000-07:00

I started reading this last night. Haven't gotten too far, but it is pretty interesting so far. I actually had to get this from the Winnipeg Public Library system, as the University does not own it (and I had to get a new library card because, apparently, your card expires if you don't use it for 10 years... weird hey?). This is from the back cover:

The Iron Whim is an intelligent, irreverent, and humorous history that traces the haphazard trajectory of a writing culture and technology. With subject matter ranging over two hundred years of literature, philosophy, popular culture, and mechanical innovation, this stimulating book probes the very nature of creativity, examines how typewriting has shaped workplaces and practices, and dissects our nostalgia for a method of communicating that has all but vanished.

As I read along I will add my own insights and reflections.

Brother AX-18 Vivisection

2007-09-24T07:02:00.000-07:00

Progress. This weekend I spent taking apart my 1987 Brother AX-18 electronic typewriter. I think I got a little too hung up on drawing pieces that really did not reveal anything to me that I could not understand without taking them off. There are a lot of lids and casings to the body that took up my time. In hindsight, I should have spent more time on the guts of the thing. Once I did get through the casing, however, I realized that it is basically made up of 4 components: A power supply. The print-head and chassis. The circuit board. And the keyboard. Here is the progress.

The Brother AX-18 before vivsection.

Keyboard Lid removed. Boring.

Paper Lid removed. It gets more interesting, I promise.

Rear Maintenance Lid removed. Don't give up yet.

Front Maintenance Lid removed.

The Body Casing removed. Finally it starts to really come apart.

Right Platen Knob. Basically this piece (as well as the following left platen knob) turns the paper feed. I know. Pretty obvious, right?

Right Platen Knob. Here you can see the gear, however, which actually interacts with a corresponding gear attached to the print-head chassis.

The half-naked Brother AX-18. Sans top Body Casing.

Here lies the Ink Ribbon Cassette. Basically a little hammer hits the daisy wheel cassette, which in turn contacts the ink ribbon - leaving the impression of the letter on the page. Once again, obvious... I know.

The Daisy Wheel. This slots into the Print-Head and is the source of the letter form. As mentioned, the hammer on the Print-Head contacts the Daisy Wheel. Essentially this is a disc of arms with heads containing reversed letter forms. These are easily replaceable and allow for font changes. This is the advantage of Daisy Wheels over tradition typewriting methods, where you were not able to change fonts necessarily.

The Keyboard half-removed. It took a decent amount of force to actually un-clip this from the bottom tray. It was hanging on for dear life. Here you can clearly see the ribbon circuit which, essentially is the keyboard, connecting to the circuit board. It is a very simple connection. It slots into the circuit board and 2 clips lock it in place.

The Keyboard removed.

The Brother AX-18 sans keyboard.

Here you can see the print-head chassis removed. You can see the ground wire at the back sticking out from the power supply area of the unit. This was really the only thing holding it back, so once that was easily off I was able to splay the unit out further.

A detail of the Print-Head and Chassis. Basically, all the Print-Head is - is a hammer. A really intricate hammer.

Detail of the gear system which operates the paper feed roller.

Detail of the Print-Head.

More to come today. I've got the Circuit Board removed from its clips, and I am ready to begin to really pull the 4 components (power supply, print-head, circuit board, input device / keyboard) out of the bottom tray.

Trying to Sleep...

2007-09-21T23:52:00.000-07:00

So, I definitely should be sleeping. I want to be back in studio by about 9 or 10am to get to work. But in my restlessness, I stumbled across some very interesting projects through Hackaday, by Aparna Rao. There are a few very relevant / cool projects within her site. I especially appreciated her "Book of Answers" - a book embedded with circuits and a speaker to help her indecisive Mother, make decisions. Another is her "Pop 22" project. Basically, it is a project which transforms an old typewriter into a device capable of sending emails for Rao's technologically challenged Mother. Be sure to also check out her "Internet Manual" under the Ideas area. Check it out.

Object 1: Brother AX-18

2007-09-21T15:33:00.000-07:00

I lucked out and found two identical (twin) Brother AX-18 electronic typewriters at Value Village. These will be an object of obsession for this weekend. I will be performing a vivisection on it in order to examine its inner workings and deepest secrets. Stay tuned.

The Second in a List of Obsessions

2007-09-18T06:59:00.000-07:00

So, I mentioned that graphic design was too broad to cover in one item. I listed posters first, and now I will talk about something that applies to any form of design. Typography. I am a self taught student of graphic design (for the most part) and I still have a LOT to learn about it. Typography is one of the most interesting aspects of graphic design for me and is probably the subject that I am most drawn to in terms of learning. The ability to arrange type well is extremely important to me as it is a functional and aesthetic concern. I will keep this post shorter than the last because I don't feel that I am qualified to talk about it and I'll probably end up sounding stupid and pretentious.

One thing that I really appreciate about typography is that with so many typefaces available (especially now due to more easily usable type design programs and free websites such as dafont - which I try to avoid now), there are usually one or two typefaces that just work for a project. Each typeface has its own characteristics and has the ability to "speak" in a different tone. The challenge lies in selecting the right type for the job.

Another aspect of typography that I both love and hate is its ability to suck you in to the most minute details and swallow hours of your time in making sure that you've set the appropriate leading for the page and text... that you've kerned the headings properly... or that you've eliminated all of your widows and orphans.

One really strong lesson I learned in doing the the AUM 07 Catalogue (click here to download a screen quality PDF, or here for a higher quality PDF) is that typography is not only important functionally in terms of readability and legibility, etc. but also extremely important in making sure that text is formatted correctly. This is probably the area that I have to work on the most. One very good book that has been a help, however, is The Elements of Typographic Style.

I've gone on longer than I had expected. So, I will end in saying I suspect typography will play a definite role in the development of my studio project. Letter-forms intrigue me - I would like to explore them further and I think that the objects that I have collected (which I will be documenting shortly and posting them up) will provide a good foundation for this exploration.

Applied Arts

2007-09-16T14:30:00.000-07:00

So, this isn't necessarily directly related with Studio. But it will be relevant within the context of one of my next items of obsession, so I thought I'd post it up.

Zach Pauls and I have received an Applied Arts student award for our work on the 15th edition of the Warehouse Journal. You can see the feature on their website here or check it out at the bookstore or McNally.

Mosquitoes

2007-09-13T18:01:00.000-07:00

I want to be a MOSQUITO. As Ken Kaplan and Ted Krueger suggest in their Pamphlet Architecture (#14) publication "Mosquitoes - A Handbook for Survival", mosquitoes "infect, inject, infest and inflame" - they "instill total raving panic from a series of harmless skirmishes" - they "reject steady-state politics for ideologies that are inherently incomplete, transient, and unstable, but that provide certain benefits over the short haul".

This was a very convenient and fitting read for me today. Just earlier during our afternoon lecture by the Head of Philosophy here at the U of M Carl Matheson, I came to a realization that (and I had believed this to a degree previously, just not positively) a sense of humour and a certain amount of humility is an important component in design and architecture. I mean humility not in the sense that you should not be proud of the work that you do, but rather that it is important not to take yourself too seriously. Kaplan and Krueger write with both a sense of urgency but also with a definite sense of humour. The projects displayed within their "handbook for survival" are often throbbing with irony and parody, and always full of socio-political commentary.

Written in '93 it is amazing to me the very accurate foresight that K/K had related to hacker culture and the importance of the internet in connecting MOSQUITOES. The Dedale Studio is a testament to their forsight.

I will have to have another read through of this "handbook for survival" before I can offer some more careful (and useful) insight. But what I will say is that I have heard K/K's wakeup call - the call to do away with any "dogmatic gases" (or at least attempt to filter it) and don't wait, just do... by any means necessary.

(A funny side-note: I read this book in the time that it took my Dad to get home from the University, realize he had forgotten me there, call me to tell me that he had forgotten me, drive back to the University to pick me up and take me home.)

The First in a List of Obsessions

2007-09-13T17:59:00.000-07:00

In an attempt to aid myself in realizing (or accepting) a statement of obsession I will begin to admit my compulsions, infatuations, fixations and whatever other words that fit the meaning of obsession. Some will be more compromising than others, but I think that this coming year is about vulnerability.

So, to begin, I will admit to myself, and you, my first (in no particular order) obsession. I think it would be far too broad to simply say graphic design, so I will probably list a few obsessions that fall within this category. The first being posters. A poster, be it for a band, an event, a lecture, a series or a new type of toothpaste represents to me one of the free-est, most open-ended and "creative" type of project. I may have just been extremely lucky thus far in the sorts of (and I hesitate greatly in saying this out of fear of sounding like an asshole) clients I've had. But posters have allowed me to develop my ability to think conceptually and critically. The objective is simple, really. To communicate a message to a particular audience (which may be very broad or specific). The complexities arise in the dissection of the meaning of the message being communicated and the mentality of the target audience. It is within this dissection where ideas are found (as opposed to "came up with").

I suppose that my first real introduction to poster making came in my 3rd year of undergrad (or ED2). Zach Pauls and I decided we wanted to run for the "Graphics Council" within the SAS student committee. Our first posters were fairly crude, with most of our imagery manually cut and pasted from magazines or newspapers. It was a good start though. I still think of the playfulness of those posters when I get too "serious" about whatever it is I am designing. We ended up being elected into the Graphics position and were endowed with the responsibility of creating all of the posters for SAS events. It was a great experience.

At some point within ED3 I stumbled upon a website. Not just any website. It was (and still is) Poster Mecca - www.gigposters.com. This website is one of the single most important discoveries pertaining to my development as a designer (in general - not simply graphics). It opened my eyes to an entire scene that was (and still is) thriving. I began to browse through thousands and thousands - there are currently over 78,000+ posters listed on the site - of images. I became exposed to work being done by the likes of Aesthetic Apparatus, Jason Munn, The Heads of State, Seripop, Patent Pending - Jeff Kleinsmith and Jesse LeDoux to name only a handful.

I guess I should also say that giposters.com (or "geepee") is not simply a collection of poster artists and enthusiasts. It really is a community of extremely talented artists. It has basically led to many different personal discoveries, some being other obsessions that I will talk about - namely screen printing. I would encourage everyone to at least check out the site and browse through some of the work. I suppose I will also throw in a shameless plug for my own work. Click here to see it - feel free to sign up and leave a comment or critique. Or do it here, whatever you wish. I always enjoy feedback.

So, this is basically my story of obsession for posters. It continues to only get stronger with every poster I make as well as every new inspiring piece of work that I am subjected to.

The Sound Machines

2007-09-13T14:46:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across this on the Make Blog.

These machines - created by Festo - look and sound absolutely incredible. It is very fitting after just having been through a lecture by Ken Gregory; a sound / acoustic / noise / video / kinetic artist. These machines, however, represent something completely opposite from the sort of work that Ken creates (which is much looser and maybe more "natural" - which is a very silly way of describing it - and is most often created with found objects and "junk"). These are very carefully crafted and machined instruments that exploit the precision which is achievable through the use of computing processes, and make it blatantly obvious to the audience. They also make some other radical machines, so be sure to check out their website - especially under the Bionic Learning Network area.

From Festo's website:

A pneumatic quintet will be playing at the Hanover Fair

Five automatic sound machines will provide musical accompaniment for the opening celebrations at the Hanover Fair – thanks to technology from Festo. Pneumatic components and a PLC control system will be applied very differently from the way they are used in industrial automation: They will create a bridge between technology and art.

Scene designer and robot artist Roland Olbeter developed and crafted the unique ensemble "The Sound Machines," an automated, electrical string quartet with a drum. The four string instruments sound and function like electric guitars, the difference being that each sound machine only has one string.

21 micro-cylinders from Festo are used in each sound machine. The micro-cylinders imitate the mechanical movements of a musician's left hand on the string instruments, determining the pitch of the tone by changing the length of the strings. Various drumsticks and a jazz brush are moved on the drum by micro-cylinders.

"Fast Blue Air," the music composed especially for the Hanover Fair by Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin, explores the range of sounds generated by the sound machines including the noises produced by the pneumatics. On stage at the opening ceremony, "The Sound Machines" will also accompany a pop music and an aria from the concert for string quartet, drum and soprano "Orlando Furioso!" sung by mezzo soprano Claudia Schneider from Barcelona.

The music program played by "The Sound Machines" is saved in midi files, and the sound is generated in three steps. For the first “digital” step, the sound machines are controlled by a PLC (programmable logic controller). In the second step, pneumatic components cause the strings to vibrate by either plucking them like a guitarist or stroking them like a string musician. In the third step, the sound is received and amplified by electronic pick-ups, similarly to an electric guitar. The sound machines offer a variety of options for generating very different musical effects.

Watch the video here.
(I am especially interested in the very short clip of the drum machine. I wish that portion was longer.)

Click here to download a detailed informational PDF.