I have my doubts about the mechanical efficiency of the system I am using. It has two tiny air stones at the bottom that both oxygenate and circulate the nutrient solution. However, in practice I can see that very little circulation takes place. In a test, I half-emptied the system and refilled it with a new nutrient solution (whose light-red color made it easy to differentiate from the existing solution in the bed). I poured the entire gallon of solution in one corner—the airstones run down the center of the bed, so one corner is the same as any other—after five minutes the new solution had barely moved at all.

pH monitoring has also revealed some complications that may be impeding plant growth. It has been difficult to keep the acidity of the solution down to a normal level, which I didn’t initially think would be an issue. (Not that I didn’t think there wouldn’t be issues—I just anticipated wild swings in either direction, rather than a persistent acid problem…) I’ve posted the readings in a graph below; will Google Docs be smart enough to update it every time I add a new reading? We’ll have to see. I intend eventually to use my server to publish these graphs without needing Google.

These considerations spur me to two actions: to increase the size of the system (in order to better dampen it from shocks like the introduction of new nutrient solution), and to change its main method of circulation to flood-and-drain. This will involve sourcing two larger grow beds and installing them one over the other, much like this arrangement. Flood-drain will, I hope, circulate solution much more efficiently and get more oxygen to the roots. It is also convenient that flood-drain is also the eventual system we’d like to have running when we try adding an aquaculture element to the system.

I have also added a grow light to the setup, and have (but have not yet set up) a large solar panel and charge controller. More about these next time.

More details soon.

Andrew2.0 and I have been working on building our own RepStrap for the last three or four weekends, and last night we had a very successful first run (without the extruder installed). Above, you can see a video of it in action. (Thanks for the FlipHD, Dad!). We made some initial measurements of its alignment and were pleasantly surprised to find that the X and Y axes are just about perfectly square to each other, and even with our hardware-store threaded rod we seem to be getting accuracy to about 0.02mm(!)

We’re assembling and mounting the extruder head tonight, so by early next week we should be printing in ABS for real. It’s pretty addictive building these, partially because it’s awesome to build something that is so much more accurate than a person can be.

While I was working on House In Bali in Berkeley, I had the thought that it would be a good idea to run some video signal through a steak. It was mostly the drawing I had made of the signal flow, and the name (“Steak Filter”) that I thought were so simple and adorably right. I am hard to dissuade when I insist something is right, even if I am clearly wrong; you might already know this. I got excited about it, and ended up not talking about much else for a day or so. I think I was pretty insufferable about it being a good thing to try.

Just last week, I finally got it together enough to just do a dry run, and I’m glad I did—somehow I never remember how easy it is to just throw something together, or how little I ever regret spending an hour or an evening to throw together a little test that will leave me with some digital or physical records to work with.

I meant to tell you about this sooner, because I liked the result. The actual mechanics of the filter worked really well, better than I thought, and it made for a nice contemplative couple hours, watching the steak (it was a roast, actually) cooking. Almost as soon as I put it up on Vimeo, I got an email from an editor at a food blog called “Eat Me Daily.” Not, if you ask me, a great name for a blog, but they had some cool work there. Raphael, the editor, asked me “exactly what’s going on here.”

This was exciting, because it was a chance to put an actual artwork into the world with a statement accompanying it. I’m glad I thought a bit ahead, though, and asked him to hold off publishing for a day or so while I got my website updated and generally cleaned house and prepared for visitors. Using Google Wave, Harlo and I co-edited the text of the statement and sent it off. Here’s the statement:

Hi Raphael, thanks for your patience – there’s now a (hopefully) more coherent web representation of the project online.

I think the >init< video is perhaps the most explanatory: http://vimeo.com/7491585 , although the green-and-red video you referenced does look a little nicer (both are from the same performance event). Quite literally, I am plugging composite video into a big steak, which is then cooked. The video signal going through the steak is the image of the steak cooking. Gradually, the steak loses moisture and signal can no longer pass.

With this performance I'm trying to get at the reflexivity of live video - the taut line between the space and the image that results. It's possible to think of almost anything that mediates as a filter of some kind...sort of a "the-map-is-not-the-territory" territory.

In this system, the filtered image is recursively processed in a feedback loop, allowing minute perturbations to ripple and echo across the screen long after the original impulse has ended.

Part of my interest in video lies in its exploded body; the signal is a ghost that resonates and deforms, trapped in our waveguides: when the system powers down the image fades into incoherence, leaving no corpse behind. Steak Filter gives body to this infinite recursion, making it real; incarnate. With this corporeality comes mortality: as the meat sputters and pops, we watch the cascade of images until finally, the steak is done.

This piece was a study for a performance series I might be doing at the Harvard Museum of Natural History this spring. I'd love to hear any thought/feedback/reactions, etc you might have - thanks!

After I sent that off, Raphael wrote back with some questions, which I’ll post verbatim:

Hi Raphael, thanks for your questions! I’ll do my best to answer these well but please feel free to push me for clarification or more details…

You write “the signal is a ghost” — is part of what you’re capturing the last remaining life of the animal, right before its consumption? Its “last gasp” so to speak. Is the meat itself a ghost?

It’s not particularly about the life/soul of the animal – meat is meat. For me, the ghost I mention is the fissure between the physical and virtual realms involved in the performance – a real space is abstracted, ghosted, into a temporal phenomenon (the video signal) that we see as a series of transient images onscreen. There’s no way to “catch” this live signal, but you can see its traces.

Was there a reason to use beef over other meats?

It was very important for this project not to be wasteful, both out of respect for the medium and due to financial limitations – I asked a couple butchers for spoiled/unwanted steaks, but nobody would provide any. Often, a title is one of the first elements I’ll start with when making a piece, and “Steak Filter” has a compelling ring to it. Also, I don’t really eat pork, and I was worried chicken or fish would not present an easily-readable image onscreen.

How will your upcoming performance series incorporate this study?

I’m not entirely sure yet, but I will probably be doing this performance, cooking a steak filter, while the audience explores the rest of the works on display. The smell, and the amplified sound of the sputtering of the meat, will provide an interesting ambient counterpoint to the museum’s usual fare of sterile, long-dead, never-changing objects. (There is no sound in some of the videos this time because I did not have the proper mic setup)

How did it taste?

It was delicious. I might experiment with different marinades, though, to see their effect on the image and palette. There is something special, though, to the simplicity of the current setup.

Have you worked with food before?

I have done a few poorly-documented projects in the past, like signing my name using a pen that dispenses a rapidly-solidifying “gummi” mix. I am working on a piece now that involves custom-molded chocolate circuitry, although it is too soon to tell if that idea will bear
fruit.

also, please confirm: the official name of the piece is “Steak Filter v0″ and should be credited to Noah Feehan / AKA MEDIA SYSTEM

Thanks for asking! This is version 0 of the “Steak Filter” series, so “Steak Filter (v0)” or “Steak Filter, v0″ would be fine. I’m Noah
Feehan / AKA. AKA MEDIA SYSTEM is a term I use to include any collaborators and/or participants, but this piece is pretty much solo.

I just couldn’t be more pleased with Raphael’s write-up here. I was a little worried when I saw the “is this about the animal’s soul” part, as it looked a little like a leading question, but it turned out fine—I think that by providing a strong set of responses and a clearly-written statement, it became easier to tell my story than to do the usual conjecture/opinion that often accompanies reblogged web art.

Raphael’s piece really took off after a few hours, which was super-exciting. First it was on kottke, then Gizmodo, then Lady Ada’s blog, then Today and Tomorrow. Overall, I got 14400 views in about 3 days. And this was a test shot, done on Friday night, more or less because I had nothing better to do.

The thing I learned is, this is the better thing that I have to do. The more I spend a couple hours doing a lil thing like this, or making Mylar Mountains, or making little chocolate circuitboards, the more something good is likely to happen.

Most of the wire is undamaged, though, and it was easy to retrieve the other wires from the silicone.

Now I’m using a much thinner and lighter strategy involving a plastic flower I got at a craft shop. The downside here is that now I’ve got a shot at making a flower that magically sets itself on fire.

My new form factor also means there’s no inbuilt means to force the wire back into a bent position when it’s unactuated – I’ll have to work out something there once the silicone has cured. It won’t be pretty.

The other bad part: so far, I have not got a circuit working – I initially ordered too few/the wrong parts. Now I’m using a relay from an old robotics project of my brother’s, but I’m concerned about the current drawn by each wire—to get them to react quickly you have to really juice them up, and I doubt my relay can handle the current drawn by 6 of these, not to mention where I’ll find a power source for all this.

The circuit I’ll worry about tomorrow. Tonight I’m not sleeping until I’m confident at least the form factor is correct and workable.

Progress-wise, here’s what I’ve got left to do:

• Decide on the actual material to use for the final flower
• Figure out how the muscle wire will connect on either end, and where this will be – it seems now that molding my own silicone petals will not be feasible in my timeframe.
• Design the circuit – I have a photoresistor that would be easy to hook up to a small transistor circuit, but I’m not sure this’ll yield consistent results. Also, there’s a latching problem that I might want to try and solve with a timer.