FUTURE BLINDNESS

I saw Jessica Rylan’s talk at the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies a few months ago, and it was an interesting experience. It’s been awhile since I went to one of these things, and I think my break has given me a bit of healthy perspective. Here are some things I wrote down or thought about during the talk—per usual, my mind wanders during events of this nature.

Jessica’s talk had some very interesting AV components. At one point, she played a great series of audio samples with accompanying waveplots. I was a little underwhelmed by her engagement with the technical side of her work—maybe she was nervous, but it seemed at times as though she was deliberately trying to sound “technical,” something that makes me immediately suspicious.

Much of Jessica’s talk was about the change in technology from the 1960’s to the present: transistors are smaller, memory is bigger, and the like. It didn’t relate much to anything else, except that it was an interest of hers, which I suppose we did all show up to listen to…at a couple points she used the strange example of cars to compare to the progress that computers have made: cars still do the same thing, cost about the same, run on gas, etc. More than a few people in the (mostly MIT-student) audience looked as confused as I that we were making this comparison.

I’m aware that I’m not saying much that’s positive about Jessica, even though I admire what she’s doing and how she got here. I’m a little puzzled myself as to why I’m dwelling on the negative aspects, and I think the distinction is dawning on me: Jessica Rylan is a good maker of things, and is firmly interested in the dialog surrounding her work. She has a rich relationship to the equipment she uses and the sound she makes (her website is very well-spoken), and is admirably open and involved in helping others have the same experience. Of course, the other side of all of this is that I really don’t care for her actual music—it appears as though she has taken to describing herself as a “noise band” because of the current cachet surrounding this genre, since her music rarely shares the qualities of other groups in that genre.

Altogether, the presentation didn’t go very well. Ms. Rylan’s prepared notes weren’t thorough or focused, and her remarks didn’t really get at the ideas behind her process and her music. Perhaps the entire audience would have been better served if he had made a clear decision either to discuss her artistic intent and motivation or to delve into the technical aspects of her hardware fabrication and setup, rather than paying lip-service to both. I’ve seen from this talk how someone who is otherwise in control of her direction and practice can make the mistake of showing work that is either poorly contextualized or, worse, attempting to capitalize on an audience’s lack of understanding rather than add to such an understanding.

I’ve held off on releasing this post for several months for a couple of reasons, and I’m glad to revisit it, especially since the project I’m working on now has put me in much the same situation: several times in the recent past, I’ve been compelled to “tech it up” when discussing my project with sponsors, press, or visitors. It’s amazing the kind of hyperbolic bullshit one can concoct when watching a sponsor’s interest in your professor’s opera flag before your eyes.

However, these experiences have only strengthened my resolve to be more open when discussing my own work, which hopefully will be soon (Sponsor Week is at the end of October, and I expect to have one or two projects of my own ready to show by then).

In the last month I’ve gotten quite a bit done, and I have more on the horizon. It is a relief to have my time spoken for these days, and a delight that such exciting projects are on the roster. I will attempt to be brief.

The application
The application is in, and all necessary evaluators have responded. Hopefully, my application is as good as anyone else’s at this point. I am satisfied with my submission, and glad that it is out of my hands.

The Cameroon project
Delightfully, I met Andrew Sempere again recently and he has offered some insight on the chip problem I am having—the one I’m working with is proving difficult to debug. I’ve been working with Harlo on using this power source and looking at other chips that more easily facilitate pitchshifting. I’m considering just gutting this helmet and using it for a cheap pitchshift effect (I assume it can be hacked to change pitches).

The Syncwalk Digital Composition Interface
I’m chomping at the bit to get to the hardware/software part of this but I have committed to do the Cameroon project first. It’s nice, though, to continue to try to refine the operational flow as a background task while walking. I have a pretty complete model in mind now, and it can be implemented in several stages, which will help focus development work along the way.

South Africa Documentary
I’m heading down to New York to finalize the scored parts of Thenji Nkosi’s documentary at the end of the month—there’s also a new song called “Primary Loyalty” that you can hear here:
Primary Loyalty

Screen printing
Harlo and started screen printing this past weekend and had some modest successes.

A Bell
I received a very lovely bell for Christmas and it makes a wonderful sound. I will link to it soon.

I finally, finally found the VHS of an old performance I did with Teresa Marrin Nakra last week, and have now safely converted it to a .mov.

The music itself isn’t the most awesome thing in the world, but I certainly am glad that proof of this exists…I really need something from this to put in my portfolio! As I try to write more thoughtfully about this project, it becomes clearer how much this served as an introduction to the world of physical computing and, in a sense, the process involved in working with emerging technology.

The carpet itself was very cool but a bit buggy. Factors like heat and prior use would seriously impact the consistency of the output, and it led to some frustrating but now-familiar debugging issues. Other things, like Teresa’s imminent pregnancy and my own unfamiliarity with the medium made this a frustrating project at the time. Thankfully, Tim Ledlie was around to handle the software side of the debugging and help me retain a sense of perspective.

We only had a week from start to finish to make our performances, and the title of mine (DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME, I’LL BE FINE) comes from the sampleset I was using at the time. Snips from Disney’s version of “Peter and the Wolf” and R+H’s “South Pacific” combined with pretty abstract (and, upon later reflection, boring) drum and toneloops to make an endless, atmospheric performance that did not go very many places.

I think the best thing about this project was finally getting to just play the damn carpet. I spent many, many hypercaffeinated hours before that night pressing on the thing and listening for trouble, and even watching it reminds me of what fun it was to make sounds with something so malleable and strange.

I’m supposed to be somewhere right now but I’m posting this first—let me know what you think. It is, like most things these days, a rough unmastered/edited quickie recording done while working on “the woods”, a composition environment I’m working on in Max.
I’LL BE LATE

Friend, I have been absent due to a disgusting illness.

Nowdays I’m working on the following:

DORKBOT HALLOWEEN07

Originally uploaded by AKA MEDIA SYSTEM

The opening tonight went well—many thanks to all who attended!

Pictured here is the final product. I think the form turned out well, and I certainly learned many lessons in different media. The flower initially deployed flawlessly and worked for over an hour with no intervention from me. I’ll detail in a later update the means by which I ensured that the auto-destruct feature of previous flower incarnations was successfully deprecated.

After I had been away from the flower for awhile, I came back and noticed it was stuck in the “on” position—not good for anyone! After twenty minutes of frustrating, in-public debugging I discovered that the 9v battery had more or less drained completely; tomorrow I’ll need to deliver a 9v AC power supply, and perhaps once I post the schematic and/or breadboard photos someone can point out the error in my circuit that causes the excessive drain.

Watching strangers interact with the flower was pretty enlightening. I certainly regret that I had to compromise on the original interaction design in order to complete the schematic on time. In the final hours of Googling for an answer (peep my del.icio.us to see the link density/time relationship change as we approach opening night) I realized I should have had the circuit ready way sooner than the physical proto…so now I know.

One significant upside to this project is that it’s eliminated the inertia that I felt was keeping me from making acceptable progress on the Cameroon project. The flower circuit is my first foray from hardware hacking into the realm of microcontroller/logic projects, and I feel much more comfortable delving into a non-555 project with this under my belt.

Well, the flower project hit a snag when the dragon skin I molded turned out to be too thick for the muscle wire to move—in the course of figuring this out, I think I may have damaged/overheated some of the wire segments.

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.

Well, it’s really coming down to the wire here with the flower project. For the next few days I may not be updating as frequently, but I’ll post a final write-up with lots of photos etc when the dust settles.

I have spent too much time working out the mechanics and not enough time planning for the circuitry side of this; I don’t even have a final behavior model yet, so tonight I’ll be hastily curing v2 of my prototype petals and trying to decide what the best operational flow will be, and whether or not that’s feasible. Last-choice scenario is using an Arduino or my flaky CUI board to detect events and actuate the flower.

Meanwhile, my good friend Thenji (a CuriousAV affiliate) has called me in on a film she’s making about South Africa - I’ll be making a small amount of prepared sound from samples she’s recorded. I listened to the first batch of folk instrument samples and they’re quite exciting—mbiras, little flutes, and hand drums are some of my favorite toys!

Friend, I’m making progress on this project. You can always check the flickr set here for the latest images.

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.