20090930 Four Loops by akamediasystem
I walked four times around the same place. Four loops. I was wearing binaural microphones. Even at the same place, the sound is never the same. But it is often familiar.
I geologged as I walked. The geologging and the recording were started simultaneously.
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Special thanks to Kelly Snook from NASA for loan of the equipment.
Very briefly, I will make a list of important promises to you:
Hallmark had a fun 24-hour hack-a-thon that started yesterday; when the dust settled around noon today, it turned out that I was one of the two winners.
The contest was basically to take a gift bag full of Hallmark’s products (you know, those irritating song-cards, dancing snowman snow globes, glitter, and so forth) and add/subtract anything to make a cool new product that answered one of four core questions. I lost my list of questions, but they were all pretty vague and fit within the “making moments matter” sort of mindframe one would expect.
The middle idea was the winner, although I had way, way more fun making the bone-conduction headband and dancing around to my old Mousercise LP…
FAMILY DANCE TROUPE
A customizable set of characters that fit into the “Dancing Santas” snowglobes. Customization can be cartoon-like (think the Mii characters of Nintendo’s Wii game system) and configured by the consumer via a web or in-store interface; alternately, new 3-d technology like Microsoft’s Project Natal could be used to accurately scan a person’s face and be printed out as an accurate likeness.
CHRISTMAS CONSTELLATIONS
A system for extended families to share memories. Each star in the constellation is a special Christmas ornament that has both a camera and a display. When Grandma sends you a picture or message (through an easy web interface like blogger or flickr), your ornament will glow gently to indicate that Grandma has sent you a new photo. As you’re seeing it, you can turn the ornament around, snap a picture, and send it right back to her via a local wireless link.
SECRET DANCE PARTY
Silly cartoon “ears” that children can wear at a birthday party or other special event. It’s a great party favor because it gives the kids an activity: they all put the ears on and magically can all dance in unison, even though the parents don’t hear any music! The secret is the bone-conduction speaker in the headband, which plays music inside the child’s head that is inaudible to others. The headbands will be pre-loaded with 8-10 full-length songs (the kids’ songs can have instructions, a la Mousercise, that allow them to do dance moves in sync), and the headbands can easily keep sync by only transmitting/receiving cues (ie, “play track 1″) instead of streaming audio.
I was determined not to use Powerpoint and not to have too much text in my presentation, as I find both to be deadly boring and inelegant. As a result, showing you the images I prepared for my presentation will be of limited utility without my spiel going on over it. That is, I think, how it should be: images should reinforce my talk, and depend on it, rather than the other way around. I hope to refine this presentation style/approach more, as it is one of the few things I think I might actually be able to teach/help other Labbers with…as a whole, we’re not so good at presenting our work. This is sad, because so many awesome ideas come out of the Lab, and only a few result in equally awesome prototypes; of those few, it is sad to see visitor/sponsor enthusiasm lag in the face of a bad presentation of an awesome concept-and-demo…
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).
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.
My very good friend’s first feature-length movie, King Corn, has opened to great acclaim in New York. This weekend (October 19th), it’ll open in Boston at the historic Coolidge Corner Theater. I’ll definitely be there, possibly in costume. Join me!
Hit up the King Corn blog
