The Wushu Project – Moritz Waldemeyer Is this possibly the coolest LED project in art history? That’s what it felt like when I worked on a further development of the Kung Fu weapon idea. Two weeks ago we came together in a London studio to shoot the elegant new CLS with a time slice rig of 50 Olympus Pen cameras. I designed a new LED weapon inspired by the car’s head lights and two professional Wushu artists performed in the space to create the dynamic 3D light sculptures you can see in the image above. Here is a film from Mercedes-Benz about the project:
Making Interactive Art: Set the Stage, Then Shut Up and Listen | hello. Don’t interpret your own work. Quite often I see artists who venture into interactive art start by making interactive artworks and offering interpretation in the notes beside them. They’ll describe the work, then tell you what each element means,and what the participant will do with those elements. It’s a hard shift for some artists to think about making interactive work because we’re taught that a work of art is a work of expression. Your task in designing an interactive artwork is to give your audience the basic context, then get out of their way. Once you’ve made your initial statement by building the thing or the environment and designing its behaviors, shut up. The next part of the conversation is to listen. For me, planning interactive artwork is similar to a director working with actors. So if you’re thinking of an interactive artwork, don’t think of it like a finished painting or sculpture.
SPEED SHOW Woodblock Printing with a Laser Cutter For this project you will need: • 1/4 inch MDF • double sided tape or glue • 1/4 hardwood or plywood boards (different types create different textures) • paints or printing ink • paper for printing • materials for mixing and storing your pigments • a large spoon or smooth tool to rub the back of your piece • access to a laser cutter for 2 hours • Corel Draw or Illustrator to prepare your files Woodblock prints are made by layering ink or other pigments onto paper. Prepare your files in your graphic program of choice and send them to the leaser cutter. Some of the most well known examples of woodblock printing were made by Japanese artists during the Edo period (1603-1868), a time when the rapid expansion of a prosperous Japanese middle class increased the demand for popular arts and entertainment.
Artibot - a portrait painting robot The architecture included an iPhone app to take a picture, downsample it to 100x100 pixels and convert it to grayscale. The image was then base-64 encoded and uploaded to a Google App Engine app that queues the images to be drawn. The arduino was fitted with an Ethernet shield so it can communicate to the server. To explain the software, consider the following drawing: In the above drawing, the angle alpha is the angle of the first arm from the y-axis, and angle beta is the angle of the second arm from the line the continues the first arm direction. These are the angles the servo motors use as their value or position. We made the conversion from (alpha,beta) space to the image space in the server code, to make the arduino part simpler. The drawing sequence was stepping the shoulder (alpha) position by one degree and for each such position, move the elbow motor from some minimum beta to a maximum beta. The general flow of the arduino software was: 1.
Drawing Machine So I've built my first CNC bot, a drawing machine. Because that wasn't quite difficult enough on its own I decided to make one that uses polar coordinates. That is, one with an arm that can spin on a base, and move in and out relative to the centre. The general setup is a pair of nema-17 motors, being run by dSpin motor drivers. One important note, if you use a solenoid for the pen lifter you need a really good diode to drain the current when you depower it otherwise the back EMF does bad things. Here are some videos, first the movement test: First drawing: After that first test, and showing the project off at my first makers faire, I rewrote the code so it automatically converts the coordinates from polar to cartesian so it gets rid of the distortion. As for the build. Once I got it glued up and assembled using every clamp in the shop, plus an anvil, blower, forge, and anything else heavy on top. You can see the rotation axis in the image on the right.
Anatomica di Revolutis by Joshua Harker This is my 2nd project, my 1st became the #1 most funded Sculpture project in Kickstarter history. My latest work entitled "Anatomica di Revolutis" is in honor of the developing 3rd Industrial Revolution. My art has been inspired, enabled, & defined by it. The resources & networks of the revolution are my tools, medium, & art gallery. I am asking for your support to empower my art & what it stands for, to grow my studio, add assistants, bring in new technology, & spread the word. The sculptural rewards are 3D printed polyamide which is essentially a nylon & glass powder that is fused together with a laser. ANATOMICA DI REVOLUTIS: Representing the project is a 3-piece sculpture entitled "Anatomica di Revolutis" (loosely intended to mean “Anatomy of the Revolution”). CRANIA REVOLUTIS: Represents the passing of an era & the ever growing renewal over the ghost of the past. Origami & Papercraft Skull Puzzles: I've designed 2 project puzzles. Project Tshirt: S, M, L, XL, 2XL, 3XL, 4XL
Penny for your thoughts? Posted by Nick Johnson | Filed under rpi, advice, maker I've been using my spare time lately to build something that's even more trivial and silly than usual. Behold, the advice machine! Operation is pretty straightforward. You insert whatever quantity of coins you see fit, then request some advice from the machine. Here's a video of it in action: More photos can be found here. All in all, the project was relatively straightforward, after a couple of false starts. The LCD is a standard 16x2 character display, with an I2C backpack from Jeelabs. The whole setup is controlled by a Raspberry Pi. Advice is sourced from the Unix fortunes databases, with certain databases corresponding to different amounts, with a bit of fuzz added for extra fun, and semi-random allocation of 'bonus' fortunes. Now that it's built, I'm planning on offering it to the local Hackspace as a substitute donation box. Many thanks to Gavin Smith of the Sydney Hackspace for the original idea. Previous PostNext Post