Labyrinth Generator

Please don’t jostle the camera while it’s exposing!

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 19:01:11 -0500

Please don’t jostle the camera while it’s exposing!

The first test shot from the camera, to test the exposure chart...

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 18:57:12 -0500

The first test shot from the camera, to test the exposure chart I cribbed from Mr. Pinhole, of some amaryllises in bloom. Pinhole cameras are so cool!

I’ve been fooling around with this camera for the past few...

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 18:47:00 -0500

I’ve been fooling around with this camera for the past few weeks, trying to get it into working order. It’s a very tall pinhole camera! The tab with the red end is the shutter, and by looking down any of those yellow lines, you can estimate the framing of the photo with surprising accuracy!

I’m going to expose an entire roll of 120 slide film in this, then mount the results, somehow. Hmm.

I’m still preoccupied with Minecraft, apparently.

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 18:35:00 -0500

I’m still preoccupied with Minecraft, apparently.

First print from Minecraft turned out awesome! Any thoughts?

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:56:39 -0500

First print from Minecraft turned out awesome!

Any thoughts?

Mineways, a program by Eric Haines, lets you export Minecraft...

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 14:12:04 -0500

Mineways, a program by Eric Haines, lets you export Minecraft worlds to a format that can be easily and cost-effectively 3D-printed. Seeing as I’ve had Minecraft on the brain for the past year or so, I thought I’d give it a go. Let’s see what happens.

Apropos of nothing, here’s my Halloween costume for this...

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 23:11:00 -0400

Apropos of nothing, here’s my Halloween costume for this year.

Here’s a sneak peek at a recent project I worked on. I...

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 16:19:26 -0400

Here’s a sneak peek at a recent project I worked on. I made a pair of “running nose” masks for Imagin8r in this Contac spot. More coming soon!

The Brain is Weird.

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 15:02:56 -0400

In 1998, neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried, MD, PhD described a 16-year-old female patient (referred to as “patient AK”) who laughed when her SFG was stimulated with electric current during treatment for epilepsy.^[3] Electrical stimulation was applied to the cortical surface of AK’s left frontal lobe while an attempt was made to locate the focus of her epileptic seizures (which were never accompanied by laughter).

Fried identified a 2 cm by 2 cm area on the left SFG where stimulation produced laughter consistently (over several trials). AK reported that the laughter was accompanied by a sensation of merriment or mirth. AK gave a different explanation for the laughter each time, attributing it to an (unfunny) external stimulus. Thus, laughter was attributed to the picture she was asked to name (saying “the horse is funny”), or to the sentence she was asked to read, or to persons present in the room (“you guys are just so funny… standing around”).

Increasing the level of stimulation current increased the duration and intensity of laughter. For example, at low currents only a smile was present, while at higher currents a louder, contagious laughter was induced. The laughter was also accompanied by the stopping of all activities involving speech or hand movements.

The superior frontal gyrus, everyone.

Who was voicing the lion? I'd like to thank them for the excellent conversation about him/it not being alive and such.

Wed, 11 May 2011 03:07:45 -0400

Oh whoa, someone actually used the “ask me a question” thing! Sweet! Thanks for asking! To answer your question, and I hope you don’t mind me ruining the magic or anything, it was me puppeteering/voicing the lion. The conversations sure got pretty existential at times. :)

Or I could observe some guy named Brandon do it on YouTube for...

Wed, 11 May 2011 03:02:00 -0400

Or I could observe some guy named Brandon do it on YouTube for free.

Introduction to DIY Bioplastics

Wed, 11 May 2011 02:53:00 -0400

Introduction to DIY Bioplastics:

Part of the Subtle Technologies festival this year. $80 seems like a reasonable price to pay to learn how to roll my own plastics! As usual, depending on my schedule and income, I’m totally there. :D

These are the controls I used to puppeteer the face! My right...

Tue, 10 May 2011 20:24:00 -0400

These are the controls I used to puppeteer the face! My right hand pulled on the black cable that is kind of hard to see here… it’s the one that’s taped to the dowel just to the leftmost corner of the box.

The cigar box with the square pegs was controlling the direction of the eyebrows and the eyes (left and right, respectively), which I manipulated with my left hand kind of on all of the levers at once.

I had to put my foot down on the mouth cable to keep it from untaping itself from the table when I yanked on it. In all honestly, this is far from a super great control scheme, but I learned so much by building this that I’m excited to take on the next challenge!

The webcam showed a view kind of like this one. It was blurry,...

Tue, 10 May 2011 20:20:00 -0400

The webcam showed a view kind of like this one. It was blurry, but I could recognize familiar faces. Being able to see outside gave the lion the opportunity to make comments about peoples’ appearance and behaviour, which was startling, as everyone was expecting a pre-programmed robot!

Here’s the door knocker from the inside. All of the...

Tue, 10 May 2011 20:15:00 -0400

Here’s the door knocker from the inside. All of the mechanical parts you see here were improvised a week before the show, when I finally gave up on servo control. They performed admirably, but the motions of the face lacked a certain range and were difficult to control. This calls for a more sophisticated solution in the future. All in all, not bad for a hack-job, but nowhere near where I wanted it to be!

There are four cables here. The three coming in from the top control the left eyebrow, mouth, and right eyebrow respectively. The diagonal line controls the direction of the eyeballs via rods inserted through the black clips, and the linear motion of the cables is turned into a rotational motion for the eyebrows via the two red wheels you see. The mouth is spring-loaded, allowing it to snap shut when I release the mouth cable on the control side.

You can see the speakers here, a legacy from an earlier plan to have all of the mechanics hidden within the hollow door. With the door now permanently locked, that wasn’t necessary!

You can also see, in the left eye, the hacked webcam I used to see out with the door closed.

Here’s the setup inside! I operated the puppet from on top...

Tue, 10 May 2011 20:08:07 -0400

Here’s the setup inside! I operated the puppet from on top of this table here. The inside mechanisms were forced together at the last minute out of desperation, since my electronics were pooping out. Therefore: all of that duct tape. I was continuously fixing stuff and improving my fixtures as the weekend went on.

The speakers I had mounted on the door didn’t perform up...

Tue, 10 May 2011 20:04:14 -0400

The speakers I had mounted on the door didn’t perform up to task when in the field. Too much feedback, not loud enough… This is always the problem with site-specific audio components! Luckily my friend Charlotte helped me out with this karaoke set, which performed really well! It breaks the immersion somewhat, and a few people found it distracting, though overall it was an adequate solution.

Here’s a closeup showing the details of the sculpture. The...

Tue, 10 May 2011 20:01:09 -0400

Here’s a closeup showing the details of the sculpture. The lion had to look stylized enough to be a bronze cast, but detailed enough to be plausibly alive! It was painted with PAX first with a layer of bronze, then with a thin layer of bone black with a bit of red tint and stippled with a sponge for a patina effect. Then the whole thing was given a glossy clear coat to protect the paint job. Overall, the effect was quite convincing! People would touch it and be amazed that it wasn’t made of metal.

The advantage of the placement is clear when you walk to the end...

Tue, 10 May 2011 19:56:19 -0400

The advantage of the placement is clear when you walk to the end of the hallway! Most of the people who interacted with the lion came from this direction. In fact, this particular line of sight is what sold me on this space!

Here’s a photo from the grad show on Sunday. Showing in...

Tue, 10 May 2011 19:53:54 -0400

Here’s a photo from the grad show on Sunday. Showing in the “computer hallway” was a bit weird, but being out of the way made for more intimate reactions.