Descartes reappears

As i was writing my precise for theory class, i came across Descartes again. i had looked at him briefly for his companion doll, Francine, and its significance as a pleasure Automata. But Descartes mind/ body dualism brings me back to the simulation of life. I came across a J-store article By Sally Pryor, "Thinking of Oneself as a Computer". Her collection of articles expand a bit on this mind/ body dualism, where the body is something spatial and the mind something conceptual. It got me thinking generally about my device and it relationship to the people who walked by it and its site. It requires environmental stimulus to be alive. It is dependent on its site for stimulating life like like the people around it. So what does my thing do? It stimulates life around it. Is it a mirror, no not that sophisticated. It occupies space within a site and modifies the space it contains and evades by altering it movement, tilt switches, light sensor circuits. My device is also in tension. The suspended feature of this device creates a sensitivity that the switches will also pick up. Balance and weight become an issue. Even the structure supporting the suspended cable are important to how sensitive the structure will be to movement, feedback of movement, and like in the black box, exterior devices' movements.

So what is my device about. Presently i am still unsure about that question. This is what i have so far. The device is in some ways about Descartes and stimulating life. Its also about giving the circuit a face and making the circuit's uncanny nature come alive. Its purpose, don't know. My goal for it was to create a chaotic movement because of the interruption of its regular movement through a series of switches and other devices. A combination of simple gestures, maybe repetitive, which create an independent movement.

A Basis for Drawing

After being introduced to Image J, some drawing possibilities became clear. These pics reveal some of the motion of the monster at an earlier stage. Still need to extract some images from video footage and then start mapping out movement from a similarly generated photo.

Drawing Movement

In the search for different methods of drawing the behaviour of my monster, i looked up Evan's suggestion of Ruairi Glynn. I came across his work in "Interactive Architecture" titled 'Performative Ecologies' which explores how 'cheap and powerful responsive technologies, build an architecture capable of Interacting with rather than Reacting to, human and wider environmental activity'. Illuminated tubes, attached to interactive robots, are used to choregraph a space with the human activity around them. The movement of light is captured on still photography, similar to the trace photos i had done earlier. This seems like one appropriate way to record the monster behaviour.

Moving Forward

The installation brought up a few concerns that need to be addressed. The rope pulley device was not functioning due to a few things: lack of balance, too much friction along rope itself and too much weight from device combined with a weak motor. I tried reduce the friction and got the device balanced but the motor still wasn't powerful enough. Another thing that has come up is the quickness of the switching in the circuit makes the change in the motor direction unnoticeable. Flower recommend perhaps using a capacitor to carry a charge to the motor so when the switch activates it, the motor keeps going even though another switch directs it another way. I envision the Arduino helping tremendously on this as well. A new strategy is to perhaps alter placement of switches and look back at some of the independent movement produced in the studio before.

Looking towards further development i thought i would explore the use of a three way switch, one which mimics the structure of the device and can be repeated to create a skin. The repetition of the switch can cause a series of connection that will always change depending on the movement of the skin.

Progress in the black box

Today was another grueling day of suspending our machines and fixing problems. the room is starting to come together nicely. I am thinking of shadow projections for my device, perhaps onto another machine dependent on light for activation. All the wring on the device makes some interesting shadows, looks like veins or better yet nervous system strands. The device accentuates the circuit itself, making the essence of what made the turtle dance, come alive. My intentions are to layer the shadow projections with infrared traces of my devices movement, alike the lead movement done before. What is interesting is this detachment from the physical object , evidence or essence of an automonous being. A record of its movement perhaps can reveal a very autonomous object. Take the movement out of context and reintroduce it somewhere else, perhaps an uncanny object.

The voices on the bus go round and round..

Well we finally made it here, it wasn't too bad until the 33rd hour, the last two hours were pretty tough. Lots of interesting characters on the bus, enough to fill volumes of psychology journals for years to come. One gentleman, who was sitting across from Ricardo and I, was talking in his sleep. Well actually when we woke him up, because he was to loud, he told us he was "praying to make the voices go away". Yeah because that makes me feel better. Here is some sound footage of what we could get of his rant, turn up volume.

Schematic

The device will be suspended along a steel cable, shared with Shannon's device, and will move along the cable and the floor. A series of tilt switches have been installed along the device's movable parts to allow photo resistor stimulated motors to respond and react to its own kinetic motion. There are three, maybe more, sensors along the cables of the machine to pick up movement or light. Perhaps the motion and the switches themselves can be projected and altered through video.