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Posted by Dave on 13 September 2005 | 2 Comments
Hi - at the last meeting we were discussing having a small show to get us started off. Mark suggested using Bonfire Night as a theme - I like this for a few reasons:
1) There are bunch of things people could do with the theme from things that go bang to democracy
2) It’s got a set date! Two months away - which I reckon is about enough time to do something in
3) Saturday 5th November, is also the date of the Ipswich Firework Display in Christchurch Park - which IMHO is an existing “interesting thing” that happens in Ipswich.
So… I’m suggesting that we hold a small informal show with a little food & drink at the Spinney prior to fireworks in the park (which is conveniently situated).
We should document anything that we do and stick it on the website as a statement of what we’re about.
What do people think?
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Miscellaneous
Posted by Cefn on 10 September 2005 | 2 Comments
Inlined below is the table of people’s availability to try and work out suitable meeting times - need your help with this.
We haven’t got all of the information in yet, you bloggers. Plus I think we need more flexibility from somebody to get a suitable day because there’s currently no day which wouldn’t exclude someone or another.
I think some have interpreted the request as the days which would be ideal. I think I asked the wrong question. I need to know what days you really won’t be able to make, because otherwise the problem is insoluble.
Best to know where people’s Ns are rather than their enthusiastic Ys.
It’s something of a pain in the arse that there are no other sensible looking days apart from Wednesday and Thursday, neither of which is good for Martin, who I don’t want to lose as a contributor.
| Days which people can make and can’t (Y/N) |
| DayPerson |
Martin Russ |
Michal Jakob |
Gavin Churcher |
Nicola Millard |
Matt Iles |
David Chatting |
Cefn Hoile |
Summary |
| Monday |
|
Y |
Y |
Y |
|
|
Y |
3+ |
| Tuesday |
|
Y |
|
|
Y |
|
Y |
3+ |
| Wednesday |
Y |
Y |
|
Y |
|
Y |
Y |
5+ |
| Thursday |
N |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
6+ 1- |
| Friday |
|
|
|
Y |
|
|
|
1+ |
| Saturday |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Sunday |
|
Y |
|
|
|
Y |
Y |
3+ |
Posted in:
Miscellaneous
Posted by Dave on 10 September 2005 | 2 Comments
Magic Lantern - “The principle of the Magic lantern fonctions by the heat created from the lightbulb that permits the propeller to rotate in a marching procession image that will animate the body of your lampshade like a cinema screen.“
These are great, I like the simplicity - no motors, just a lightbulb.
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Posted by Dave on 08 September 2005 | 2 Comments
Beyond Object is something we could do:
1. Build a small set
2. Film a sequence
3. Spray everything white!
4. Project the sequence back onto the set
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Posted by Dave on 08 September 2005 | 0 Comments
Scott McCloud has done a bunch of really cool things - notably he’s the author of Understanding Comics.
Another one of which might be an inspiration for a piece - The Story Machine, “is a random idea-generating device along the lines of various surrealist games and devices. Basically, it’s a big map of symbols that you randomly explore (using a four sided D-4 to move north, south, east and west) while creating stories.“
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Posted by Cefn on 06 September 2005 | 0 Comments
Some technical and curatorial questions raised by Blue, ICE project manager, in case anyone has useful suggestions.
The project is planning a multimedia (DVD/Flash/HTML) presentation of the digital archive they are collecting - representing the oral memories of local Caribbean people.
They have 25 short videos extracted from 45 minute interviews with local people and want to build this into a navigable interface for touchscreen displays in local libraries/museums. They have to build a DVD of these interviews, navigable according to topic/according to interviewee as part of the project plan, and are looking for DVD authors who quote to complete this work (paid contracting).
She’s also currently trying to decide how this material should best be presented as part of the kiosk displays which are to be distributed to local venues. There are a few practical questions which you might have views on. Can they simply run the DVD in a player, driven by a touchscreen? Is it better to buy PCs, with attached touchscreens? Does the content need to be repurposed for this kind of environment? Wonder if anyone on the curiosity list has experience of this kind of deployment, or would know someone. Your suggestions are welcome.
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Posted by Cefn on 06 September 2005 | 4 Comments
A projector is available on free loan for any future curious installations, if Martin Russ, Chris Rutherford or some other funky electronics person can fix it.
Does that sound like a deal? It’s just blank when you start it up at the moment, as if some kind of CMOS is not booting it properly. None of the buttons work, but it powers up OK.
Its one of these. I’ve looked at it, but I have no idea whatever what to do about it.
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Posted by Dave on 05 September 2005 | 1 Comments
This is a project I started but never finished - I’d love to see it work properly!
I’ve got a Hoberman Sphere which with a length of fishing-wire and pully arrangement you can control it’s size. Using a Lego motor and Mindstorms kit I managed to automate it. I can control the size of the sphere via a Java appplication running on a computer and using a Infrared link. Unfortunately, even with a fair amount of gearing, the motor was never really up to it.
The original idea was to sense when someone came near (by camera, passive-infrared, etc) and contract the sphere, like a hedgehog - hence the sphere of fear! If you stood still it would gradually open-up.
I think to get this working we need to get a more powerful mechanism and a way of controlling it from the computer. It would also need a way of sensing how far the sphere is currently expanded - at the moment it simply runs the motor for as preset time known to be sufficient to open or close it.
Chuck Hoberman has created some brilliant expanding structures.
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Posted by Cefn on 05 September 2005 | 0 Comments
Below is a summary of requests for bits which people were talking about at the meeting and could blog with references. By my reckoning the main takeaway from the meeting was the following
Major Developments
Although I’ll get round to writing up the minutes eventually, some key events were…
- Getting a theme. The Common theme has been agreed to be ‘curiosity’ itself. Each piece would then have its own name, like curiosity:pipedreams.
- Setting up some kind of milestone before too long, where we might invite friends, curious people, journalists, others? I’ve set up a tag preview for people to tag their comments on this
- Bunch of opportunities through CSV, IP-ART and others emerging - we just have to decide who we want to work with - there’s a hunger for curiosity
There were a lot of suggestions of things at the meeting which people were going to root out for us and blog up here. I think there was another involving faked broken mirrors in some way, maybe whoever it was could dig it out.
Dave’s twisted map - tag twistedmap
Martin was going to dig out some refs for neural maps which distorted body space according to the density of neurons found at that body part - huge genitals, tiny feet, that kind of thing. Also some stock market representations.
Paul saw something at Edinburgh festival, where countries were swelled according to the media stories which were coming out.
I think Michal had some kind of map thing as well, but didn’t manage to get it down. I’ll blog something up on the Zeitgeist maps if I can find them, and Keith Briggs’ statistician timetables.
Danger High Voltage - tag highvoltage
Chris, do you want to put some stuff up about your coils and other static effects we could use. There was a bit of discussion of making bulbs glow in microwaves, fluorescent tubes glow by rubbing them on your shirt. Any refs of how to do this SAFELY?
This is the amazing growing ball which Dave showed us. There was some kind of link to a massive one in a museum somewhere. Also a link to buy them cheap would be handy if there might be more than one as part of the exhibit.
Miscellaneous
Vero - could you post a link to openstudios? CSV make a difference day?
Look forward to seeing your blog entries, and if you don’t know where to start, Click here to blog. Full minutes soon to come.
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Posted by Cefn on 05 September 2005 | 0 Comments
Met up with a girl called Lee this morning - happened to be in the house. Anyway, she told me she’s here doing a project to record in audio and video the memories of people at the Ipswich Caribbean Association.
The Ice Project - Ipswich Carribbean Experience will generate a load of multimedia files which are intended as an archive for Ipswich. I guess this could be a very interesting source for seeding our pipedreams thingy.
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