Robotic arm

If you know me personally you understand how hectic my life has become. Grace, my daughter, is an incredible motivational force in my life. Her presence and love has driven me to work a full time job, pursue the completion of my BA at a full time pace, and to wake up every morning at or before sunrise in order to spend some quality time with her. In attempting this life style I have run up against the limits my body has to offer. With the inspiration of wanting to do more for and with my daughter I plan to extend my body, and it's limits with a device of my own authoring. I am in the research and planning stages currently, but I have tremendous support of my professors and am determined to make it a reality. I share in this post the beginnings of this project. First is a three dimensional model produced in Google Sketchup. I will include information I uncover in my research and more details about the plans later but I was too excited not to share my model having just figured out how to embed it. If anyone has trouble viewing it please leave a comment and let me know about it.

Google Earth project

Well this was the first project of the semester and I just figured out how to embed it in the blog. Hopefully it works. Feel free to comment and let me know what you think. A write up on this will be forth coming.

Random Art Project

My formula consisted of creating an Andy Worhol like self portrait but the changes in hue are connected to personal information about the individual.

My partner's recipe is a documentation of my life experiences during daily earthly milestones. (i.e. tides and celestial events)
Nova's Recipe:

Look up tide info for San Francisco

There should be times for high tide, low tide, sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset.

Record this timetable for your reference – however many days you think you’ll need.

Use the schedule.  Whenever possible, take a video clip of your surroundings in conjunction with the times – wherever you are, whatever you feel like capturing, however long. 

Label the videos according to their time and significance (e.g., 4:15/high tide)

Some of the times are in the wee hours of the morning, naturally you can skip these; but, if you are awake and can take video, do. 

If you forget or if you miss a cue because you just cannot do it, go or look outside and shoot skyward as soon as possible.  If possible capture the sun or the moon. 

Do this until you have 24 video clips.

Edit together in imovie (free mac software) or whatever other video software you have/prefer.  

Brain-Machine Interfaces

Brain-Machine Interfaces

A mention of a scientist growing brain matter in the lab and using that material to control robots. I couldn't resist.

Extended body assignment

http://store.neurosky.com/

www.kevinkoleckar.com

Robotic art

This week I found a couple of links to some art that perked my ears. The first is an artwork built to celebrate and market a video game. The game is Halo: Reach which is about a sort of Sci-Fi Pearl Harbor event where the players are space marines attempting to defend a world that is under an overwhelming surprise attack. The art piece is a light sculpture made as a monument to those who fought and died during this event. A robotic arm places points of light in 3D space until the sculpture is complete. Fans of the game log into a website and place a point of light into the sculpture like someone who might light a candle to honor the memory of a loved one. Fans of the game can visit the sight to watch the sculpture grow and take place and even visit their point of light and the points that their friends have added.

Here is a link to a video about the technology behind the piece.


Here is a link to the website that fans go to in order to add to the sculpture:
http://www.rememberreach.com

The promotion is over now so you can't add to the piece any longer. But here is a vide documentation of the piece.



The last link I want to share is a profile page for some artists invovled in integrating robotics into art. Chico MacMurtrie I found particularly interesting, mostly because he was an artist in residency at the Exploratorium museum right here in San Francisco. I didn't even realize that was a job! I would love that job. Here's the link.

http://www.thetech.org/robotics/robotart/index.html

Body augmentation artist