Sleep is for the Weak

Making goal on KS was just the beginning. The adrenaline rush, answering the congratulatory emails the thank-yous...rip that needle off the record and wake up! (As if I'd slept a wink in the last few weeks.)

China was the first thing to deal with. Not only did it have the longest production time (or so I thought), but it was the furthest away in time, space and language and there's always US Customs between me and my stuff. Usually there aren't any issues, but....

All OK there, but there was going to be a shipping issue which I took care of right away. It turned out to my advantage later on in the production chain.

The duratrans needed some work in the processing, but it's all done, and they're coming in one by one after a few prototypes. Funny that a colleague brought her class to see what I was up to, since she teaches about the technical intricacies of communication--a significant component of this installation. The students (college freshmen) had never seen a duratrans--or LED panel for that matter--up close, though they had passed by many, many of them in their treks through NYC.

Slices of the eight images
set for proofing.

The dura showed slices of the images from the installation. One of the students said that he liked the prototype and asked whether it was for sale, that he'd buy it.

Now that was a shock. The student's reaction took me by surprise since I didn't think that prototypes would impress much of anyone, let alone an 18-year old in an into graphic communications class. However this did shed yet another light on installation art and why it is so difficult to make and fund. The experience can't be sold, that's ridiculous. The materials that make up the components can't be sold, either. So what is the ultimate value that the viewer can bring away with them, other than the snapshot they've taken with their phone?

One of Christo's many sketches for
The Gates.

Looking back to when The Gates by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the prototypes and drawings were what collectors flocked to, while the tourists got the souvenirs: the book, the coffee mugs, etc.

Other puzzle pieces: the electronics being patched since parts don't always work as planned; changes must be made. A small assembly line was set up in one of the labs at City Tech and Remy diligently pieced everything together with a rare expletive when the soldering iron got a little close. There's a lot going on; and while it works well, I have a feeling the unit's gonna get an overhaul after Trenton, as had happened with SMV.

Suspended works are incredibly seductive, and while I haven't gotten around to seeing Chris Burden at the New Museum yet, I plan to get over the next few days. I long to see the Porsche balanced with a rock at the long end of a see-saw. How magnificent is that?

Anyway, I found, through the exhibition staff at ArtWorks, a theatre rigger who will install an armature to the ceiling and from it, hang the pieces. He's doing the work within my budget, though I had to rearrange things a bit. The crate with the LEDs came into to LA rather than NYC and shipped ground via train and truck, saving money. It got here fine, but there is a little stress, and I love that.

The ArtLab in Trenton with some slapped-together  still images and the nine images planted in the space. 

I sent the rigger the sketch and we're meeting this week to put it up. Wow. It's so real now. It's a ton of fun but there's still a ways to go. The longest two weeks of my life. Sounds familiar.

Dust Off and Take Off

I made my funding goal, with six hours to go. A backer bought a large piece that tipped my goal. I was with the engineers. After that, an additional two backers made pledges to bring the total funding to $10,165. Because I had one backer cancellation and another reducing the amount of their pledge, I stayed up to watch the seconds count down, keeping my fingers crossed. It felt great.

I was burnt to a crisp and needed to decompress. But today, I'm at it again, Skyping the LED guy to order the nine panels. He's sending me a PI (Proposed invoice, or RFP) tonight and I'll initiate payment. He says he can get me all nine units by the end of October; I say first week of November.

Also in the works is a new speaker. The original item is overkill for this project. Yes, it's nice, but I hadn't considered that there will be nine of them. While both venues are big, nine of the original units will blow the roof off them. I ordered a new, smaller one; I'll test it when it comes in at the end of the week. If I'm not confident I'll go back to the bigger one.

Wouldn't it be nice to have enough funds to outfit this project with those tiny BOSE speakers? However, I've already caught flack from "marketing expert" lookers-on that my KS goal of $ 10,000 was too high, as if they did any research to see how much things cost. Annoying, but I don't have time for their noise.

I already have the scans back so I'll work on those starting tonight. And, I'll start getting calls out to the riggers in NJ forwarded to me by ArtLab's director. I have to finish processing the sound. Other calls go out to Ithaca and the sound libraries in case they can recommend anything else.

And the engineers! Oy gevalt! (coming from me, trust me, it's sincere) The sensors are acting out, needing a longish reset time. They say can be fixed in the programming. Just in case, however, Dr. Marantz is looking at another sensor. They're both confident. I'm....well, let's say...nothing.

I have the sketches for the catalog; gotta firm up the copy from my curator friends. And then, I've gotta work on my backer's rewards. I'm finding nine frames, making a bunch of acrylic cases, the screen saver, uploading the wallpaper and ringtone.

I love this. I really do.

Some of the Gory Details

The longest month of my life: That's what I call this Kickstarter campaign. The emails, the facetime, the tweeting and posting. Wow, this has been intense. I'll write about it at length in the near future after I've had time to process the information.

What's important now, even though I haven't secured funding, are the components. Three things are at the forefront:

The LEDs, the Images and the Electronics. Since I got the working breadboard last night, I'm showing it off, totally psyched.

Electronics gurus might snicker, but I believe I owe some explanation to others.

Item a) is the motion sensor for chip b). Similarly, f) is the motion sensor for chip e).

Item d), tucked under one of the blue cylinders, is a small chip Dr. Marantz discussed earlier to regulate the data (sound) from each piece. This allows both sound chips to play simultaneously yet independently when their corresponding sensor is tripped.

Item c) is the microcontroller. I understand the basic principles and will attempt to explain them below. Engineers Dr. Marantz and Remy Cucui volley ideas about which model of the arduino is better suited for this project. I'm an avid listener, smiling politely as they discuss the subtleties talmudicly.

Item g) is a dummy speaker; the final one will be a speaker bar that uses a remote to control the volume. Nice.

Item h) is the code on Remy's cell phone. He has the app installed and can change the programming on the fly. The code goes through an encoder, Item i) and the code goes to the arduino via the UBS (coming in from the top of the image). 

How it works:
The arduino controls the operation (hence the term micro-controller), working from a series of commands input by the code. When purchased, the little computer is a blank slate, capable of giving electronic commands to all kinds of devices according to the code that's programmed into it.

It's hard to see in the photo, but the arduino has a several rows (pins) of input and output terminals into which wires are plugged in. When instructions are programmed, they're linked to a specific pin so the wires plugged into that pin send the programmed instructions to the corresponding component or pin on a microchip.

Each chip has different functions, and the ones used in this project are sound chips like the ones used in talking toys and answering machines, so they're set up to record and playback sound. I've used chips like this in other projects and the chip has remained more or less unchanged over the years. What has changed, however, is the ability for the chip to store more data = longer sound messages or sound bytes.

The chips are  connected to the breadboard, the white perforated rectangle. Impossible to see, there are little conducting wires throughout it that channel the data from the arduino to the chip. Their function is fine tuned by the other components like resistors, diodes, transistors and capacitors.

The code, written on a cell phone, is processed into a signal the micro-controller understands. Also programmed is the sensitivity of the motion sensors--defining the circumstances to trip the chips to begin playback.

Those little intricacies bring the installation to life, and it's the culmination of the work. Right now, I just wish I could get this thing funded.

Building the Work

With my Kickstarter's end a mere six days away, I must turn my attention to things far more important: the installation itself. I never imagined a crowd funding campaign to be so consuming; and I'm not sure I will ever undertake something like this again. While, going forward, I will have a much larger reach and the needs will not be as great, I still wonder if it gets easier the second time around.

Doesn't matter.

Gotta build the work. The LED panels, made in China, are only part of the challenge. The engineers have to also get the electronics done by the end of the month for the last prototype installation at City Tech. Today I will be going to the Gowanus Ballroom with the LED panel to see how it will suspend in that locale, and, how power will be distributed to the nine panels.

As I get ready for that, I recall other installations being built or struck. Any time Richard Serra exhibits at Gagosian Gallery, people show up to see the installation of the huge metal sculptures. The attached photos give no idea to the extent of planning that goes into putting a work like this in a room. It's wonderful to see, as the entire back wall of the gallery is removed and the sculpture is brought in, piece by piece, on tracks and cranes.

When he had his show at the MoMA a few years back, this vid was produced on the installation of two works in the sculpture garden. The crane is visible in the second sculpture's installation. This stuff is not for the faint-hearted.

My nine panels present their own challenge:

The two exhibition spaces are not normally equipped to exhibit work that is both large and electronic; it's a challenge for them as well. The square footage of the exhibition space is not a problem either in Trenton or Gowanus, and since both were industrial buildings at one point, and suspending my 300+/- pound (136 kg) installation is not a big deal for them. Bringing power to the units is. 

I'm spoiled from when I exhibited the prototype in Red Hook, since that facility has relatively low ceilings with wooden spacers every 18 inches (45 cm). And, their power is right there, running along those spacers. I approach the two exhibition venues with respect and trepidation, although the exhibition directors of both venues are confident putting this work up will be a breeze. Ha!

However, many if not most installations are hardly a walk in the park. Some installation works are suspended, and others have to be walked through or around. Hans Haacke's "Germania" at the 1993 Venice Biennale is intentionally meant to be trod over, which sadly may limit some viewers' experience. Although the photograph below is beautiful and representative, it doesn't do justice to this moving introspective piece. 

Walking over the shattered slabs
in Haacke's "Germania"  created
 a gentle sonata.

What this conversation leads to, then, is that the work itself--the physical item--is truly meant to be intermingled with the viewer; and that effect is taken on in different ways according to the intent of the artist. This type of work is often difficult to interpret because, like SIS, it requires the viewer to enter the mind of the artist, and that is the real challenge. Often, an installation's concept is quite easy to understand; it's making the leap to how the elements translate themselves to evoke emotion that stymies viewers. 

Sometimes viewers don't know that they can interact with a piece unless told to do so. I'm on the fence about this: "push a button and this will happen" does not define interactivity in my book. Yet, how do viewers know that their presence will elicit a reaction? That's where the sensors in my work comes in. Only with the presence of the viewers will my work react. That's at the heart of the piece. SIS is there for one viewer to take in; alone with themselves. As others in the room do the same, the sound grows and melds into a layered sensation. The experience deepens. As I've said before: it's a dance I share with my viewer.

What pieces like this do is transform the viewer into a participant; the work's sensations are set free by those present.

Belief and Conviction

Past the midway point, my installation is 25% funded. While I have a feeling I will made goal, it's going to be a difficult and probably painful journey indeed. Not that the platform or anything about the process is disappointing, but the challenge of launching something like this is not too different from launching a political campaign, with similar processes, tensions and outcomes.

I worked on a presidential campaign--made the trips to Ohio and Pennsylvania and all the etceteras--not with the belief that my candidate was going to win; no, no. My candidate HAD to win. What he believed in was that important, and I believed, important for my fellow citizens. 

That conviction is what's needed when launching a crowd funding campaign. It's what fuels the resourcefulness, it's what makes strategies turn on a dime and switch paths in doing one thing: Getting a message across clearly.

Kickstarting an installation is like a presidential campaign in other ways: It's all or nothing. Either you're the president, or…you're not. Either you're funded, or not. Also, it's a highly targeted media blitz that pulls in smarts from every genre of creativity. What I find the greatest similarity, however, is that, funding an installation, just like campaigning for president, is getting people to believe in your idea, your passion, your experience. There's nothing tenable, not an ounce of predictability or guarantee. Just a belief in a promise and this is quite unlike other types of projects like products, games or technology--even fine art ones like painting.

Ultimately, it's what makes getting there so challenging and so rewarding.

Two people I know--a friend and a colleague--each funded their installations on Kickstarter. I know others who have successfully funded work there, but I refer to these two because they were able to fund experimental conceptual experiential work. And while I've backed eight projects on KS, I've watched none more that the Echoes Exhibit, an installation done by Teresa Flowers.

She, too, tried to fund an experience, and succeeded. But not easily, as her FB feed attests. I get the feeling it won't be much different for me. 

As the World Turns

The posts will get shorter over the next two weeks since a lot of time will be spent communicating with backers and potential ones, urging them to pledge. However, the network for the installation has grown, with well-wishers and fans around the world. True, the LED manufacturer has a vested interest in SIS, but the LED guy photographing the guys at the plant and sending me the shots is totally fun. I'm quite moved by it.


Look at this place! The shop looks clean enough to eat off the floor. In a few weeks I look forward to my stuff being built there. And while my KS is having a rough time, I'm confident that shaking up my would-be backers will get me there.


Other things has progressed this week on a technical side. In search of ideas on how to get this installation to fly (hang actually), I went to the shop in the college where I work to see what ideas could be offered. We have a full stage technology lab in our Entertainment Technology Department where students learn and sometimes develop the technology surrounding live performance. What better place than that?

The lab technician suggested that rather than hooks, using cable clamps with thimbles would do the trick. Two clamps for each wire for reinforcement, and it's fully adjustable. Great, another thing out of the way.

Didn't get to Trenton yesterday since I was having a video crisis.

But it was solved again, thanks to the handy Internet. I downloaded a sound program and edited a new sound piece, slapped together some images from another app I got from the web, and I have the new 1m45s vid below.

It's really short but I believe it says it all.

Repeating what I've been saying on this blog: This work, as with many conceptual works and performance pieces, loses everything in the translation off-site. While photos and videos help, nothing comes close to walking in the room, sliding  past the intricate images, taking in the sound and welcoming the revelation that has come into your head. 

Dancing From the Ceiling

Time and again I find myself contextualizing my work by looking at parallel installations. This comes after a visit to the ArtWorks in Trenton last Friday and discussions with its exhibition director and my engineer buddy on how to hang this work.

The top of the historic building is supported by an iron frame, not always criss-crossing in a place convenient to where I want my pieces to hang. So this leaves me looking for either a rigger to install scaffolding from which to hang nine 35-pound panels or modifying the grid above by joining metal tubing and hanging the pieces from there.

The video shows the ceiling of ArtWorks. While some think it's gonna be a snap to join pipe and hang the panels, I'm already losing sleep. However, while I was originally thinking of having the LED guys in China install long cable on the panels, I'm gonna instead have them install lengths of 3 meters (nine feet) . From there, I'll attach hooks. To the pipes above, I'd install heavy-duty cable, finishing with hooks.

Borrowing generously from the blog, thisiscolossal.com, I've looked at the eight or so pages of their entries, poring over the methods artists used for hanging works. A white grid hangs from the ceiling of an art museum in Istanbul from which hundreds of books suspend.

I'm not wild about this particular work attributed to Hanif Shoaei. [He also works as a photographer in his native Iran, and creates quite inspiring panoramic works--another of my weaknesses, but that's another conversation.] 

Visiting the link allows the viewer to move the full 360. http://www.360cities.net/image/on-diving-board-iran

Many other suspended works are shown Colossal, and many, quite beautiful. But, I lean toward suspended sculptures that can be interacted with by walking through. 

High on the list are the rope sculptures suspended outdoors by Italian sculptor Moneyless. More of his work can be seen at his gallery's website, http://www.unurth.com/Moneyless-San-Francisco-Oakland; as well as his own, www.moneyless.it. The image I've included just whets the appetite. His site shows his thought process through drawings and paintings, in which he fuses perfect geometry in the haphazard natural environment as a rite of purification. Lovely work. 

Returning to the reasons why SIS must be a suspended work is the need for the viewer to walk around the panels. The installation's intent is for the viewer to accomplish a number for tasks: on a basic level, they are needed to trip the sensors otherwise the installation is silent. On the conceptual level, this work is for the viewer, through the abstract media, to connect to a remote nuance in their past. Putting images on pedestals makes it [already said] pedestrian!

The exhibition director at ArtWorks had voiced concern about bringing a scaffold from which to suspend the works: Any kind of roof overhead would render the space claustrophobic and ruin the sensation of light-emitting rectangles floating in mid-air. 

He's right. I'm boxing with this as my Kickstarter gets off to a very slow start. [Sigh].

The Biomorphic Form

With affordable 3D printers bursting on the scene, many artists' and designers' response is to utilize the replicating shape creating streams and chains that build on one another into more complex shapes, much the way the DNA molecule helixes itself into proteins that make up organisms.

One is Skylar Tibbits an artist, architect and scientist from the MIT Media lab and winner of the Ars Electronica Next Wave prize. He's the talk of the town with his inclusion in other shows, notably the one I saw at The New School's Gallery on Fifth Avenue.

Mr. Tibbits works with the forms and shapes making up his sculptures as building units; they strongly evoke biological forms, at first appearing haphazard and chaotic, but in fact, creating an order in which their irregularities make them more amenable, understandable and approachable. Suspending the works adds to their surreal quality; allowing the viewer to walk through their arrangement envelops them as if they are in a journey through themselves.

In February he presented his development of a self-building lab at a TED Talk in which the process to make his work goes one step further: works themselves are programmed at the material's structure level, and programming extends to the sculptures erecting themselves. The designer (or artist, if you will) programs the path of construction to achieve the shape or function by supplying a simple energy source. I venture to say the animation itself could be part of the art form.

The 3D lab recently unveiled at the school where I teach, The New York City College of Technology (City Tech), showed off their latest creations from the architecture school in a small but thorough exhibition in the lobby of Voorhees Hall at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge. Simple shapes, programmed to replicate and arrange themselves, achieve structures approaching protein arrangements and shell patterns, some suspended as if in a primordial soup of their own, calling back to the TWA Building at JFK.

One of the entryways to the main
lobby of the TWA Terminal, de-
signed by Eero Saarinen in 1956. He
surely didn't have a 3D printer, though
3D printers are being developed for
building construction.

Not using the 3D printer but utilizing enormous spaces and sometimes self-engineered machines, Tim Hawkinson creates suspended environments for viewers to walk through intestines (presumably his own, since much of his work is self-confronting). I've seen his shows at the Ace Gallery and the Whitney throughout the years; and like Mr. Tibbets, Hawkinson concerns himself with the creation process--calling it production is not appropriate here--going so far to design and build the machines that make his art.

Among my many favorites is a piece that employs a studded phonograph turntable that jolts the arm into writing his signature. A conveyor pulls the paper through a scissor set to a timer, shearing the slips of paper, landing in a pile, shown below. What's endearing is the use of analog components, kluged to make the machine/contraption/sculpture. It dissolves any glimmer of manufacture. Magnificent.

And while we haven't heard much of him here as yet, Jang Yong Son has created a collection of blissfully organic pieces from small steel tubular components welded together until large, intricate forms reminiscent of microscopic images of bacteria (referred to by the art blogging site ThisIsColossal.com as an amoeba) are formed.

The sculptor does not employ the 3D printer, crafting the scultures by hand. However, the precision--and size--of the work make it breathtaking, as do the irregularities that give it credence and affability. He too, suspends some of his sculptures, much to the delight of the viewer.

Bathsheba Grossman, an early 3D printer artist is a mathematician turned artist. Saying of herself that she explores the world between math and art, she takes inspiration from nature such as pollen, viruses, jelly fish. These seem to be the evocative shapes at the moment; but an argument awakens about the programming of the printer and production of the sculptures.

Tusk, by Bethsheba
Grossman

When a machine can be programmed to sculpt an image, is it a craft or an art? Does perfect symmetry turn the object into a mathematical rendering? Or, going further, is programming an irregularity part of the creating process rather than building or manufacturing process? Can art be a product? Of course. The persistent discussion of art and philosophy of the 20th Century was precisely where do we draw the line between the sacred art piece and its replication--and, is its value the ability to reach the masses?

Clones of the image are manufactured all time, as with photography, and the original item retains its status as art while multiples are editions. But when the originals themselves are created using programmable, predictable means, are the pieces art or objects and is their multiplication called prints or units? What's the difference between an item coming off a litho press, a Heidelberg or a MakerBot?

Hawkinson's autograph machine.

A stinging observation was made by Otto Rank in Art and Artist in 1932: I paraphrase: the difference between a craftsman and an artist is that a craftsman knows what the finished piece will look like before he or she begins the work; whereas the artist who has brought a vision to the work, is also motivated by an exploration stemming from the self.  This caveat lays a path away from the original vision of the finished piece during the process, thus creating an art piece, not making one.

Real Ice

Anytime I see anything about ice in art I can't resist. Guilty pleasure? hardly. Aside from the cringe-fest of ice sculptures often found at weddings in Brighton Beach reception halls, there are studios creating complex works in this medium side-by-side with providing clients with crafted items surrounding special events. Okamoto Studio, taking themselves quite seriously, have a handsome website--complete with a video--detailing their philosophy and mission, as well as showing off the work they've done for a list of pricey clients. Far more impressive is their artwork, like the conceptual piece above, a lovely crystal bicycle glowing on the streets of NYC. One of a pregnant woman is on their website.

Another discussion. Remembering when I photographed the many, many pieces of ice for SIS. One was a chunk of ice I'd made in the freezer. Big deal. But, it photographed well and appeared to be much bigger than it really was, though I didn't select is as part of the nine. Another was--I like the "was"--a frosted-over kitchen window I discovered one morning as dawn was breaking. The 4x5 was always set up at that time, so I dashed to get some diffuser on the outside of the window and came up with Ice 2.

During that same winter, I came across a piece of ice that had separated from the curb. Dirt and grime imbedded in it, I hauled it upstairs, back lit it, and shot it so quickly I didn't notice that the top edge of the ice was in the image, a wonderful, unexpected mistake, creating Ice 1.

Olafur Elaiasson's installation at PS1 MoMA is a story all its own. The highly prolific Icelandic artist's work is quite at home in New York where it was prominently featured at MoMA and PS1 in 2008, his

waterfalls along the East River also in 2008, and currently, the exhibition of "Your Waste of Time" at Expo1: New York at PS1 in Long Island City. The installation consists of pieces of ice from a glacier in his native Iceland, presumably 800 years old. Global environmental issues are a recurring theme in his work, as he makes use of Iceland's seismically active landscape as inspiration and subject matter, photographing glaciers, sink holes, volcano explosions and floods. His work then evolves into experiential spectacles that have been exhibited internationally.

As for "Your Waste of Time", friends both in and outside the art world have issues with Mr. Elaiasson's piece: is it art?  Is it authentic? NYT editor Ken Johnson reported at the show's opening: "I couldn't help wondering: how much power does it take to keep the room so cold? A wall label explains that the cooling machinery is powered by solar panels temporarily installaed on PS1's roof. Still, what's the project's carbon footprint? Does raising awareness of a phenomenon that most viewers already know of make it worth the energy drain? Whose time is being wasted?"

My thoughts extend from there: Isn't this environmental theft?

The memory banks immediately circuit to Andy Goldsworthy, the master of environmental works. Using only his hands in making works in the naturally occurring landscape, he lovingly crafts sculptures from sorting, placing and layering the materials available at the sculpture's location. The beautiful stele at the left was carved from a piece of ice with a stone. The conduit of glowing ice circling a tree are icicles melted together by some water and the warmth of Goldsworthy's fingers.

The 90-minute documentary of his work, Rivers and Tides is available on iTunes and BlueRay. It is on YouTube as well, but the resolution isn't great so below is the two-minute trailer. About a minute in, the artist's fingers are shown melting the icicles to create the tree spiral.

A contributing factor to the magic of his work is the crisp photography, which captures the fleeting moments of true sight-specific work.

Unexpectedly, using ice as part of artists' discourse on environmental ravage enters the conversation in other art pubs. SIS, being about memory recall, couldn't be farther from that discourse.

Further reading:
http://www.icefantasies.com
http://www.okamotostudionyc.com
http://www.olafureliasson.net
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/e/olafur_eliasson/index.html

Onward!

So, I've ordered the parts mentioned in this post: http://steeliceandstone.blogspot.com/2013/08/tic-toc.html and have gotten to work on assembling them.

Good news: This is going smoothly. I'm currently following the documentation on this page: http://hem.passagen.se/communication/speach.html to program and test out our recording chip, the  ISD4002. I'm going to be using the Arduino as the USB to Serial adapter for programming. I have a USB to Serial adapter, but the Arduino is already set up for easily plugging wires around, and my adapter is not. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/40601652/2013-08-23%2015.45.23.jpg I'd either have to buy/make an adapter to have longer leads going from my adapter, or take it apart and solder in some wires.

Once that's programmed and working we'll program the second chip (same circuit, different sound), and code the Arduino to control both chips via SPI. Make a button to start one, make a button to start the other, they work as desired and we move along to the motion sensing and remote control calibration.

Current state: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/40601652/2013-08-23%2015.21.34.jpg
The chips on the breadboard, going top to bottom are the ISD4002, the LM386, and the PIC16F84A.
The two green wires are place holders. One is for the second chip to interface with the LM386, the other is the output sound to be connected to a speaker.
I'm aware that the resistors have rather long wires. Once this is working, I'll consider snipping them. I'm fond of reusing old materials in new projects though, so I'll put thought into it later.

Bad news: My assortment of resistors and capacitors does not provide me with all of the same things in the diagrams found on the site documenting their use of the ISD40002. More specifically, I have none of the capacitors with the uF and nF values labeled (except 4.7K), and I don't have any 1.5K resistors. I'd rather stick to a setup that seems to have already worked instead of deviating/tweaking it more than I already have before I find a need to. So programming is stalled until I get my hands on those.

Getting Closer

As the relaunch date of my Kickstarter campaign approaches, I've been  increasing contact with several in the crowd funding circuit, asking for advice.

Crowd funding has become an industry, with many, many blogs, websites and marketing companies giving free advice or offering their services for a fee. I found this deplorable at first, because, as a fine artist, the crowd funding platform represents a way to get ideas realized in the ever-shrinking grant arena. And specifically for me, it's as difficult to find funding for highly experimental installation work as it is to find a venue to exhibit it. Now, to get a project funded I have to give someone a cut?!? But on exploration, employing a service might be advantageous because launching a project is enormously time-consuming in an area many artists abhor: Marketing.

A well-respected crowd funding consultant, Rose Spinelli (Crowdsourcing.org) commented on my posts on a LinkedIn Kickstarter forum that artists are often reluctant to launch a campaign and that perhaps writing about some of my experiences would reverse the trend. Talking to my artist buddies, culling stories and insights from around the web and adding snippets of my own, listed below are some reasons why I believe many fine artists often turn their backs on funding projects via social media platforms like KS or IGG:

1. Describing your project to convince a backer is different from describing it to convince a curator and artists don't know that. When writing about their work, artists concentrate on the meaning of the work, its intent and the concept behind what brought it into being. A backer is interested in that information, yes, but on a secondary or tertiary level. Rather, they want to be reasonably certain that if they give you money, the project will get done, hung, seen. The description must be geared toward them.

[Note: some say that patrons of platforms like KS rely very heavily on the rewards; and that installation art, performance art and fine art in general don't offer tenable goods in reward for a pledge. I disagree. If people who like art like your project and are convinced you'll bring it to fruition, they'll throw $10 at it to see it done. They believe in it and are happy to help you out, something much different from designers, inventors and their backers]

2. Putting in the time to build a social media following is something that many artists just don't have. Most are already working two jobs. See my post http://ow.ly/i/2tocC. I launched my first campaign in the spring which was only 28% funded before I took it down. During that time, it was even voted as a Staff Pick by KS. The percentage of people who contributed was exceedingly high, indicating an inspiring campaign. The problem was that not enough people saw that inspiring campaign.

So I embarked on building a following: a time-costly task. The tweets, the IMs, the chats, the follows and unfollows took hours out of each evening. But, using the computer as the tool to get my show done, I put in the time: emotional labor, as Seth Godin says, or, taking from Amanda Palmer: She'd rather sleep on a fan's couch if they had wifi rather than on a comfy bed in a hotel that didn't.

Has it paid off? Dunno if it will in KS terms. But something else has happened: a devoted awareness has developed for the installation itself--the core reason of making art. So, as artists grumble about one more thing to do on the road to making it (and I'm not going to go into what that means), they ought to take heart: lots of people found out about my work and they're excited about it. That cosmic energy always leads to something else, something good.

3. Putting together a video is sheer torture for almost all artists. While most artists have gotten to where they are because they possess some degree of extroverted self-centeredness, making love to the camera is tantamount to balancing a checkbook. They can hold conversations with anyone but a lens. My first launch's video had me introducing my work, and I hated it so much that I re-edited the whole thing with a voice-over. At a KS info-session I went to a few months ago, the verdict from hosts and guests alike was: get your face on it. Sigh.

4. The money chores and timing the launch around them is annoying to most artists. But, if cash is to be deposited to your account, grin and bear it.

5. The intense fear of asking others for money. Probably because many artists have done it before, they've had to field smirks and snorts of "Again?!?" Well, building a following is all about asking. And hand-in-hand with that, appreciating--every thing, every dime, every gesture as an acknowledgement of one's talent and ability. Perhaps in that light, some artists' fears and cynicism may melt away.

6. Having to explain "what went wrong." If goal isn't reached, "Again?" comes up, one more time. It's ego slashing. But sometimes that's all an artist has to keep going. It's the one thing that can't be taken away by anyone. Nothing wrong with a calloused ego as long as it's still there.

So where does that leave me, SIS and Kickstarter? I'll be talking about this more in the coming weeks. For now, please consider all the above as a chapter in my climb up the rocky ledge with the rain beating my face and a knife clenched in my teeth: sooner or later I'll get to the top.

Tic-toc...

So the obstacles that we've been encountering with the Arduino and the interleaving/mixing of the audio tracks may be solved, but as with any real-world project there are time constraints and the clock's ticking is getting louder. All of the devices should be up and running within 2 weeks' time.

So, we're ditching the audio shield due to it's slow speed and the real time digital mixing, for now. Instead, we'll be working with the high speed processing of the ISD4002 ChipCorder(R) that works with real time audio for playback and recording. The beauty of the device is that:

1. It has built-in anti-aliasing and smoothing filters.
2. A four-wire SPI interface.
3. The family offers a variety of storage space and sampling rates.
4. Most importantly, there is a circuit for directly uploading a WAV file onto the chip. Though it's programmed through a serial port, there are USB-to-serial adapters available.

Ideally, we'd just use one microcontroller to program the sound chip, calibrate the sensors, and control the active system, but due to the lack of time, we'll use one microcontroller, the PIC16F84A (one of my personal favorites) for the programming of the sound chips. The calibration and control of the whole system may be done through the Arduino, so long as we have available 4 inputs (2 for sensors and 2 for the sound chips) and 2 outputs (for triggering the sound chips). The Arduino has numerous multipurpose pins, so that's definitely not an issue. The calibration of the sensors can be done externally with a rheostat or internally with the use of an additional analog input pin.

The main thing is that the mixing of the two audio sounds will be done by a LM386 set up as a summer or with a splitter/combiner.

The first prototype should be set up on a breadboard just to show feasibility. After that, we may decide to create custom soldered boards, but I think sticking to breadboards for now would lead to very quick and efficient production. If we want to beautify it, we can always place the boards inside a project box.

There was talk about having the boards communicate with each other, but we'll leave that for later, if there's time for it.

Be Prepared

The little exhibition of the SIS prototype at Bohemian Hall last week woke a sweet memory of what it's like to get your show on the road. ArtLab Trenton is on my mind on a daily basis. Site-specific artists like me learn all about the ordeal fast but the laundry list is worth talking about here for those just getting their feet wet.

Having exhibited far from home in Ohio, Amsterdam and Germany, different snippets to be called upon when crafting a TO-DO list:

1. Go to the venue around four days in advance. Make a note of:

     a) Parking in the area, far it is from the venue, how much it costs and if they give discounts because you're working in the venue.

     b) Does public transportation service the venue in case you can't get a ride or renting a car is out of the question? (Getting a car far from an airport isn't always as easy as you think)

     c) Hardware (or electronics or art supply or stationary) store in the area and their store hours (important if you're in Europe).

     d) Assistants you can hire to help you. Sometimes the gallery only helps you out when your stuff is already in the door. Ask the venue or do some homework in advance; post an ad/FB/Tw. I found a photo assistant in Amsterdam to help me put the installation together. We had agreed on his day rate, but he had so much fun, he cut me a break.

     e) The office(s) of the transportation company if your stuff is being shipped. There are many ways to ship crated artworks cheaply, some you wouldn't expect. But you have to be knowledgeable of what the drop-off/pick-up depot is, especially if you're on a tight deadline.
    Some things tried and tested:
http://postcalc.usps.com is postal calculator for large packages, use the last tab on the right. I shipped panoramic photographs ( 20 x 50 inches!) to Oklahoma, standard, taking a week, for around $ 25.00. Only $ 50 for 2-day delivery. Not bad.
http://pe.usps.com/text/dmm100/choosing-service.htm This is for retail service and,
https://www.usps.com/business/why-choose-usps.htm? is for B-2-B.
This might be useful if you have to ship a lot of small packages. I'm looking into this for when I ship my Kickstarter rewards [Wishful thinking, but if I make goal my time will be limited, so it's best to be prepared. Five minutes of research now...]
http://www.express1.com. I haven't tried these guys, but if you're not a do-it-yourselfer, they're worth looking into as an intermediary for USPS.
http://www.uship.com/cheap-discount-shipping/ This is a handy service for anything shipped within the US. If there's extra room on a truck going to your destination, you can score a cheap shipping price for large or heavy items that would be expensive on FedEx Freight or UPS. Do some research and you can really save, even with insurance.














f) Get your own crate and pack it yourself. Check out http://www.quickcrate.com.

g) If you're showing abroad, find out the customs rules as well as the location and office hours of the nearest US General Consul. When I showed in Amsterdam, the well-paid shipping company I used neglected to fill out the proper papers (they had written my crate up as a shipment, as if my work was a big piece of luggage). Dutch customs at Schripol wanted import duty for artwork. (Holy sssitt!) So I found myself filling out import/export papers at the US Consulate after spending the morning on the phone with the Embassy at The Hague. The Dutch stevedores are awesome and I still have my Customs House clearance badge, but I could have done without the stress. And, I when heard the Germans are just as tough, I snuck my work under my arm rolled up in a tube and shipped the electronics as a gift to a friend.

The beloved train station of Düsseldorf,
my control room in the Fatherland, photo-
graphed on an unusually sunny day.

      h) Food. What if you need a bite to eat and you're short on time? You might say "I'll eat anything, anywhere" but, it's easier if you know where to get it. I couldn't get a cup of coffee without walking four blocks on New York City's Upper East Side on a Sunday at 6 AM. 7 AM, another story. But I lost an hour. And, often you have to feed the assistant. Really think about this if you're showing in an area where you have to drive to everything (my host in Ohio had amazing time and patience, shuttling me around) or if you're in an area that wakes up later than you'd like (trust me, the train stations in Europe become your HQs).

Under Construction

So what have we got?

More parts, I know what doesn't work, and I'm trying to figure out what I think will work.

Parts!

We have our speaker bar by Vizio:










http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7731416&csid=_61
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/40601652/2013-07-29%2018.39.44-2.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/40601652/2013-07-29%2018.41.31.jpg

Our power strip/supply by Belkin:









http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3839636&csid=_61
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/40601652/2013-07-29%2018.49.07.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/40601652/2013-07-29%2018.49.23.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/40601652/2013-07-29%2018.49.37-2.jpg

And our remote control by RCA: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4456088&SRCCODE=WEBGOOPA&cm_mmc_o=mH4CjC7BBTkwCjCV1-CjCE&gclid=CICl_4CX5LcCFSdnOgodRXwA2g

Now, I tried soldering the motion sensors first. This resulted in a bad but not catastrophic case of wrong tool for the job. We have pins crossing: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/40601652/2013-08-04%2015.49.20.jpg

I was following the tutorial Adafruit provided for dealing with chips of this size, except one important part. The soldering iron. My tip's not small enough. But that's ok right? I figured "What if I just tin all of the contacts before putting the chip in place, and then heat each pin until the solder melts?" https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/40601652/2013-08-04%2015.57.27.jpg well that's a bad idea for two reasons. 1: It doesn't work that way, you need need need need neeeeed a fine tipped iron. 2: Soldering things by pressing on top of the wire/lead/pin doesn't work very well. You might end up warping the pin, and the solder won't flow into place properly.

I spoke with Professor Marantz and he affirmed that a fine tipped soldering iron is a necessity, and told me to get a tip from Radioshack. Which actually means I'm going to have to get a different soldering iron. I got mine from the near by hardware store (not Radioshack) and the only tip I can find is this: http://www.allspec.com/products/Weller/Soldering_and_Rework%7CPortable_Soldering_Equipment%7CSOL-27/BP1.html which is what I'm already using. My other alternative is to scour the internet for a tip for my really old soldering iron which I can't make out any manufacturer information on, or maybe to get a hot air gun. That might make the whole pre tinned contacts thing work.

Now, code. Remember that method for handling sound involving alternating between the sound buffers as rapidly as possible? Not happening. I got it to "work" and it sounds worse than I thought. Reading from file A and playing it, then reading from file B and playing it only works ok if you have a delay of 15 milliseconds or more between switching. Below that, you'll hear something that sounds like a corrupt recording of someone with the hiccups. If you here anything at all. With 8 milliseconds of delay or less, you're lucky if you hear anything.

Not all is bad though! Remember how I mentioned using code from Audacity? I looked into how it exports sound and downloaded its code. Lo and behold, there's an FAQ on their wiki, and it answers my question in theory: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/HowAudacityWorks all the way at the very bottom we have
"What is the algorithm used by Audacity to mix separate sound tracks (i.e. what is the process of merging the tracks to a single one when the "Mix and Render" command is used)?"

Perfect! The part of the answer I care about is:
"Mixing is just addition. The waveforms show the air pressure moment by moment. If there are two sounds at the same time then the air pressures add. So we just add the waveform values."
Which is excellent. So I set up the code to read from both files, add the values of the data read, and feed that to the decoder on the music shield. But before running it, I realize "Wait, these are MP3s, they're compressed, just adding the data wont do it." and try it anyway for the hell of it. It was amusing. Have you ever had a pair of headphones messed up in such a way/plugged in just wrong enough that you here only one side and it's all garbled? Now imagine that in both ears. That's what happens.

So I convert the files to .wav and try again. Now I hear nothing. I realized that even though .wav is raw and usually uncompressed, it's still digital and has a file structure, waveforms are analogue. Adding the buffers that I read from each file won't do the job.

After some poking around, I found this! https://github.com/TMRh20/TMRpcm code meant to play .wav files with minimal hardware (an SD card and no more). It outputs through the Arduino's PWM pins (pulse width modulation), which means I can figure out something resembling a wave form to work with (PWM can be used to fake analogue output). All I need to do is find where in the code data gets sent to the pins, and that'll be my wave form. If this can make analogue sense of a digital file, it can do the reverse too.

And that's where I'm at now.

Until next time!

Things to do:

1. Fiddle with that library until it works or until I don't think it'll work
2. Separate the pins on the motion sensor module.
3. Aquire as close to a needle point soldering iron as I can find.
4. Get the Arduino to read commands from the remote control.

Together and Separately

At the Serpentine Gallery in London last week, Pavilion, the commissioned architectural sculpture was unveiled amid a flurry of reviews and interviews. Sou Fujimoto, the architect who accepted the commission, talked about the work as a cloud, and others, picking up on it, equated it to the computing Cloud, hovering over us gently, surreptitiously.

The environment--it's too big to be a sculpture and calling it a construction would be unfair, is made up of hundreds of latices welded carefully together to create an elegant grid. It was built in Japan and England and eased by crane to its place in the Serpentine's front yard where it is on exhibit until September. Tables and chairs add a café effect (which I don't think is at all necessary) and, to adapt it to the sometimes rainy British weather, transparent discs were placed over certain parts of it to stop rain from soaking the ground. Some cloud. I would have left it alone. Rain falls from clouds after all, right?

Conspicuously absent from the reviews is the sound and light element, developed by United Visual Artists, UVA, a London-based art, design and fabrication company that got its start making sets for musical performances and now accepts commissions to create public art installations.

Turns out Mr. Fujimoto's Pavilion at night glows with flashes of light and the sounds of small electrical explosions akin to bursts of lightning. In UVA's description:

"As an event, UVA transformed Sou Fujimoto's summer pavilion bringing the cloud-like structure to life with an electrical storm. Their performative installation aims to make the architecture "breathe", awakening a character and energy, seemingly from within. For this piece UVS reference their past works which, similar to Fujimoto's, rely on geometric foundations and interests".

OK, but I don't get what the criteria for the energy release, and information has thus far been absent. News outlets referred it as "The Summer Party", however it's hasn't been noted if the light and sound show was a one-time event or whether it will continue for the duration of the exhibition.

UVA, speaking of itself in the plural, touches upon their past work, an LED cube installed in Brooklyn Bridge Park a few years ago. The building shells that were once the tobacco warehouses on the banks of the East River housed a giant cube made up of computer-driven illuminated LED panels set to the compositions of sound artist Scanner (Robin Rimbaud). In it, the computer programmed the modulating light and sound. Unlike Fujimoto's carefully considered structure at the Serpentine, Origin is a latticed cube in various colors, its shape constantly transformed by the fluctuating lights.

Not sure if either of the two pieces is interactive. True, the spectators are engaged, however I don't see how the viewers influence the operation--the expression, if you will, of that engagement. Comments welcome.

Further reading:
http://www.archdaily.com/388267/fujimoto-s-serpentine-pavilion-through-the-lens-of-james-aiken/
http://www.serpentinegallery.org/2013/02/sou_fujimoto_to_design_serpentine_gallery_pavilion_2013.html