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

Report from Bohemian Hall

What a day!
Set up time was at 7 AM. Got my stuff to Bohemian Hall at 8:00, and I hung an LED from two light stands with a cross beam. Brought two lambdas, no sound. TEDxUES didn't want sound effects.

The sound would have been OK, though, since there were two intermissions and a lunch break. Doesn't matter, this prototyping was a wild success.

Lessons learned:
1) LED Panel can pick up air bubbles or moisture bubbles, making a white spot on the image. I had a kink in the neck for a while there, thinking that I had damaged at $300 Duratrans mounted on acrylic, but lifting the top panel with the mini suction removed it right away.

2) If the lambdas are brought out again for any reason, including a sale, they're going to have to cure so they don't crinkle. Remembering when I did SMV long ago, after I had wet-mounted the prints and let them dry, I rolled them for a number of days to allow the glue to stretch and rest. That's why they always framed as tight as a mirror and sagged only at BWAC because there is so much moisture there.

3) I must get to any and every exhibition venue more than once before any showing of this work. There is just too much involved, and the sound isn't even in the equation yet. And, very importantly, a new set of foam core prototypes have to be made. I haven't decided yet if I'll make them to their original size (48 x 60 inches--122 x 152 cm) or the new size, that of the LED, 36 x 47 inches (91.5 x 119 cm). Gotta think fast. I haven't gotten approval for another prototype phase at the Grace Gallery yet, but if I do, it'll be coming fast, along with working on the sound, the LED image processing and the Kickstarter.

Staircase in the first floor lobby. Note the glass etched
with poetry (both in English and Czech); a recurring
theme throughout the building. Photo by Pavel Semarak

In conclusion, I'm totally thrilled I did it. I met some kind, open-minded, open-hearted people, saw a new beautifully designed venue that combines traditional European elegance with smooth surfaces holding poems written in undulating typography, and listened to some truly generous, enlightened people talk about what charges their lives. Great.

Presentation is Everything

What a Mess! Can't bring that. 

In the scramble to get everything together for TEDxUES, I assumed that the nine foam core panels I'd planned on bringing were in perfect shape.

No Siree!

The reason is moot; I think it's due to the weather. They looked quite terrible, blistered and bubbled through. It doesn't matter. They're prototypes. However, the two panels that have the lambada are fine, so I'm bringing those along with the piéce de resistance, the LED!

The other night, walking home from
the subway, I saw a window dresser
carefully taping where she was going to
paint the floor of a pop-up store.  Would
anyone notice as they passed by?
The idea is for the viewer not to; just to
participate in the experience.

The image came in from Michigan and just holding it up to the window it looks awesome. It's going into the panel tonight and I'll post photos later. The leaflets were printed and they look great. I'm set with transportation so, I'm on a roll.

But here's a muse: Had I discovered the crumpled images earlier, I would have had six reprinted (nine minus the two lambdas and the LED) and spent the week tiling them to--perhaps even a new--foamboard. Yes, prototypes are just that; a learning experience. As I trundle through the steps in the production stage of the installation, the many stumblings are worked out, sometimes expensively, sometimes cost-free through tiny brain explosions. But their presentation must be flawless.

A second prototype phase is planned in the fall with the sound and the units in place, giving me time to redo the laser prints for that occasion.

TEDxUES

Days have been taken by an unexpected invitation to exhibit the prototype installation at a TEDx event this coming Sunday, August 4th at Bohemian Hall. A tweet from the TEDx asking if I could get my installation together and show up with it to the Bohemian Hall got me scrambling in fifth gear.

What is TEDx?

In their definition:

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that  bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At TEDxUpperEastSide, TEDTalks video and live speakers will combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. The TED conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program but individual TEDx events are self-organized.

Got the film proof from Michigan edited and uploaded; a new one is one its way in time the show. Got a van to schlep everything from my work lab in Brooklyn (at City Tech where I teach) and back. Got a brochure written, designed and printed so give out at the event. Got the nod from the folks at The Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association to deliver on Friday afternoon. Now all I need is the OK from the team leader at TEDxUES.

Went there this morning in the driving rain to see the location and it's totally awesome. The little vid below is the space in the back of the ballroom where, I'm assuming, SIS will reside for a day with me chatting it up with the 100 or so guests expected to hear a group of speakers discuss leadership, arts and culture, sustainability and education, just to name a few topics. A beautiful group of people to rub elbow with for an afternoon.