Category Archives: pcomp

pcomp, Physical Computing

“Academics get paid for being clever, not for being right.” – Don Norman 2011

We had some reading to do for class. It wasn’t only that I took exception to dated text. I  get persnickety when it comes to presenting ideas regarding art, design, history, politics, and technology to artists.   Then again some say I am persnickety in general.  Anyway, the first reading was Don Norman...

Don Norman -- Human Centered Design Professor Emeritus Departments of Cognitive Science and Psychology, UCSD "People Propose, Science Studies, Technology Conforms" My person-centered motto for the 21st century. (Also the epilog of "Things that make us smart." Addison-Wesley, 1993.)

I was bored to tears by the insipid, clever, whining of Don Norman about design.  Reading Norman was reminiscent of someone attempting to divert accountability for keyboard entry errors (due to a lack of understanding) by referring to anomalous events as computer “glitches.”   His tone is not dissimilar from the individuals  who detonated ALL of the fireworks at once for the 2012 Fourth of July display in San Diego (call it a case of premature detonation) and blamed it on a “glitch.”

“Glitches” went out as an excuse for failure by all except the most non-technical illiterati after the release of MS-DOS 2.0 right after the, “dog ate my homework.”  Though a case might be made for persistent glitches in Windows operating systems right up to XP service pack 2.

As usual, I Googled the writer.   On his UCSD teaching site Professor Norman had this to say:  “Today’s technology, especially that of the Personal Computer, is too complex.  But the potential is enormous. ”   You would have thought that an MIT EE & Computer Science graduate would have been a bit more forward thinking.  Professor Norman was certainly correct about the potential of the PC, even if he failed to grasp what was so unique about the protean nature of  microprocessors.

Creating the mantle of cognitive scientist, he was able to focus on exploiting the insecurities of others of his generation – and his seniors.  He made a career out of being a whiner: inventing problems was a realized necessity for his job:

“Academics get paid for being clever, not for being right.”   –  Don Norman, 2011

Professor Norman’s quote is a good lead in to what I thought while reading Bret Victor’s, “Brief Rant on the Future.”    Yes, I agree with a possible interface of the hand with accompanying gestures.

Let us bourree beyond our cro-Magnon ancestry, beyond Bret Victor and his hammer.  What of speech as an interface?  I talk to the machine, it talks back to me (ideally telling me that it did what I asked).  If Apple quit being so Microsoft these days, maybe they would fix Siri and we would be one step closer to a better interface for everyday uses.

Or how about multiple manners of human-machine interface?  Why must there be an exclusive interface?  What ever happened to choice?   In my studio I have eleven hammers, each one for a different job.  I cannot use a sledge hammer to drive a tack (accurately, anyway), any more than I can use a ball peen hammer to drive a wedge to split a log: match the tool to the task.

While the future is never what anyone says its going to be, the seeds for tomorrow are  around us now.  Engineers and designers will continue to experiment and innovate.  Today’s machines will evolve in order to successfully compete in the global marketplace.  Ultimately it will be the customer who will determine the evolutionary paths of products.

About a year ago I was complaining to an Apple technician about not having control over the system font size on the iPhone.  He patronizingly told me that Apple was planning on making smaller devices, not larger, and that I should look to another vendor for a phone.   Now Apple is planning on rolling out four and six inch phones in response to the pounding they are taking from Samsung and others.

Bummer that Apple has become so much like Microsoft.  But this is the fast moving near-present; not the future.

Genomes, pcomp, Physical Computing

The Body and the Future are Eclectic

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Here’s my two cents about tomorrowland: The future is in the transhuman.

Mankind has been struggling against the fetters of the flesh, the banal, the mundane since the discoveries of clothing, psychoactive drugs (including alcohol), body building, steroid use, meditation, and every manner of modification including neck stretching, teeth filing, skin coloring, scarification, tattoos, elective surgeries, the crippling of children to improve their careers as beggars, and more.

I am surrounded by a growing percentage of individuals visibly sporting more tattoos than traditional circus attractions and convicted felons. There is also a plethora of hardware hanging from forehead, lips, and nostrils – including hog rings (and that is only what is visible). In addition to piercings there are implants of every manner including dental, dermal, breast, calf, and buttock.  There are even the absolute creepiest DIYs for piercing of the male member.

Beyond the realm of vanity and elective mutilation, organ transplants are no longer uncommon, and growing replacement skin and organs is burgeoning technology: fiction’s fodder has become reality.

The first company which is able to receive FDA approval for an implantable computer interface is going to make a zillion dollars – even if it “may” cause brain tumors should the user exceed “casual use.”  The age of the megacorporation is upon the public and we are their food.

The discovery of the point contact transistor in 1947 New Jersey was less than a hundred years ago.  Watson and Crick published their historic work in 1953.  Developments in genetic engineering are more impressive than those of computer technology.  However it is because of computer technology that the rate of contemporary genetics research is possible.

Organic processes (like evolution) are rarely clean, neat, or isolated. Almost without realizing it as such, we are well into the age of the Transhuman:

My friend Stelarc could be correct; transhumanism may be where we are heading. The first person to figure out how to implant/grow animal features (plates, scales, fur, feathers, and/or muscle mass) in human beings will be a zillionaire.  Smeary tattoos and non-essential holes in the flesh will be the equivalent of bell bottoms and  bobby socks.

E-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y wants to be something more than what they are now. Some even want to be machines and/or have sex with them.  It could even be that AI will remove the human from the equation of the future altogether.

Machines will evolve. Clever people will make clever products and market them in clever fashion. That’s the way things work.

In a world of posers, whiners, and “wanna-bes,” David Cronenberg may be up to something. Any volunteers?

 

3D, NYC, pcomp, Physical Computing, SVA

Past as Prologue

In preparation of an impending move back to New York in July of 2012, I made the difficult decision to clean my studio.  Part of what wound up as trash included floppy disks (8, 5.25 and 3.5 inch!),  one-off prototype circuits, models, and materials from my teaching days at New York City’s School of Visual Arts (SVA).  These included boxes containing experimental efforts and research into 3D scanning, laser cutting, CNC machining, stereolithography,  water-jet cutting, and wax-jet printing as new tools for artists.   As someone whose instinct is to save nearly everything of a technological nature (all my work and parts I use to make work!), I thought I was being extraordinarily adult with what was a very difficult purge of the past.

Ironically, a few days later and the night before that week’s trash pickup, I received an email from an author’s representative in the UK asking for information on my now historic work in 3D printing.  After some seriously panicked dumpster diving, I was able to salvage one wax-jet fabricated piece whose photo made it into Stephen Hoskins’s  new book.

My interests have shifted over the years and I did not know of Stephen or his work. The video below is a terrific introduction to his unique specialization and center:

I am honored to have work included in this book and I want to thank two very good friends who helped to shape this period of my life: Timothy Binkley and Bruce Wands.

Tim Binkley’s invitation to teach in SVA’s MFA program made many things possible.  Intimidated by then giant CRTs and the unnerving silence of Photoshop temple devotees  I was very happy when  I was allocated a terrific little space to use as a classroom.   It was a corner room, no heat, windows with wire in the glass, on a floor above the “serious fine artists” where I developed and taught “Electronic Engineering for Artists,” one of the first – if not the first – of its kind in an art or engineering school.

Bruce Wands was the department chair at SVA’s BFA Computer Art Department and the visionary who gave the “Digital Sculpture” class a chance.  Bruce was able to appropriate the funds not only run the class (first semester, three students) but to also purchase a CNC machine, and secure three site licenses of AutoCAD.   The machine – and my classroom – inhabited a closet at the end of a hall.

Life has changed a lot since then.

3D-printing-hoskins-amazon

burning-man-92-hoskins

Machines, NYC, pcomp, Physical Computing

Roach – B – Dead

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Our first project for class was a dream-it-up project. It didn’t have to work. We had to demonstrate the idea with a plausible story conveyed in a convincing manner. I don’t really think it’s my fault that most of my dreams are nightmares any more than I am responsible for my height or hair color.And so it came to pass that the first Physical Computing class/group project with Leslie Lin and Rodrigo Derteano was based upon experiences from living in New York City: Roach-B-Dead! An automated roach killing system that uses a hammer, wiper blade, and digital counter.
 Roach-B-Dead
Roach-B-Dead
 Roach-B-Dead
[quicktime]http://www.terezakis.org/pcom/roach-b-dead.mov[/quicktime]
Art, Design, Introduction to Computational Media, pcomp, Physical Computing

Introduction to Computational Media: Reactive Planar Dimension using Processing and a MacBook Pro

In the 1990s I created a series of grid structures using acid-etched industrial steel parts.  A sensor was located at each intersection.

l’Autre, Terezakis, Here Gallery and performance space, 1996

They were all connected with a combination of RJ11 and RJ45 connectors and appropriate cable. For ease of touring and installations, I designed six grids to be 48″ x 96″.  Plywood, sheetrock, and other building materials in the United States typically max out at those two dimensions.   Correctly fabricated the modules would have easily fit in cargo vans, elevators, and trucks.   Much to my chagrin, I did not factor in the additoinal length caused by the couplings and the additional offset of the pipe.  This caused some extra challenges. But that’s for a different text.

The grid structures were created for people to be able to play music and/or poetry either in a random manner or by controlling where their shadows fell on the grid. In this manner they could then control the placement and pattern of sounds or words if they chose.

I always liked the idea of creating participatory volumes and felt that their must be a better way to get control signals to the computer.

Processing and the availability of low cost web cameras would seem to be one way to update the mechanics of the artwork.

Serial port communication is a lot like it was in the 1990s.  Except that it is more robust, runs over a USB (then non-existent!) cable, has relaible physical connectors,  and Apple computers which can do things undreamt of back then.   The Arduino was essential in making this project work.  (This seemed like a heavy-handed solution for the task at hand. I can’t help but thing that a simple 16C58B could have given me the hardware interface I needed for this project.) I used the Arduino because I wanted the experience with the platform as well as the fact that its language is nearly identical to that of Processing.

A screen grab of the Arduino code appears below. In its uncommented out incarnation, the code allows me to see which outputs are firing and when. For the demonstration and testing I am using incandescent bulbs. Due to the heat they radiate, I prefer to have the lights “off” while waiting to trigger them using camera input.

LED test code for Arduino and AC power moduletest-test

Clicking on this link will open a new window with a screen cap showing the code testing with the laptop webcam. A white rectangle will appear with contiguous moving black segments, showing where my arm passes in front of the camera. (QT controller is at the bottom of the file.)

The above example is the code portion working. The file at this link shows the lights changing in response to the detected movement.

Peter Terezakis
ITP, Tisch School of the Arts
New York City