Okay day three. I had a vision in the shower. That’s usually how it happens. Change of plans somewhat. Today I shifted focus from gestural mapping cueing to programming. The “ModBots” / or the bots that are mainly percussive and tend to hang from the ceiling at LEMURplex / are easy enough to control using simple thresholding detection while wearing the TwitchSet. But the bots with notes, i.e. the XyloBot and the GtrBot are much harder for me to control with any sort of fine resolution. The GtrBot, for example, takes MIDI notes of 36-81, which means 45 note resolution. I had been trying to control notes variations using one axis of the TriAx accelerometers on the TwitchSet. An accelerometer is not a tilt switch and is a bad substitute for one in this case of trying to get 45 steps of resolution with a 180˚ rotation of my shaky hand.
Besides, I’m not a musician. I’m not going to become a musician just because I have the pleasure of spending the next two weeks with musical robots. I’ve decided to focus on the performative aspect of why I’m doing the residency. Hell yes. I think I’ve got something going here. Below is a short clip documenting the partial results of today’s programming. I didn’t write the song. And I’m not going to tell you what song it is based on, or who wrote it. That’s the surprise for the performance. In progress:
Recently I spent my first significant amount of time at LEMURplex in Brooklyn as part of my April residency in preperation for the Resident show on Friday, May 2nd. I’m not great with Max/MSP for logic, which seems to be the biggest hurdle for me right now. That and not possessing the ability to write music are bringing me down. I will not rest though. Hopefully I’ll use these obstacles to make more interesting work. Here’s a video of yesterday’s experiments:
April showers bring May flowers musical robots. I am fortunate enough to be a ReSiDeNt at LEMURplex this month in Brooklyn. LEMUR stands for the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots. Um….could there be a more perfect residency? I get to interface with their xylobot, guitarbot, hydrobots, and modbots. I’m planning on using the Twitchset and Performoshoes (together)as a starting-off point with the bots. I also plan on doing a lot with the fiddle~ object. Fellow ITPer and now full time LEMURer, Leif gave me a breif walk-through of the space yesterday. I’ll be setting up another blog over at LEMUR to document my stuffs. Here we go…
Word. I was incredibled to see this spread about Dorkbot in the new issue of Art Review. I knew it was coming out, I just didn’t know it would be so dope. Regine Debatty wrote it, Douglas Repetto makes the Dorkbot wonderful, and A.J.J. Davis took this photo.
“The 1492nd dorkbot-nyc meeting will take place at 7pm on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 at Location One in SoHo.” And I’ll be showing my stuff! Experimental Devices for Performance comes out out of it’s fall hiatus and rears it’s experimental head to the SoHo masses. I’ll be featured with the other “Humid and Tropical” presenters Ted Johnson and Fiona Hallinan (aka Fink). Ted will be talking about “how to build your own secret laboratory in a small NYC-sized space and at a low cost, and thereby produce silly and useless gadgets” and Fiona “would like to tell a story about [her] first interactive experience between computers and people, which occurred when [she] was twelve years old.” I have no idea what to expect except that it’s free and everyone seems really very nice. So please come on out! Free (((BlinkCam))) pics! (see below)
Nerrrrvous. I’ll be performing a wondrous phonetically-backwards performance piece about everything-in-my-life-ever to kick off the Prelude Festival at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center (located at The Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue (at 34 Street)) on Wednesday the 26th around 8:00pm. The night starts at 6:30 with “a discussion on the process of bringing challenging new work to broader audiences and the effects this process has on artists and institutions. Panelists include: Sarah Benson, Adam Bock, Jim Nicola, and Alex Timbers with moderator David Cote.” My short performance is to follow the discussion. A reception with then follow me. Looks like 31Down and The Laboratory Theater will both have work in the festival this year. The whole thing is free! .ereht uoy ees ot epoh. try it…
The Solar Bikini is now in the hands of the Greylock Arts Gallery in Adams, MA as part of the Sustainable Energy Art show there along with several other sustainable ITP projects. Journalist John E. Mitchell of the North Adams Transcript wrote what I think is hands-down the best article on the Bikini yet (link). In other news(papers), MaryJane Weedman (yes) of the WSJ or Washington Square Jounal wrote up this little article on the Bikini this weekend as well. Thanks journalists! I can’t wait to see where the bikini will end up next. The South American Rainforests? The rumors may be true.
I’ll be in LA this morning (right now I’m in NYC) to shoot a segment for the reality TV show, The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency. Janice wants to turn her agency green. I’m there to help, and to get het into the solar bikini. I’ll be back in NYC tonight, god willing. More to come.
It’s the SIGGRAPH UnRavel festival 2007 in sunny San Diego California! I just wish I was actually there. I’m doing some really artsy shit in Chicago, but thanks to some last minute favors from great friends, it looks like everything is working out alright for the solar bikini during this two-day event. A nice spread this morning on the BBC’s website including othe ITPers Jenny Chowdhury and Joo Youn Paek. I can’t wait to roll out the iDrink!
Okay day three. I had a vision in the shower. That’s usually how it happens. Change of plans somewhat. Today I shifted focus from gestural mapping cueing to programming. The “ModBots” / or the bots that are mainly percussive and tend to hang from the ceiling at LEMURplex / are easy enough to control using simple thresholding detection while wearing the TwitchSet. But the bots with notes, i.e. the XyloBot and the GtrBot are much harder for me to control with any sort of fine resolution. The GtrBot, for example, takes MIDI notes of 36-81, which means 45 note resolution. I had been trying to control notes variations using one axis of the TriAx accelerometers on the TwitchSet. An accelerometer is not a tilt switch and is a bad substitute for one in this case of trying to get 45 steps of resolution with a 180˚ rotation of my shaky hand.
April showers bring May 
It’s the