Edith Kollath is a Resistor who is at the crossroads of art and microcontroller technology. She made the most beautiful books that breathe.
Besides being beautiful objects, this show is also about the TSA. On a trip home to show the books in Germany, the TSA detained her and took the books from her. The story is bizarre and strange and reflects the very weird times we live in today.
Edith is showing the books until December 14th in the damstuhltrager gallery and if you’re in NYC, go see the show and if you collect contemporary art or are just as stunned as I am by their breathing, buy them. (you’ll have the most wonderful breathing bookshelves.)
Devon Jones needed a robot to do his bidding and so he made a computer controlled dremel. He found an instructable by Stuart McFarlan and created it using a mix of aluminum stock, an inexpensive wood called MDF, and skate bearings.
It now works so he’s going to be able to use the subtractive process, which means he can take away all the parts of the material that are not his thing, to create whatever he can imagine.
I’m publishing a video everyday. Catch them all over on my blog.
All hail Make Blog! Collin Cunningham wrote a fantastic post about all the places on the inernets to buy all different sizes, shapes and colors of Arduinos, Arduino related boards, Arduino related books, and Arduino kits. Our very own NYCR’s Zach Hoeken’s ‘Danger Shield’ is on the list too. It’s a great collection that you should bookmark for your next projects & purchases or just email it to St. Nick so he knows what you want for the holidays. The Arduino Gift Guide.
Processing 1.0 launched today! Congrats to Casey Reas, Ben Fry and everyone else who has been instrumental on the project. You can get the new, fancy, 1.0 version at http://www.processing.org/download. I was lucky enough to meet with Casey on my last trip out to UCLA and as we chatted about the Processing and the upcoming 1.0 launch he said: ‘You know the best part about launching a 1.0? It means that we get to start working on 2.0’.
This past Saturday, I stopped in at NYC Resistor looking to really start learning how to program electronics using the Arduino platform. I’d taken Zach’s Intro to Arduino “If funky get loopy” course (he says there will be more after the new year!), but hadn’t really made any of my own projects. Figuring that Raphael’s twitchie kit had some good servos and a little Ardunio based board in it, I started taking apart.
It turns out that Bre was already in the middle of a similar project, and had fashioned a DIY robotic arm out of servos, a twitchie board (which uses the same firmware as the Lilypad) and Popsicle sticks. We joined forces and put together this amazing little thing:
We hacked an old Atari joystick to control the arm, and each servo is manipulated in turn as you press the red button. It really was a ton of fun to bring this project together, and I’m amazed at what we did in a few hours. Huge thanks to Bre for having the hardware all set to go and to Raph for his awesome Twitchie kit and all his advice along the way.
Bre is debating keeping the popsicle stick aesthetic or making a slick laser-cut body, and is taking votes via comments on his blog. Let him know what you think!
By the way – this video is part of Bre’s excellent “Things” series, where he features a new awesome thing each day. You can check out the archives at bre.blip.tv, or Subscribe in itunes to get new episodes as they come out!
As Eric Beug (pictured above with me) put it so well, ‘XBee Sunday. XBee is the new football.’ NYCR was full of lots of hackery today including Bre’s laazzzzooorrr class, Zach’s ‘peristaltic pump’ and Phooky’s ‘crawling deathbot’.
I know that this is late notice by now, but I’d like to invite you -as a follow up on my post about my confiscated breathing books – to our opening tomorrow:
Come to see the evidence and have a drink with us this Saturday, Nov 22nd in Williamsburg at Dam, Stuhltrager Gallery (38 Marcy/corner of Hope, www.damstuhltrager.com)
Breathing books by Edith Kollath and creepy creatures by Raphael Abrams.
Readings by Teju Cole, Carey Wallace, Wah-Ming Chang & Madhu Kaza at 9pm.
Marisa Olsen pointed me to this interesting panel. I won’t be in the country, but I hope someone can go and report back as to how it went!
Craft Hackers is a panel discussion among artists who use crafting techniques to explore high-tech culture and the relationship between needlework and computer programming. Panelists include Cat Mazza, who translates moving images into stills knit in yarn; Christy Matson, who uses Jacquard Looms (some of the earliest computers) to knit landscape images from computer games; Ben Fino-Radin, whose witty needlepoint sculptures translate the World Wide Web into yarn and plastic, one pixel at a time; and Cody Trepte, whose embroidery of retired computer punch cards rekindles an old-fashioned love affair with the hand of the artist.
If you didn’t get a chance to sign up for Saturday’s class, on Sunday, November 23nd, you can harness the power of an Eplilog 35 Watt Laser! In this class you’ll learn everything you need to know to make the ideas in your head become a reality with a laser.
In this two hour class, we’ll walk through all the steps from idea to pressing the “go” button on the laser. We’ll cover safety and basic design skills in Inkscape, the open source vector editor and you’ll learn how to do a burninate test to find out if something is laserable.
After learning the basics, each student will create their own design and lasercut it on the laser! A $10 lab fee is included in the ticket price and covers 12″ x 12″ of 1/8″ acrylic and time on the laser cutter to cut and etch it. Bring a laptop if you’ve got one and design ideas for your own holiday decorations.
Even though this class doesn’t start insanely early, I will be providing bagels and cream cheese. Give me a heads up if you are a vegan and I’ll make sure to have some jam or tofu cream cheese!
