It’s twenty minutes before door open when Vince, the show curator, looks me in the eye and says, “Crunch time.” On the table, the chandelier is gutted, I am applying solder and electrical tape to wrap the half dozen wires into one coherent chunk of copper, to run into the laptop adapter that I’ve hacked as to operate as the power supply.
I nod, I don’t want to retort that I have been in crunch time for the last three days, in preparation for my piece, “Key Piece of My Heart” for the annual NYC Resistor Interactive Show.
Often people inquire about membership, sometimes as a mere curiosity or otherwise stemming from a sincere desire to join our community.
Selection is not a rigid process. In part, we offer nearly all the resources that we have to the public, so often, there isn’t much upside to the fees, responsibilities, and commitment that accompany membership.
But most importantly, to us, Resistor is home. We tightly maintain our community. We often use a metaphor that membership is akin to giving that person a key to our apartment, and that functionally becomes true when, as part of onboarding, we present keys to the space, allowing all members unlimited access to space.
When the locks downstairs were changed, all our old keys were swapped out. I collected them, attracted to their immediate devaluation as functional tools, but maintaining a level of attachment to their metaphorical resonance. These were a physical representation of our membership. But for a year, they sat on the shelf on my locker, without a home.
The clarity around this work came as Vince called for projects for our annual Interactive Show, a fundraising party where we showcase all sorts of art pieces, intersecting technology and art. A thought struck me, that I could put the keys on a chandelier.
While wrapping the keys around the ring that would sit on the chandelier, I was concerned with the keys getting tangled and knotted. Keegan and Adela offered advice to weigh the keys, and create additional stability with triangles. I also learned two new knots, one to tie the keys to the ring and another to wrap the ring with string to secure the keys in place.
Rafi helped me unscrewing the brackets that held the old lightbulbs. I made a mistake in removing about half the copper wires threaded through the arms, before realizing I would probably need to replace those later.
I teach Adela how to solder the wires to the LED strips, and she helps wrap the LEDs to center the lights. We laugh and joke with Lydia and Missy, who are working on the LED cube panel next to us.
I print bulbs on the 3D printer. I model the sphere myself in AutoCAD, which I learned in a class here.
Cyril, Gene, and Missy offer input on power, we settle on a laptop adapter with a circle pin. I test the amperage to a LED strip to know if I am within the limits. Vince helps me source an adapter, after I blow out the first one that Gene gets me on the micrometer and then I bike to Microcenter, just to not find one.
I have experienced making art as an iterative process, as solving unforeseen obstacles, as pivoting around experiences, as integrating evolutions.
Which has allowed me more resilience around set backs and feedback. Leveraging the community allowed me to learn quickly from others who had experienced a similar thing, and combining their knowledge made my final result better.
Vince tells me after the show, that he had no faith I would finish the project in time, but after, he thought my piece was his favorite in the show.
It’s most important resonance for me is how it is the cumulative of our collective experience.
Now it lives in Resistor, and I’m really proud to have joined all the art that already exists in the space, another piece of the cumulative collective of our experiences.
