Shadow Hand

I recently heard from Maja kuzmanovic from FoAM. She is working on a project called lyt_A, a distance touch generator that takes the form of a two large 2D array walls of pneumatic actuators, as tall and wide as a person. When someone presses on the actuators on one wall, the corresponding actuators on the other wall push out.


This Shadow Hand is incredibly cool! The tendons are controlled by air muscles, also known as a McKibben actuator.

"Neurotic Santa" and Neodynium Magnets

Please excuse the lack of lip-sync in the YouTube conversion...



I picked up a bunch of neodynium magnets to make LED throwies at the next Dorkbot DC meeting.

My first PD Patch

While travelling recently, I decided to try Pure Data, the real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing. I first heard about PD at an I/O Media jam in Toronto. Here is a picture of my first patch, a recursive reberb (click to expand):



Probably the best way to learn about PD is to read the free online book The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music. I'm slowly making my way through it.

Your Two Cents Progress

"Your Two Cents" is a collaborative work I am doing with Philip Kohn, Brian Judy, and Claudia Vess. The work will be in a kiosk, and it will ask viewers to record video of their "two cents" about many issues. Then the video of the viewers will be played back, distorted by video effects (to allude to the distortion of reality that the media applies to "on the street interviews"). You can see the image of the artificial animated interviewer:

"Touch" Maquette

Here is the most recent version of the "Touch" Maquette which uses CUBLOC CB220, Pololu Micro Servo controller, and Lantronix XPORT. The two black boxes are sending the force-sensitive resistor data to a server about 70 miles away, where the pressure difference is calculated, a new common finger position is determined, and the finger position is sent back 70 miles to the black boxes.

Dorkbot DC results

The last Dorkbot DC meeting went really well. We had about 25 people in attendance, and had a telepresentation from Jason Freeman live from Atlanta speaking about his interactive violin composition work, then Roberto Bocci presented his interactive works that look at immigrants to Italy as well as Earth, Air, Water, and Fire.



I gave a presentation on microcontrollers.

It was a lot of fun! Our new venue at Provisions Library is excellent, located right near the heart of Dupont Circle.