Christina Day’s Blog

This graphic novel by Nick Abadzis mixes strenuously researched fact and compelling fiction to tell the story of Laika, the doomed canine victim of the Sputnik II Russian space program. Premier Khruschev forced the program was forced upon the Sputnik I team of scientists and engineers in the wake of Sputnik I’s success. The team had only one month to completely fabricate a spacecraft capable of sustaining, for a limited time,  the life of a dog that would be trained for the one-way voyage into space. Abadzis interviewed members of the team responsible for selecting and training the dog and began to unravel the truth behind the Sputnik II propaganda stunt, and discover an allegory for the communist regime in Russia, and its relationship with its citizens.  Fact meets fiction when Abadzis composes a touching history of abuse and betrayal for the sweet-natured Laika, who had at last found a kind home with the Sputnik trainers, only to be selected as the sacrificial poster-child for the Cosmonaut program, in hopes of establishing Russia as a dominant force in the hearts and minds of capitalist nations. Although the mission was declared a success by Khruschev, the reality is that Laika died after merely 4 hours in space, due to a malfunction in the shuttle’s climate control system. Basically, the interior of the shuttle reached over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and Laika died of stress and overheating. It was apparent that Khruschev never intended to devote the resources to make the craft fully functional and the malfunction was a result of having to create a whole spacecraft in 30 days time.

Abadzis brings Laika to life, and I found myself very attached to the little dog, and, being a dog-owner myself, it was heartbreaking to witness the depiction of this little animal dying all alone in space, floating in the void. In a bitterly beautiful representation, Laika and Sputnik II disintegrate in the atmosphere and return to earth as a series of shooting stars.

The book ends solomnly and appropriatly with a quote by Oleg Gazenko, the director of Laika’s training program:

“Work with animals is a source of suffering to all of us. We treat them like babies who cannot speak. The more time passes, the more I’m sorry about it. We shouldn’t have done it… We did not learn enough from this mission to justify the death of the dog.”

So I never finished my Cheshire Cat painting, but I have a good excuse. My friend and awesome photographer Jonny Carrol wanted to remove the IR filter from his Canon Digital Rebel 300D. Using this great tutorial, I underwent one of my most nerve-racking projects to date. Here is a photo-montage.

Workspace setup!

Back casing and LCD screen mount removed, ribbon cables unplugged and protective case desoldered and removed.

Circuitboard removed, about to remove the CMOS chip. Yikes!

The delicate CMOS unit before I took it apart and removed the IR filter (the purple glass thing).

Carefully dissecting the CMOS unit, removing the plastic frame and gaskets that house the IR filter.

The naked CMOS chip. This is what gathers the light in the camera and translates it into digital data, kind of like undeveloped film.

My sophisticated system for gluing the new glass into its housing. It was scary since one drop of glue on the new glass, and Id have to start all over!

Success! Time to clean it up with isopropal alcohol and a microfiber cloth and put her all back together!

All back together again...except for the grounding plate...looks like i skipped a step and will have to pull the glass holding off again, uuugh. Luckily its an easy fix.

Sweet, last step before just reconnecting/resoldering everything. Added a small .1mm spacer to compensate for the difference in thickness between the old filter and new glass. This will ensure that autofocus will still work.

And that about wraps it up. After that last step, it was all smooth sailing with the reassembly. Id post pics but its just the same steps in reverse and would be very boring. Fun project, look forward to trying similar projects in the future. I will also update when I receive pictures taken with the camera post-mod so you can compare the results!

Conceptart.org hosts a series of weekly ‘contests’ including ‘Character of the Week’, where each week they post criteria for a new ‘character’ which the artists in the community do an interpretation of, climaxing in a voting session at the end of the week where the best piece is labeled the winner. There arent any prizes, but it builds your portfolio and gives you projects to work on, as well as expands your reputation within the art community.

That said, this week’s theme was to make an interpretation of the Cheshire Cat and/or the Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. It is due Sunday the 18th, so hopefully I can finish it up in time.

Ive been on a graphic novel/comic kick this semester and by coincidence was required to read ‘Understanding Comics’ by Scott McCloud for my History of Graphic Design class. McCloud somehow manages to make a textbook in graphic novel form, and I found that it reads alot like watching a great documentary. Outside of illuminating alot of the theory behind creating an effective comic, McCloud really explores the way we communicate with each other. I recommend this read to anyone interested in not just comics, but the artistic process in general.

Once I finished ‘Understanding Comics’, I immediately dove into another acclaimed book by McCloud titled ‘Making Comics’. As can be inferred by the title, this book focuses more on the physical process and engineering behind creating effective comics and so far I enjoy it alot. More on this once I complete it.

Lastly, as a fun read, Im currently halfway through ‘Red Mars’ by Kim Stanley Robinson. My Biochem major boyfriend has been encouraging me to read Robinson’s ‘Mars Trilogy’ for some time now, and I began reading this book expecting something either really dry and laden with technical jargon, or another cheap sci-fi fantasy hybrid. But I am very glad to have been wrong and have thus far been enjoying a great human drama that explores much more than the surface of Mars. “Red Mars’ touches on human psychology and the impact we have as a civilization on the environment around us. Having completed an Environmental Philosophy course earlier this Spring, I recognize alot of the themes addressed by Henry David Thoreau, or some of the contemporary ideas found in Bruce Hull’s ‘Infinite Nature’ pertaining to our impact on our environments. In conclusion, this book is anything but a nerdy sci-fi adventure, and, despite being published over a decade ago, the themes in this book are very contemporary.

Upcoming reads:
I was fortunate enough to receive about $80 in Amazon.com gift cards for Christmas and already spent every penny by liquidating my wishlist. I ordered several books that I am really looking forward to devouring:

‘Comics and Sequential Art’ by Will Eisner

This is another comic ‘textbook’ that was highly recommended throughout McClouds ‘Understanding Comics’.

‘The Complete Maus: A Survivors Tale’ by Art Spiegelman

From what I understand, this is a moving saga about a father and son surving the Jewish Holocaust. Many literature professors consider this ‘required reading’ for their students.

‘The Sandman: Vol 3, Dream Country’ by Neil Gaiman (Author), Malcolm Jones III (Author), Colleen Doran (Illustrator), Kelley Jones (Illustrator), Charles Vess (Author), Steve Erickson (Author)

Book 3 of the Sandman saga that I have been reading. A great series with a celebrity cast of authors and illustrators.

‘The Best of The Spirit’ by Will Eisner

A ‘best of’ collection of Eisner’s classic strip. I bought this in spirit of the movie having recently been released. Pun intended?

‘The Watchmen’ by Alan Moore

Alan Moore’s masterpiece, again, in spirit of the movie being released soon.

‘Laika’ by Nick Abadzis

The graphic novel about the doomed dog that was launched into orbit in the Sputnik II Soviet project. I know that this will be heartbreaking to read.

Well that about ends this rant. Till next time, take care and have a safe, happy holiday season!

This past Fall semester, I took the first in a series of painting classes required for my major. Most of the paintings I produced for this class were pretty boring, but this is the painting I created for my final project. The subject was required to be a portrait, so I painted a picture of me playing with my dog, Penny, on a hot day in July.

This semester was the first time I have painted with oil or acrylic paints since high school, so it was interesting getting back into shape. This time around, I only used primary colors and white to create my paintings. If black was needed, it was achieved by blending all my primaries together, making it difficult to be consistent, but it was worth it to prevent the painting from being neutralized by using a pre-fab black.

The painting I created as my final project

Here is a montage of the process I went through to create this simple painting:

How I created this painting, step by step.

I might make some changes to this later, but for now, this is the card that I will print off for my family. I try to do this every Christmas that I have time. Here’s another design I made a few years ago:

The Christmas card I designed for 2005

For the final project in my New Media class, I assembled a little gadget that lights up whenever someone visits your website. The piece follows the guidelines provided in a tutorial I found for using an Arduino to ring a bell everytime a predetermined website is visited. I wanted an LED to light up instead of a bell ringing, so I kept the python script unaltered, but adjusted the Arduino code appropriatly to make the light turn on. The project uses 3 separate scripts:

-A php script that is saved to the root directory of the website Im counting the hits on. This script just counts how many times this site is visited. This script was unaltered from the tutorial and can be found at the link I provided.

-An Python script that retrieves the counter information from the php script and delivers it to the Arduino board. I only altered this script so it would communicate with the specific domain I wanted. This code can also be found in the tutorial.

-And an Arduino sketch that I have uploaded to my Arduino board that turns a LED on each time the Python script tells it that the website has received a hit. The code for this sketch has been requested, so Ill post it here:

long nextMillis = 0;

int blinks = 0;         // amount of blinks

int state = 0;         // for the state machine

void setup() {

int ledPin = 13;

pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);  // Set LED pin as an output pin

Serial.begin(9600);

}

// define states for the state machine

#define PULSE_ON       0

#define PULSE_OFF      2

#define WAIT_PULSE_OFF 3

void loop() {

if (Serial.available() > 0) {

blinks += Serial.read();

Serial.println(blinks);

}

while (blinks > 0) {

int ledPin = 13;

digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); //sets LED on

delay(1000);     //waits for a second

digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);  //sets LED off

blinks–;

}

}

This is the Arduino board itself with the LED, that I sanded to diffuse the light, plugged into ground and pin 13, the pin that Arduino has conveniently connected a resistor to, so I dont  have to.

Here is the guts of the housing. It used to be a cheap alarm clock from a novelty shop, but now its going to house my Arduino Board.

Final product!

Leaf embellishments on bowl

I enrolled in an introductory Metalsmithing and Jewelry class this semester as an elective. This is one of the projects I feel is presentable. The assignment was to create an enameled copper bowl.

Raw copper just after I planished it

Letting the enamel dry (still in powder form) before firing in the kiln

finished bottom of the bowl with some nice organic details created by overfiring

Detail shot of the bottom of the bowl

Final product