Christina Day’s Blog

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!

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!

The second project we did this year in Emedia was required to be interactive. I had been experimenting lately with Computer Vision using programs like Processing and Jmyron. For this project I dumbed it down to using Flash. The result is a simple motion-detection based interactive piece using a webcam, but it was definitely a learning experience for me because it was almost entirely actionscript (flash’s programming language) based, and I have had little to no experience with code as I am a very visual person. Overall, I consider this piece a building block for me to do more things with the motion detection program.

Since this blog is in need of attention, Im going to be dumping all my recent projects on here to day so I can catch up, so bear with me.

The first project assigned this year in Max’s Emedia class was a pretty basic ‘get-to-know-flash’ project where we made an animated narrative involving, like most of our projects, the concept of ‘interface’. I chose to do a simple animation about the different roles we play in our lives, and how to each person we encounter, we play a different role.

In his article ‘Computer Vision for Artists’, Golan Levin, a pioneer in the computer vision community, attempts to make computer vision, which in the past has been reserved solely for programmers and funded research teams, available to even the a novice artist seeking artistic application of this technology. Levin, after presenting a series of examples of pieces and installations involving computer vision technology, goes on to cover some basic methods for implementing computer vision.

It is encouraging that such technology is becoming more readily available to the public, even outside of the art community. Similar to the way the personal computer was once only a massive, expensive machine for only scientists and/or the very wealthy, and slowly this technology becomes more available, till even students can program applications for their own personal computers, as well as servers and databases. Levin’s attitude is very progressive and contributes to the availability and evolution of art and technology.

‘What is New Media‘, is a discussion over defining new media art, and what distinguishes it as being ‘new’. Manovich argues that the majority of the elements in new media art are not new at all, but are redefined elements found in cinema and photography, as well as other forms of media from the 19th and 20th centuries. Examples such as multimedia, which is very general and dates back to Medieval times, as well as the ability to use sampling, another element associated with new media, and which has been introduced in the early 19th century through film.  However, it is the advantages of new media, such as the ability to replicate data infinity without degradation that make new media stand apart.

Manovich settles on the redefinition of ‘interactivity’ as the defining characteristic of New Media Art, and how the interface has expanded beyond the purely informational, and now approaches a psychological level. This allows users to merge seamlessly with the media on a psychological level, ever closing the gap between man and machine.

I agree with the author, that while the elements that comprise New Media Art are not new, the use of these elements is. This is common with lots of new technology. Cell phones for example;  one could argue that they are not a new idea because communication has been around since prehistoric times. What cell phones are is the most recent step in an evolutionary process. In fact, you could say that the evolutionary process is no longer linear, but has branched off into thousands of technologies and possibilities. Cell phones are just one aspect of communication technology, alongside the internet, email, instant messaging, and the rising popularity of internet communities. Now theres a community called Twitter that connects the cell phone community with the instant messaging and forum communities, where a user can make one update either on their phone, on a forum or on instant messenger and all users ‘following’ that user, recieve that update on their own phones, instant messengers, forums etc. Developments like this, paired with the rising integration of wireless internet bring society closer to becoming an idealized global meeting place.

So its been quite some time since I turned in the flash project. I deviated dramatically from my original design and with for something alot more minimalistic. With my previous design my eyes were alot bigger than my stomach, especially considering I’m a rookie Flash user.

I kept the daisy, but eleminated the literal exploration of other environments and decided on a simple and less multi-layered design. Heres a screenshot.

When the user hovers over the petals with his mouse, they turn into a colored version of themselves, and the center turns yellow. Click the red petal and a red vine grows out of the flower. Use your mouse to hover along the vine, following its path. Along the vine you will trigger the growth of another vine, follow that vine or follow the one youre already following, each path leads to new growth without giving any warning to the viewer. The viewer must search for the triggers that grow each new vine, there will be no visual indications. This is a loose reflection on life and how one must journey through life to find their destiny, which will be revieled to them along the way. Click the center of the flower to erase and start over.

Because this is a prototype, only the Red, Orange and Center of the flower are interactive. The rest of the petals will react when hovered over but not to clicking.

Heres a working version of the project:

http://dfyb.net/daisy.swf

as to where each ‘button’ will lead to: i would like the viewer to be taken to an environment relating to the picture seen on the flower petal. the environment will be somewhat interactive, the most important aspect being how to return the main page.

to return to the main page, the viewer must interact with the environment, search around to find the link back to the main page. this is intended to involve the viewer by forcing him or her to experience that particular environment, whether it be a positive or negative experience.

This is totally new to me. Im just now figuring out how to use Flash (the requirement for this project) and I have a few rough conceptual directions I want this project to take on. I started with a picture of a daisy, with the idea that each petal will be a button in Flash that leads to something else, alot like a paper fortune teller. That idea morphed into making each petal a cutout from a larger picture where I could find a solid field of whatever color Im looking for. For example, I might cut a petal from a picture of a cluster of red balloons. I like the idea of the picture being something technological or un-natural; it would provide a nice contrast to the natural element of the flower.

Conceptually I would like to incorporate the theme of fate, different paths of destiny, an interface similar to those ‘choose your own adventure’ books we discussed in class. I want to play on the theme of ’she loves me she loves me not’, represented abstractly by a digital daisy where each petal is a different outcome.

some questions I need to answer:

-how am I going to represent each outcome, and how will I lead the viewer back to the ‘home’ page of the daisy?

-how do I make each transition fluid and pertaining to the theme?

-what music should I use and what tone will it create?

this is my original brainstorming sketch with my notes

these are rough examples of what the flower petals might look like once cut from their larger photos.

more to come.

A copy of the article can be found here: http://bid.berkeley.edu/bidclass/readings/benjamin.html

Benjamin’s article is discussing the evolution of Art and aesthetics in relation to the ability to reproduce art on a mass scale. Beginning with a history of artistic reproduction (the woodblock), the author moves through a brief history of mechanical reproduction in Art. Benjamin then moves on to address the more abstract issues that are created now that reproducing art becomes more and more simple and convenient. A few of the topics addressed are ownership, and the value of ‘the original’.

Artistic reproduction can be found in the media as well, where art now reaches masses of people, and thus effects more people than ever would be possible had the technology to reproduce art not been available. An artist in our day and age can be more influential in a single day than the masters like Titian and Divincci were over years of their lifetimes.

I think a good example of an artist having influence via the media would be the issue in Amsterdam that occured a few years ago when artists began publishing cartoon drawings of the prophet Mohhamed, whos face, in the Muslim tradition, is forbidden to be recreated. Needless to say, turmoil ensued as numbers of offended Muslim individuals protested the outrageous event.

More comments to come as we discuss this article in class.