Sandeep
From Wiki
Sandeep.
July 8th 2009
We started by talking about the basics of electronics. How we live and think in analogue, and the computer ‘thinks’ digitally. Analogue is the smooth, gradual way that we perceive things around us. Digital signals don’t have the smooth gradients that we are used to- there is only high and low, essentially on and off.
We then went on to talk about the project. What are artists doing messing around in the world of science? Do we have the right to do so? Why are we doing this? A couple of answers that came up were: Democratizing the knowledge science has produced, making it more accessible, adding an aesthetic sensitivity, and helping to represent the data that are produced by scientific experiments in a more natural(?), understandable manner.
We talked about working with sound. How music has evolved through the ages, to a point at which composers have stopped to think if what they have been doing all these years is somewhat vain.
We started off on some basic processing- lines, grids and squares. Variables and constants. Brackets and semicolons.
Some of what came out of the processing exercises:
July 13th 2009
We did a few readings. We read "RED ALERT - Think Before you Breathe" an article by Gobar Times. It talked about the current state of pollution and pollution measurement, and well how its rather non existant. It exists but, people are measuring the wrong pollutants(irregularly), measuring instruments are out dated or non functional etc etc. We also started on this manifesto called "Suspicious Images".
Later in the day, we met Victor who gave us a presentation on some of his previous projects. He showed us a project that helped people visualize the pollution levels in Madrid. It was a virtual net like 3D 'cloud' above the city that had points that rose or fell acording to interpolated data from the 20 pollution measurement stations in the city. The outcome was not only easily understandable by the common man, but also visually striking. He also showed us some other projects of his like a butterfly that flapped its wings faster as the noise pollution levels increased, and a very cool sting ray inspired installation that flapped more violently the faster the wind speed was( without actually being in the wind of course).
The rest of the day was spent trying to crack various Processing programs, both assignments and self-inflicted ones. We learnt about if functions
July 14th 2009
We continued reading suspicious minds in the morning. We found some pretty decent data for air pollutants from yeswanthapur. I made this graph for the NO2, CO and the RSPM and SPM in the air.
We spent the rest of the day trying to fiddle around with the arduino board. I got hold of a piezo tweeter and irritated the hell out of everyone with the basic melody tutorial from the arduino.cc site. The program comes coded with the notes for twinkle twinkle.. go figure. Well we then did more of processing , trying to figure something out for the map assignment. We are supposed to get a map and put three variables on it.
July 15th 2009
July 16th 2009
July 22nd 2009
We had a solder party with dusjagr. What in the world is that you might ask. Well we sat and made very cool electronic musical instruments from scratch on the CEMA terrace. We then continued to play our instruments, in an attempt to jam, until the security guard came up and told us to turn it down. We had this diagram we were following to make the synthesiser. We just soldered away the components onto these brilliantly designed circuit boards. One very cool thing is that there were people there who didnt even know what a soldering iron was called actually making circuits for themselves. My synthesiser turned out to be rather pink Coke bottle (because of the wires inside, oh and an extremely pink LED).
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July 28th 2009
The Bioelectronix for Artists workshop were doing is a real eye opener. When I first heard about webcams being used as microscopes, I imagined elaborate contraptions that produced blurry grainy images that left things to your imagination. Kind of like those astrological signs (Look! Can’t you see the lion?! Uh, no.) Well, the reality is that just flipping the lens of a webcam around makes it a solid microscope with around 200X magnification. Very cool. We have been staring at these things called Water bears for a few hours now. They are these microscopic animals that kind of look like bears, with a few too many legs hopping around morsels of moss. Dusjagr brought those from somewhere in bottles. How he got those things though customs I don’t know. Apparently they can be found anywhere with moss. Were going on a walk around Yellahanka tomorrow hunting for things like these animals. Maybe we can find our own Bangalore style Water Bears.
July 29th 2009
Im beginning to question my decision of inculding the '2009' in these titles. Rather pointless it seems to be... oh well. Today we walked around Yellahanka, a largely uncharted part of Yellahanka that is and almost got attacked by wild dogs and arrested for tresspassing government property (the railway tracks). After the eventful walk, we returned to find... nothing.
August 3rd 2009
I've decided that I'm going to work on the Website. Almost entirely. I will go around and poke my nose in some of the other groups I think. Do the odd soldering job or something.
August 7th 2009
The site is pretty much up. Just needs a decent theme. The content will come shortly, as and when the groups send me their descriptions/pictures. This whole uploading a page using a local server and things needs to get a lot simpler. Theres almost no way of figuring out what to do without detailed instructions.
I made this image for a header:
August 12th
Still no info for the site yet.
August 15 2009
Ok, I got a few pictures. I put them up. They are suppoused to flip like a slideshow. Its just not happening. Maybe it has something to do with php and I have no idea about that. Probably need Sam's help.
August 18th 2009
Trying to think of ways of visualizing the xml data coming in from pachube. The graph from pachube is quite tiny and boring. A Bar graph just doesn't seem to cut it. I'm playing around with processing to try and see if something interesting looking pops up.
August 20th 2009
This is one option.
August 26th
There is'nt a lot to do right now. Still waiting for inputs from the project groups. Websites working fine. The prototype of the gas pump is ready. It looks a little shoddy right now. It will get better soon, i hope. Calls to petrol bunk managers haven't been too successful.
September 6th
Ok, the seniors who are supposed to be making the book are at design yatra. Without the book there are no visuals I can work with for the site. The colour scheme, layout, everything, needs to follow the book. So Im waiting.
September 9th
Yesterday a few of us went for a walk on brigade road with the glowing t-shirt to get reactions from the public. There were quite quite a range of responses actually, well within the rather small sample. There was this one guy who was really excited, and wanted to know if he could make one of them himself. We promptly gave him our email id. Bleh. Thats, rather lamely, the only form of contact we have. Well its something. Well, we made a mysterious etc.bangalore person on facebook. Oh etc is Ecology, Technology and Culture- our groups(current?) name. Well I think its better than other ones we have right now... Plan ET, GAS.. etc..as in etcetera. Well, coming back to our walk. There was this other guy, an engineering student who said things like the electronics we were using were as or more polluting than what we are trying to create awareness about. oh well. We got a suprisingly good response from McDonalds. Got a whole bunch of email ids. We offered to have Saurabh walk around in front of the shop with "I'm lovin' it!" flashing across his t-shirt in exchange for permission to tell people about our project. The manager flat out refused to let us do the Saurabh part, but let us talk to his customers. Go figure. Well not really.. copyright issues and things.
September 14th
Ok, now that the seniors are back, and sachin came back from Delhi with acrylic sheets and what not there seems to be some life back into the project. The good old dash to the finish line...Work seems to be happening. The book seems to be being made. The almost forgotten gas pump got some much needed attention. It was torn apart and given a little refurbishing. It will be painted and finished tomorrow, hopefully. The new idea is that it will house the 'last plant on Earth' or one of the last few at least. So its going to some how, magically or pseudo-futuristically extract the oxygen from the plant and blow it out petrol pump style.
September 15th
The gas pump is painted and reassembled. Its looking quite good actually. With the plant and light and all. We actually got Mr. Ravindra's seal of approval, with a nod, a smile and an "I like it". Which has to be a good sign.
