I've got another sneak peek for you. These are a couple of basic videos I shot myself (obviously) of the construction and finished project. I'm lucky enough to be able to get some help from the professional photographer in the household and hope to have some better videos to share in the near future. Though, it is no mean feat to photograph something which emits changing patterns of light... so he must really love me to embark on this project, and as it will require some labour, it may take some time. In the meanwhile, you can watch this:
Other than that, I built a prototype of my Schrödinger's cat which incorporates some simple circuits so that the poison and cat disappear at the flick of a switch! I'll share it with you when I've got something a little more polished than my breadboard and copper tape circuit. I've been thinking about how best to let the user interact with electrically heated thermochromic prints. It's funny that I'm suddenly thinking of a 'user' of art, rather than a viewer.
Also, I've gathered together a 'Resources' page with links to several of the sites I've found which are useful to artists and makers who want to incorporate some electronics, 'smart' materials, and other scientifically-fueled interactivity (like thermo- and photochromic materials, or shape memory alloys) into their work. This includes sites with information, projects, tutorials and a variety of suppliers. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.
One of the places you can find great items for incorporating some electronics into your art, as well as tutorials, kits, links, forums and useful information is Adafruit. I like their attitude, and I like seeing a company lead by a female electrical engineer and entrepreneur be such a success. She (founder Limor Fried) named herself and her company in homage to Lady Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer. I added my pictures of my comb jelly light box to their flickr pool and was asked by one of their engineers if they could feature the comb jelly project on their blog. One of my motivations is often sharing and teaching; I personally think comb jellies are undeniably cool, and I want artists I know to see how easy it is to wire up a simple circuit and add light (or even changing coloured light) to a project. I'm a believer in 'open source'.* It's why I like their attitude, it's why I made a point to explain what I'd done and how, and it's why I'm flattered to be featured.
*It's not always obvious how to make information free, but I think it's a concept which will, combined with a rapidly improving communication system, lead to faster innovation and change civilization.
So I know some of you hate the idea of twitter, some of you love it. I've been using it for quite some time now (@minouette), and enjoy it a lot more than I would have suspected. If you're curious there are many tricks to making it work for you. It's pretty easy to avoid the mundane, the shrill, or otherwise unfortunate users, and their existence shouldn't deter you from the entire concept. I find it a great news source for specific interests, and a means to filter the internet for interesting links. (I can follow everyone from @NASA to @feministhulk to @DAVID_LYNCH to @rebelmayor (William Lyon MacKenzie, Toronto's first mayor and 1837 rebel) to @sockington (a rotund cat) to collections of artists and science journalists, and of course several of the people on my friends' list here and this works for me). But it is, what it is. I doubt anyone's tweets warrant archiving (I'm looking at you, @librarycongress the Library of Congress). One can only be so profound in 140 characters. So, after that verbose caveat, let me pass on this funny Twitter tool du jour, That Can Be My Next Tweet, which employs your previous tweets as a means to predict your next (via teenangster, who calls it "like magnetic poetry, except way more embarrassing and personal.")
Here are some of the funnier suggestions for @minouette:
“More block print of Memories’ wedding guestbook will show up the pussycat… pillow. congratulations!”
“You promised tweets. Still waiting. : enough seismic data. perspective is crazy, but luckily not inside.”
“Haha! I watched a carpentry tool? It ought to Scott Walker and eating a documentary about reindeer and.”
“Radiolarians block prints. Will be at Pearson. Somehow, I’m listening to radiolarians Working on my block.”
“New monster avatar : today too!”
“Model wireless solar-powered charging ‘tree’ for a block printed pillow new monster avatar ; drinking tea?”
and, my favorite, (though I do love the idea of listening to radiolaria at the airport),
“Debugging imaginary problems is crazy, but more elegant than Toronto Street Team.”
This morning I've been listening to A.S. Byatt being interviewed by the Australian Radio National 'All in the Mind' for National Science Week. It was a great pleasure to hear a favorite author talk about her love of science, her horror at the idea that the English Department would be the centre of the University, snail neurons, mirror neurons, her mind maps (though she doesn't use that term) and the colours of her novels (in an almost synesthesian* sense).
I am fascinated by the intersection of art and science, and this is one of the reasons I am so fond of her novels. She quite clearly articulates that she understands what some of her more disdainful peers in literature did not; that science is very much a creative field of endeavour. Further, she explains how she develops some of the key concepts underlying her novels (specifically Babel Tower) through the process of analogy, which she links to metaphor. Byatt is quite obsessed with metaphor, as well as being very interested in neurology. As such, I always think she should read one of my other favorite authors, Douglas Hofstadter. I am always telling people they should read Gödel, Escher, Bach, and then refusing to lend it to them, because I need to have it on my bookshelf at all time.**
Hofstadter works in artificial intelligence, so he thinks very deeply about how it is we think. He feels that analogy is the core of cognition, as he explains in the amusing and unpretentious lecture included below (the unpretentious part his lecture itself begins at 13.5 minutes in). When I was in grad school and he came to give a physics colloquium. He was trained as a physicist (and in fact, his father was a Nobel laureate in physics). He created a wonderful lecture on how Einstein, in his miraculous year (1905 - wherein he discovered the core of special relativity and much of the core of quantum mechanics), came up with his ideas through the process of ANALOGY. Einstein was also a great and honest observer of his own mind. The talk as I recall it, in fact, went through the entire history of physics and explained it all as a process of analogy. I'll give you but a hint: Rutherford proposed his model of the atom (which of course is both wrong, and a revolutionary step forward) with electrons circling the positively-charged nucleus by analogy to our model of the solar system, with planets orbiting the sun.
I think it is quite wonderful that Byatt can look to science as a means of enriching her literature - not simply with pretty metaphors, but in a deep structural sense, and Hofstadter can look at the tiniest linguistic errors we make***, and see them as data on how it is we actually think. In the interview Byatt speaks about mirror neurons - neurons which light up both when we perform an act and when we see an act performed. This is explained as a possible source of empathy. I wonder if this mirroring (which I've seen also postulated as an explanation for how we understand facial expression) does in fact indicate that on a fundamental level we understand actions we observe directly from analogy - not just in a higher level 'software' sense, as Hofstadter tends to discuss, but in a neuron-level 'hardware' sense as well.
*Is this a word? I think it should be. I created it by analogy. **I made an exception for the time, years ago, I convinced my friend JM to go get it signed by Hofstadter, since I had to teach when he was speaking with the grad students in our department. JM was a good sport. I confess I was actually unsure I wanted to meet Hofstadter - because I was uncertain he would match the mental construct I had formed of him in my head. This is ironic since I formed my ideas about mental constructs of people partly by reading Hofstadter's Le Ton Beau de Marot (which of course, is in English). ***He collects linguistic slips. My favorite, of the spoken errors in English by native speakers, which I have observed is one made by my friend Jill. Jill once said, "I'm turd, even though I have a chordle-neck on." I love that 'turd' came from 'turtle' and 'cold' not only swapped places with the first syllable of 'turtle', it also morphed into 'chord', because, presumably, she couldn't drop the 'r' sound. (Also, it's quite interesting that I typed 'turdle' before correcting myself with 'turtle'). But, most of all, I love that she said, "I'm turd" and persisted with her sentence despite the fact that I was laughing uncontrollably. Incidentally, Jill also faces a prospect discussed late in this lecture. That was a teaser, to try to intice you to listen to it.
Check out this spectacular giveaway by the lovely rikrak! The incredibly generous gift pack (valued at over $450 US) of handmade items in red and silver, includes my moon ornament. There are many easy ways to play, for a chance to win. You can even enter by simply post a link to your favorite minouette item on her blog. Check her blog for all the details.
Tanis has posted some photos on her flickr stream showing the nursery nook for her & Joe's soon-to-be offspring. It's really lovely, and I'm not just saying that because it contains two of my prints and a seahorse! In fact, I'm flattered to see my artwork amongst such company as Deth Sun, SparklePower, KG crafts and of course, Tanis herself. But the most important thing is how with a little creative, and some hand-crafted items, one can create a beautiful space on a tiny budget.
