A little late, but better than never… I did make it over to the dorkbot-nyc meeting a bit after 8PM EST. I missed the first speaker, but I was able to catch the other two.
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The second speaker, Anton Perich, discussed a painting machine he first built in the 1970’s and still uses today.
The painting machine looked like a giant printer (without its case). An image would be projected on a giant canvas, and then a print head would go back and forth across a massive canvas, painting line by line a giant image. Using an optical sensor, the head would know what areas to paint (for example, when in a dark part of the projected image, apply paint). The artist would manually intervene throughout the process to tweak the painting.
The most interesting point made was when Perich said he viewed technology as a tool through which he applied his creativity to build the works of art. He did not view the machine as a work of art in and of itself, just as a means to create art. Perich was asked about what the machine was built from, and he just glazed over the large amount of effort that went into building such a thing, as his focus was on the art created with it, not the technical details that went into to building it. (As we often say, technology is a means, not an end.)
Oh, and he discussed a portrait he did of Andy Warhol, who was a friend of his.
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After that, the third speaker, Carrie Dashow, presented on a few of her projects. She discussed how her projects were focused on using technology to study human interaction, and she discussed three projects in particular.
The first project (“hello“) was Dashow going around saying hello to random people and recording the interaction. She showed one example where she was passing some person of the street and said hello. The person looked quite puzzled.
Anyway, Dashow made it onto television at one point, and she was made to say hello to random people outside while being filmed. At the same time, she brought with her a hidden camera to take control of the experience and make it her own. The result was amusing.
The second project (“10 Cameras, Caumsett L.I.”) was studying multiple people’s perspectives and the synchronicities between them using video cameras. Dashow gave cameras to 10 people and had them wander around a particular zone in Caumsett State Park. This footage was then shown in an installation, which basically showed all 10 perspectives across 10 monitors, so you could see each person’s viewpoint at any given time.
What I found most interesting were the synchronicities across the group. For example, a plane flying overhead would map across all 10 monitors, being just heard in some views, looked at in other views, etc. Quite interesting.
(Side note: I went to camp in Caumsett State Park during the summer back when I was a little kid. Fun stuff, although my mother didn’t enjoy picking the ticks off me.)
The third project (“Red Light Relay”) Dashow discussed was basically connecting the dots. In a town (Troy) in upstate New York where she went to college, she wanted to pull people together and create sort of network that transmitted a beam of light from one point of town to another. Dashow initiated the first light, and then the next person turned on their light when they saw hers, and so on.
This led her to try the concept with the dorkbot-nyc meeting attendees. Dashow had one person holding a balloon and another person holding a needle, and then had everyone connect to each other by holding hands starting from the balloon person’s free hand and ending with the needle person’s free hand. A signal was sent through this network of people by tapping hands, with each person receiving a tap from one person they were connected and then proceeding to tap the other person they were connected to. The signal was initiated by the balloon person tapping the person they were connected to, and this was meant to trasmit through all of us until it reached the needle person, who would then pop the balloon instead of a regular tap.
Unfortunately, as all of us that have debugged network problems have experienced, the signal went off into the ether and failed to reach its destination. After a bit of debugging, it turned out the attendees were divided into two giant networks, and there was no route between them. Time running out for her presentation, Dashow circumvented these difficulties by creating a tiny network with the people closest to her and sent the signal hopping through them. This worked, and the balloon was popped.
(Yes, it was cheesy, but it was also fun and got everyone talking. You know, sometimes cheesiness is the best way to break the ice.)
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All in all, I find myself really enjoying these meetings. Thanks to the speakers and to dorkbot.
[...] Cool beans. My write-ups on a couple of dorkbot-nyc meetings can be found here and here. The meetings I attended were full of strange and interesting projects, packed with friendly people, and just a plain old good time. [...]