video and paper

Thesis Paper

hired gangsta

my helpmate is apparently a bit of a gangsta.
(or he likes to think he is.)

And here is a gallery of progress pics. In a few days i’ll have photos of the up-n-running model!
the stabilizing collars are a mess right now. The original plan didn’t work, sketched out a few ideas and today’s plan is to test each of them. Once that problem is solved, i can drop the screen in, set up the projectors, and TA-DA!

three legged dog

http://www.3leggeddog.org/

Midterm presentation

Link to midterm slide show.
quick, short, simple. the focus is the prototype.

pic of the day

Nothing intelligent to say. Just progress and more progress.
This version of the project works. There is a lot of stuff going on that will be reworked in the final version… some welding to hold stuff in place, a base for the project, tightening the cables so the inner rings are centered and perfectly circular.
Right now its definitely cutting corners to get it ready for wednesday’s show-n-tell.
I’ve inserted tons of pictures. it basically amounts to a flip book of the project in motion.

rude mechs

NY Times Article “Many Methods to Collaborative Madness”

This article, though slightly confusing, is about an actor collective/collaboration. The article refers to everyone as co-artistic directors. I’d not heard of this company but its worth doing some investigation.
So many collaborative theaters are really just actors taking up various roles. This implies they are truly a broader collaboration.

pic of today

I spent today in the metal shop. We plasma cut the central support ring and then started suspending the two rings of pulleys from this structure.
i learned that no amount of math will help when buying aircraft cable. The easier and time saving solution is to walk into the store and say “i’ll take all the 1/16th aircraft cable you have in stock.” (Because its the Home Depot on 23rd street, they won’t have too much in stock.)
I spent a while trying out various configurations for the weaving. I settled on one that works and looks nice but i’m not sure its the final choice. I might get all fancy pants and do something more complex when i restring it for the final version.
Tomorrow morning i have to string up the second ring of pulleys. the shop was closing up for the night and i had to head out.
The technicians in the shop have been nothing but helpful on this process. We had a lot of delays and set backs getting this metal cut. Every time things went wrong, i just asked what i could do to make their jobs easier and then rethought my schedule to work around their new ETA on the metal. Its frustrating but the end result was today I had the tech helping me out as much as could.
When you are working with other people (or relying on other people to do work for your project) you cannot have nuclear melt downs when things don’t go according to plan. That won’t make things better and it just alienates your team from you.

updates

200 pulleys at $1.23 = $246
vs
200 sewing bobbins at $0.15 = $30

Wednesday night, I learn to weld.

Need to find source of balsa wood for cheap and schedule time in wood shop.

Elizabeth Streb

http://www.streb.org/index.html

Choreographer who works with extreme motion and her brooklyn studio creates extreme kinetic devices

Giants are Small

http://giantsaresmall.blogspot.com/search/label/02.%20LIVE%20ANIMATION

Theatrical company that is blending puppetry with video and live performers to create what they call “live animation” onstage.