Word Wall Love Button

Word Wall Marking and Drilling Buttons

Word Wall Buttons Cut List

This is the aluminum fresh from the waterjet company. Looks amazing!

Now to drill and tap around 500 holes, then attach the buttons to each sprung bolt and wire them up, and create the LED boards and wire them up. I was thinking this would be something like 2000 solder points, but I think it’s more like 2500. I’ll make sure to count.

I should have placed something in the photos for scale, but just know that the panels are 6′ x 3′, and will be placed one over the other to make a 6 foot by 6 foot wall.

Word Wall Lower Panel Fresh From The WaterJet

Word Wall Panel Fresh From The WaterJet – "think" Closeup

Word Wall Panel Fresh From The WaterJet – "wall" Closeup

Word Wall Panel Fresh From The WaterJet – "steel" Closeup (Ironically in Aluminum)

Word Wall Panel Fresh From The WaterJet – "concrete" Closeup

Word Wall Fresh From The WaterJet

Word Wall Fresh From The WaterJet – Angled

I almost made a grave newbie error with the font sizing. It turns out the original photos I took of me pressing my lcd display were showing at “actual size” and they were maybe 100 or even 150 dpi. I just printed another test to make sure the buttons would still work, since I had made them a bit smaller than that original test and the words were too small to comfortably press. Most people would have to squeeze their fingers in to press the buttons.

So, I had to make the font quite a bit larger in order to make the buttons pressable again. This completely changes the look. It’s now much more word heavy. But I’m ok with that. It’s very much a Word Wall now, as the words are more prominent than they were compared to the panel.

You’ll notice that there is a seam in the center. I added this so that the wall will now be made up of two sections. The full object was going to weight in at around 200 lbs and be 6′ x 6′. Making it that way would just be asking for trouble. So now it’s two sections, each around 100 lbs and 6′ x 3′. A bonus to this (that I really like) is that I can now set the halves next to each other as well, making a 12′ x 3′ wall. This might make the project fit into different venues.

Now I just have to add the holes for every word and I can send in the file.

Word Wall Word Cutups (Still In Progress)

Progress has been made! Since last time, I have finished quite a bit for my Word Wall project (initial description here). I even completed several things I didn’t think I would have to do!

The first thing is that some of the quotes I got for laser cutting and water jet cutting some of the pieces were fairly right on, and some were fairly right off. Note to self: apparently cnc milling is obscenely expensive, and 3d printing is not as accessible in cost as I thought unless you are creating small parts or prototyping. This leads directly into the second thing, which is a redesign of how the buttons work. The redesign loses my holy grail of a smooth front panel. Instead the buttons will be inset by the depth of the front panel, which has been thinned a bit, partially for this reason. The pro to this part of the redesign is that if I run into some mad money, or figure out another way to create the buttons in raised acrylic like I was originally going for, I can swap out the button panels to get my smooth front surface, and leave everything else exactly like it is.

(image from Monome)

Second, I have completed the electronics/brains portion, and sourced a computer for the internals. The electronics for the buttons and button lights is based off of the Monome open source project. I had made a kit version of the Monome previously, which is part of what got me thinking about this tangential buttons and lights project. I was thinking that I was going to have some pcbs (printed circuit boards) made from the files available under the Arduinome branch of compatible open source hardware (sounds more confusing than it is, but the short of it is that you are allowed to make your own pcbs). While working on planning this out, I found a person who wanted to sell his unused Monome mk kit, and I purchased the heck out of it. Monome is a boutique shop in numbers, and they don’t have a “store” as such, it’s more of a “we’ve got these right now, who wants ‘em?” This is some good luck, as these particular kits sold out in limited numbers months ago. This saved me much time, effort, ordering, waiting, and soldering time. After doing some simple soldering a couple weekends ago, I had the boards soldered and ready to go. This possibly took a little bit more money than making the pcbs, and a fair bit more than wiring up prototype boards, but it’s also a known entity. The Monome people make quality boards, and I can cross this off the list of things to worry about or have to make repairs to further down the road. And I want to take this on the road, so that’s important.

(image from Monome)

As for the computer, I’m going to be using an old Apple Mac Mini with the old PPC G4 chip. I was thinking I would have to have a newer Intel chip model for this project, but it looks like this will work fine. If I get into doing some more in depth programs for the wall, I may have to upgrade at a later date. The Mac Mini is fairly tiny, and it uses very little power, which makes it great for this project. The other option I was looking at was finding an old MacBook with a busted display, which is fairly close to being a Mac Mini as well.

Mac Mini (Braaaaiiinns!)

Next up is the words themselves. Incalculable time has been spent thinking in various ways about the words that will cover this panel (although I believe I tracked most of my time). Thinking up 128 words sounds extremely simple until you think about those words costing almost $1500 every time you want to change them. I’ve sent the word lists to all my various wordy people, I’ve printed lists of the words in various formats, I’ve made haiku-esque poetry using the words, I’ve printed the words, cut them out, and arranged and re-arranged them, and all of these through different revisions of the lists. This is actually the one last thing holding me up in submitting the final files to the water jet company. I’m finalizing the word list this weekend, finishing the drawings Sunday night, and submitting the files Monday morning. I should get the water jet panel back within a week.

Word Wall Word Station (Still In Progress)

The design and plan for the buttons and lights is completed, and should be simple to construct. For the buttons, each word gets it’s own piece of acrylic panel which sits underneath it’s area. Each panel gets each corner pinned by fairly small socket head cap screws, and the larger words also get one screw in the most central location possible. Each of these screws threads into the front panel, and floats through the acrylic panel. Behind that is a spring. This makes the natural position of the acrylic flush with the back of the front panel. At the back end of each screw are a nut, a very simple circuit board with one button, and another nut. The first nut is what aligns the button onto the acrylic surface, and the 2nd tightens the circuit board into place. The buttons for each word are merely wired together, and then wired back to the Monome controller circuits. Since the desired outcome of pressing any of the 4 or 5 buttons per word is to have that word received as a command, I don’t have to do anything more complex.

The LED lighting under the acrylic surface of the buttons is fairly simple, but more complex than a simple Monome kit. A Monome is intended to be laid out in a grid, with one LED per button. The Word Wall will have 1 letter words, all the way up to 8 letter words. One LED will definitely be enough to light up a 1 letter word, and maybe two or three letter words, but an 8 letter word will likely need 3-5 LEDs. Unfortunately, I can’t do something as simple as just wiring 5 LEDs up to the Monome controller. If I were to do that, words with more letters would be dimmer than words with fewer letters. There could be other side-effects as well. Instead, I will have to use the Monome circuit to drive mosfets, which are like electronic relays (ie, no big clicking sound) which then connect those LEDs to a constant amount of power. For this reason, and that of less wiring, I am grounding the front panel and just wiring up the positive side of the electronics. Additionally, I am mounting the LEDs to the back case, so that the light from the LEDs fills the letters evenly. The downside to having the LEDs farther away is that I suspect I will have to build some internal boxes per word out of chipboard or similar so that the light from one word doesn’t bleed over into the surrounding words.

If that weren’t enough, I have to finish up the Max/MSP patches that control the overall interaction. That too is based on open source, as people using Max/MSP with their Monomes often share their patches. I never end up just using someone’s patch as found, and I also will be customizing things based on viewing people interact with the wall. I’m not the greatest programmer, but when I finish this project, any files I create will be available.

Thanks to:
Ignition Northwest for partial funding. This is what is making it reasonable for me to create this thing.
Breona for word list fun and thinking through scenarios and possible button configurations.
Thomas York for some mechanical/process design/brainstorming sessions. Very helpful.
Ben Flaster for power and LED info and ideas.
Sunday Electric for feedback and a place and time to get some work done. Thanks to Clay and Laura.
Whoever helps me solder the 2000 connections once I get everything ready to put together.

Word Wall Current Words (Still In Progress, 3D Angled View)

I recently got a grant from Ignition Northwest to help me put together a project I’ve had in my head for a few years. I’m calling it the Word Wall.

Word Wall Current Words (Still In Progress, 3D Front View)

The Word Wall is an aluminum wall on a stand with a highly technical and smooth finished character. Words are cut into the surface which can be lit from within and can be pressed to interact with the wall. It’s a little over 6′ x 6′.

(viewing and pressing words full scale on my computer display)

When no one is within range of the wall, the various words embedded in the metal surface pulse mostly randomly. Sometimes meaning can be put to the sequence of random words.

When within range of the wall, you are beckoned to interact: “start, start, start”. But you don’t know what kind of interaction you will get with each visit.

Word Wall Current Words (Still In Progress)

One possible interaction of the many possible: Any words pressed are sequenced and looped in time on the wall. If you press the words “here”, “i”, “am”, the wall will then play back those words in both audio and lighting of the words, and after a pause, this loop continues until the participant presses something different, or walks away.

The grant is from Ignition Northwest, a NW organization coming out of the Burning Man networks in town. They throw a yearly mini Burning Man called Critical Massive, and fund a fair number of projects. They gave out over $10,000 this year and I was fortunate to be involved.

(viewing and pressing words full scale on my computer display)

I’ve been working on some interactive audio triggering for Kate Vrijmoet, an artist with a gallery in Seattle’s Tashiro Kaplan building. If you’re in the area come and see/hear how the piece turned out.

This is a screenshot of my side of things. In practice, the top left quadrants will be filled with video from a camera with a wide angle lens hanging above the space. The four larger rectangles in the center will show when computation is being done with input from the video. If that sounds vague, you’ll have to come check it out in person this Thursday!

(I promise I’ll take a more useful screenshot on Thursday, and some video of people interacting with the space as well.)

Here’s the information from Kate herself:

Mother, may I…?

Mother, may I…? is an interactive sound installation by Kate Vrijmoet. It focuses on issues of permission and boundary violation, and requires visitors to provoke, with every footfall, a torrent of harshly whispered questions, merely for entering the room. Visitors may try to discern the origin of the whispers, which arise from a source not easily located. There is a way for visitors to stop the whispering, but it will take them a very long time to work it out.

Visitors who have personal issues with being talked about, in a hissing way, or with being sharply admonished for doing nothing very bad, should probably stay out.

Visitors able to set those issues aside for a time will explore such questions as: What happens when the rules aren’t immediately apparent? What, and where, is the art? And, do you helplessly violate boundaries, somewhere, with every breath you take?

Welcome.

Thursday, February 3, 2011
Tashiro Kaplan Building #107
Kate Vrijmoet Artist’s Studio
306 S. Washington Street
Seattle, WA 98103
www.figurespace.com
Kvrijmoet@hotmail.com

Technical support provided by Ian Page-Echols v8media.com/
Audio support provided by David Guillbert www.davidguilbault.com
Art fabrication by Thomas York

Voices:
Valerie Collymore www.valeriecollymore.com
Ingrid Lahti www.ingridlahti.com/
Barbera Noonan www.morninnoonannight.com
Carla Panescu-Reich
Ed Skoog www.edskoog.com
John Vrijmoet
Kate Vrijmoet www.figurespace.com
Thomas York

In the midst of the open spaces of the desert was a pile of materials put out for the purpose of art. People would wander by, tinkering with all of the interesting pieces. Some would think up a combination that was greater than the sum of the parts and create a piece of art. After the event was over, Phyxx gave me a tour of the results.

(more…)

I’ve got 15 photos ready for an art show. No specific art show in mind yet, but I have the prints. There are five sets of three images.

Here’s an overview of the sets (from top to bottom):
Blurry
Detail
Light
Music
Texture

(click on the image for a preview of the blurry plane image, which is one of my favorites)

Here’s a few foldy things for you.

Steps: Print, cut, fold, glue, enjoy. I think that’s more steps than setting up an iMac.

Even when printed as large as possible on 8 1/2 x 11 paper, these are fairly hard to deal with. Better would be 11 x 17. Bonus: printing on textured paper, or paper with some sort of design or adding a design to your image before printing results in a cool-looking object.

Cut them out using an xacto blade and a cutting mat. If you’re a masochist, you could try scissors. I’d at least suggest surgical scissors, big ‘ol craft scissors will likely drive you batty.

I still haven’t figured out the best glue to use. Wood glue works great if you can figure out a way to hold the pieces of paper together long enough to have the glue dry. Hot glue works, but is messy even when you do it perfectly, and you also have to hold the pieces together while the glue is steaming hot. Potentially painful. I’d almost suggest super glue, but I’ve never had luck with that stuff.

I’m picturing these as hanging objects in my studio apartment. I have a high ceiling that would be nice to fill with a few of these in different colors. If you think about the size of each little face though, even a poster sized print will only give me something like a 1′ object.

Youngstown Open House
Saturday, December 1st
4-10pm
*Free, All Ages

(I’m doing visuals along with Jason Pitt’s audio from 9:15-10, or so says the schedule.)

Join us and enjoy music, performance, and visual art during our annual open house & open studios event. Cultural Center staff will be on hand along with resident artists and representatives from tenant organizations Arts Corps, Nature Consortium, Southwest Interagency Academy, Twelfth Night Productions, Power of Hope, The Service Board, and Youth Media Institute. Studios in Cooper Artist Housing will be open and performances and activities will take place in the Cultural Center.

The 2007 Touring Reel Youth Film Festival will be screened in our theater from 6:30-8:30pm in partnership with Native Lens, Reel Girls, Longhouse Media, and Power of Hope. Showcasing the best of youth filmmaking, the Reel Youth Film Festival is a collection of insightful and entertaining short films made by youth ages 19 years and under from all over the country. Ranging from the comedic to the dramatic, using video and stop motion animation, this year’s films explore a wide range of themes, reflecting the diversity of the culture and concerns of youth today. Films made by Seattle area youth will also be screened as part of this special presentation.

Adjacent to the screening, Youngstown’s Movement Studio will play host to live performances. Youth dancers from around the area will perform from 6- 7:30pm in an exhibition of krumping, a relatively new, highly stylized and exciting freestyle form birthed in Los Angeles. Seattle’s best youth and adult spoken word artists including Khatsini Simani, Rose McAllese, Dakota Camacho, Angela Dy, Rocky Bernstein, James Ray, eLa Barton , Matt Gano, Chris Carroll, and Karen Finneyfrock will take the stage from 7:30-9:30pm in an intimate reading of their work. Seattle is home to nationally and internationally recognized poets, and the performance will feature slam poets from Youth Speaks-who recently placed 5th in the nation at the National Youth Poetry Slams-and adult poets who regularly showcase their work at the Seattle Poetry Slam.

Residents of Cooper artist housing will mount an exhibition of their work in Youngstown’s promenade gallery. Upstairs, they will open their studios to show and sell their works. Their mediums range from painting, photography, sculpture, and installation, to clothing, jewelry, video, and more.

* This year’s Open House is taking place in conjunction with Come Over! a Delridge Open Campus event. The community is invited to Come Over! between 6-10pm for a progressive menu of delectable foods, entertainment, raffle, and tours of: Youngstown, the Delridge Community Center, and Southwest Youth and Family Services. The event will provide an opportunity for neighbors to connect with one another and learn about programs and services offered by the organizations.