ericStimmel: October 2005

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Wednesday, October 26, 2005

okay... so i've gotten bored with the 'migrating posts from my old typepad blog' tedium... i'll try to get it done at some point, but i want to start posting about what i am working on right now... of course i don't think i can get into it any detail at the moment [ at least not with any images ] due to lack of sleep and subsequent lack of focus.

i will, however, give a brief description of the trajectory of my work. so here goes...

i finished out the year last spring working with gps mapping. i made a quick test using a holux gm-210 usb gps puck and a piece of open source software called kismac. this is a mac application developed, i believe, from a linux application called kismet; the program is designed primarily as a wifi stumbler, but it has a secondary feature used to map paths and mark wifi APs using data from an attached gps receiver. since i knew very little about gps mapping at that point i just used this to record my path as i walked and drove around campus. i was able to save the paths as vectors and tried to underlay a map of the area... it didn't line up very well [ probably my fault ] so i adjusted things in illustrator a bit... [ maybe i can find the direct import image and post it to flickr sometime ] so this really is kind of faked... here's a detail. there are a couple others on my flickr site [ just click the image ]

so, back to this year... we are working on a project that will travel the country later this year... it's unofficially [ and rather uninspired-ly ] called 'the trailer project' and is probably explained in more detail on some of the other students' blogs [ check out doug's for example ]. but quickly it's a 45 foot long, retired flatbed trailer that we will 'chop' and have towed to a number of schools and institutions across the country. my contribution to this will be an adaptation of an un-realized project i was working on last year [ the where's eric project ]. i will place a computer on the bed of the trailer, hook up an internet connection via a cel phone, connect a gps, add a number of cameras and track the thing along it's journey... auto posting this information to a website and recording in onboard.

whew... that's kind of intimidating me now... it seems like a lot of work, but i think i have my head around most of it... each component will have to be hacked or chopped to some degree in order to bend them to my will. i've succeeded on several accounts so far all of which i will dedicate some space to explaining at a later date. stay tuned...

assisted speaking devices [orig. posted 2005.03.22 at 12:21 AM]

Monday, October 24, 2005

so i know that i have been slow to post images of this, my most recent collaboration... and i don't see much of a chance of formatting images and posting in the next couple of days, so i will just start out with a teaser [well, i think it pretty much covers the final, working view] and will get into the technical details a little later. there are many details and working shots i would like to show and some links to where i learned about some of the things i used as well as a sort of 'how-to' manual that will show how it all came together... that will probably be a little later though since i am planning to modify some of the inner workings. at any rate, here are a couple shots... [apologies to those who have already and only seen these shots... patience is a virtue]

view my statement here: Download speaking_devsmall.pdf

**small, but important note... i worked on this project with jessica frelinghuysen who is pictured in the second image above..

preliminary bench design [orig. posted 2005.02.27 at 06:50 PM]

Sunday, October 23, 2005

as an upcoming project, Andy and i will be developing a design and a system for constructing a thin-walled concrete bench with a wood back support. here are a few images of our brainstorming session last night.

Dive Into Repetition [ends...] [orig. posted 2005.01.31 at 01:01 AM]

well... a week ago last friday was the official closing of the week long Dive Into Repetition forum gallery show. you can see the poster here and i've added a photo album on the sidebar [or click here] that shows a couple shots from my piece [a collaboration with ben teague from ceramics and andy weitnauer from architecture]... there may be more photos of the show on some of the other blogs... [the other architecture students participating in the show were dharmesh patel, jeff sturges, marty mcelveen, paul puzzello, and mikolaj szoska]

you can also see some of the progress photos in the previous posts and in this photo album [Ceramics Collaboration]

i also had a crit on this project last friday and some pictures of the installation in the architecture studio are shown in the photo album with gallery show. as always there is the possibility of this project being resurrected again at a later date, but for now it is completed. we produced 60 bricks [30 each of the two shapes] using the cardboard forms and two glazes [it's kind of amazing the variation we got from the red glaze].

the question of tolerance and precision came up before, during, and after my crit and i think it is central to my work... stay tuned for further developments and formulations of this idea and how it will be explored.

further updates... [orig. posted 2005.01.20 at 07:01 PM]

Monday, October 17, 2005

i will give a further breakdown of the process, quantity, loss ratio, etc soon. but in the meantime, here are some photos of the bricks in the molds, out of the molds [wet], out of the molds [dry] and in the kiln... unfortunately this kiln didn't fire the first night so we had to move to a larger kiln the next day which did fire. i don't have pictures of the fired bricks yet, but they look similar, just more red. ben is glazing the first batch tonight and firing them again in time to get them into the show [about 20-30] and putting another batch of about 12-15 in to be fired for the first time. these will also go in the show, but unglazed.

progress pictures [orig. posted 2005.01.16 at 12:12 AM]

Sunday, October 16, 2005

the Brick Project [orig. posted 2005.01.15 at 10:05 PM]

last thursday it was suggested to me that i attack my current project singularly rather than split time with other projects... this is difficult but, i think, good advice and i will try to heed it.

with that in mind i have been trying to finish the groundwork for the brick project in time to have some work for the upcoming forum gallery show this coming friday. i've taken the laser cut cardboard forms that i made at bill massie's studio last semester and have been coating them with a two-part resin epoxy (by West System) so that ben and i can use them as molds for hand packing clay and producing our bricks.

this process seems to work on the 1/8" cardboard molds where the corrugation runs perpendicular to the base, but the edges have proven a bit more difficult allowing the epoxy to flow thru the corrugations... i am currently experimenting with filling those openings with wood filler before applying the epoxy resin. this same problem might crop up in the 1/16" cardboard molds as well because the corrugations run vertically on those pieces... although they are smaller which might hold the epoxy long enough for it to cure.

when i find a camera around here i will post some progress shots... until then, back to work!

semester recap [orig. posted 2005.01.09 at 04:40 AM]

documentation of the previous semester's projects will be coming to this blog soon enough [well, that's the plan anyways] but in the meantime here is a brief recap of what i did and what i plan to do...

Forum Gallery Group Show - Platform

the team consisted of me, ed liang, maryam kaykavoosi, and robert brooks. we built a relatively modular plywood platform in and outside the forum gallery that addressed the nature of site specificity.

Dive Into Repetition - Hanging Bricks

the team for this project is me, andy weitnauer, and ben teague. this project is still in progress and it's completion [in time for an upcoming gallery show] will be my first task.

Fanfare Video/Audio Manipulation

the team for this project was me, andy weitnauer, and ed liang. in preparation for the event our studio held a 3-day charette with two former graduates and gustavo crembil [the AIR at the time]. we positioned a wireless camera outside the building along with a microphone. both were aimed at the street. we projected the live video feed onto the wall in the fanfare dining area [aka the woodshop] in the hope that the headlights on the passing cars would illuminate the candlelit room. we took the ambient traffic noise and processed it through ableton live and broadcast it into the space as well in the hope that it would provide a coreographed soundtrack to the lighting change. although this project was fairly unsuccessful, i believe it was due to technical difficulties attributable to the short time frame and would like to revisit it at a later date.

Omnipotent Vision - Quadrastatic

the team for this project was me and andy weitnauer. this project involved the construction of a video helmet equiped with a video monitor and wireless receiver. the gallery show was a immersive experience that led an individual along a path through the gallery with only stationary camera angles to guide them. at the end of the path they were asked to write their name on the wall which triggered a prerecorded, bluescreen video to be overlayed onto the live video feed in the helmet. this was accomplished by the use of a patch i wrote with Max/MSP + Jitter. This project endured some technical difficulties as well and should probably be renamed Duostatic, but again, i plan to revisit some of the ideas at a later date.

Massie Architecture Charette - Laser Cut Cardboard

i was part of a group of four students [including marty mcelveen, dharmesh patel, jeff sturges, and myself] who travelled to bill massie's studio in troy, ny for a weeklong experiment in 3D modeling and physical modeling with laser cut cardboard.

Studio/Personal Surveillance - The 'Where's Eric?' Project

this project is something that i will work on primarily myself. i have only begun to set this up with a wireless camera mounted to the truss above my studio. i plan to explore the possibilities and consequences of video tracking and monitoring and instantaneous global/local positioning. however, at present i have drifted a little onto a tangent involving the distortions of the video cameras i am working with.

New Studios Building Courtyard Intervention

jessica frelinghuysen and i are planning to complete an audio intervention in the new studios building courtyard in response to a project proposed by martin schwartz and bill massie. there isn't much resolved about this project yet. stay tuned.

so that's a brief recap and some prospects for the coming semester. i hope to get a more detailed description of some of these projects up in the coming days as well as some images and diagrams.

update... [orig. posted 2004.12.11 at 09:04 PM]

some long overdue images (not such great quality, but that's all i have at the moment) of some of what we are working on here (these are not all my projects)... and we did find a little time to do some sightseeing in albany at empire plaza...

lasers and cardboard [orig. posted 2004.12.09 at 05:32 PM]

on tuesday morning of this week dharmesh, marty, jeff and i drove from detroit to troy, new york for a sort of workshop at bill massie's office. we have been able to work at his office for the past two days (and nights) and will be here until sometime on sunday. we've been learning rhino and how to operate the laser cutter. i just uploaded a couple shots of bill's studio (it is very big - it's the entire building in the second shot) and the first floor is dedicated to a large CNC router, a 4'x8' laser cutter, and various other tools and materials not usually found in an architecture office). i will try to post some photos of what we are working on in the next day or so, but i've got a lot of work to do right now...

day of reckoning [orig. posted 2004.11.23 at 08:33 PM]

the unveiling of Omnipotent Vision: Quadrastatic is tomorrow... it will be located in the architecture studio (not the forum gallery as previously indicated) and will be from 6-8pm... be there. i will post images and a full description of the project after the show... in the meantime here is the flyer.

**REVISED LOCATION - FORUM GALLERY

Ceramics Collaboration [orig. posted 2004.11.21 at 04:03 PM]

andy and ben (ceramics) and i are working on a collaborative project to make a flexible linking brick that can both stack and hang. we developed the concept and the design several weeks ago. our initial fabrication method was to extrude the section and then lay them on a wood block to shape them into the hooked final form. then they would dry, be fired, then glazed and fired again. i have put up a photo album of the extruder plates and our first attempt.

to make a long story short... we exploded our two plates (they were made mostly of plywood) and will be abandoning the extrusion method for a packed form method.

video helmet prototype [ orig. posted 2004.11.15 at 06:36 PM ]

andy and i are working on a project called omnipotent vision. it involves a video helmet (which you can see here in it's first rendition) with a video screen attached to the front. a wireless receiver is attached to the top and a wireless camera is mounted to the wall surveillance camera style. the helmet restricts your vision to the fixed viewpoint of the surveillance camera effectively limiting your (visually) accessible world to a very small area. it also affects depth perception and orientation and forces the viewer to rely on the apparent truth of the 'live' video he/she is watching. this is the area we have chosen to exploit. with the use of Jitter (a software environment for working with live video processing) and a lot of modified electronics we hope to be able to create an immersive (though unnatural) experience that challenges the truth of live surveillance and is entertaining as well.

re-posts

okay... i looked back at my beginning posts and there is some junk there so i won't repost everything... just those related to my work.

new blogs...

so this is the first post on the new studio blog...
i'll be transferring my previous posts over virtually unedited.
only then will i begin to post regularly.
hopefully it will be regularly.
here's a picture to kick things off...

that's thomas
and the trailer [ more on that later ]

ericStimmel

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