When the Unexpected Strikes

I am now faced with something I did not consider when I began this particular project. Though the potentiator managed to slow the motors by half, they are still moving rather fast. In fact, it appears as if the motors might be spinning too fast for the diffraction sheets to work. I personally didn’t think that was possible but I unfortunately will not be able to test that theory until I can fix the device. Much to my amusement and horror, the wind ripped the sheet right off as I was walking back from the studio yesterday!

Some Adjustments

Due to my current lack of speakers and lack of funding or time to find adequate ones, I have decided to switch the kind of light show I am building. Unfortunately this version does require some circuitry. However I do intended to keep the result cheap and easy to make. Essentially I am making something akin to this…

After some research I discovered that he was wrong about those motors. Not only are they extremely hard to find, they are also very expensive. And these are only for the simplest version! So my goal is to make a similar contraption but with motors you can get for 99 cents to $2 at radioshack. Please note that most of these motors are actually high speed motors. Regardless, I believe that these combined with a potentiator to slow them down will create the same effect.

It’s fairly simple to add the potentiator to the circuit. You’ll need a battery hook up (preferably 2 to 4 AAA) and some extra wire.
1) The potentiator has three solder stations, attach either the positive or the negative end of the battery to one of the outside stations.
2) Take the left over wire for the battery and attach that to one of the two solder stations on the motors.
3) With you’re extra wire run a line from the second solder stations on the motors to the middle station of the potentiator
4) Leave the last solder station on the potentiator open!
5) Turn it on and have fun!

Final Proposal

Abstract: I propose to create a simplified laser effects show that is cheaply and easily made, so that it is available to everyone who wants one. Also it is easy to use and interactive with any music playing.

In my short encounter with this subject called timearts, I have found it to be the most diverse and most quickly expanding of all the art forms I have partaken in. from video art to reactabes to LED graffiti. It is the last of those though that really caught my muse, the idea of light as art. However, instead of graffiti I turned towards light shows.

Normally when we think of light shows, we think of those fancy pictures made of light and spectacular pyrotechnics that we have seen at rock concerts from, essentially, Pink Floyd and onward. However, lasers were originally used as a form of art, back to a performance of Faust in the late 1960s. In that light, no pun intended, I believe that it should not be something exclusive to only those who have the excess money to sponsor it. Instead it should be accessible to everyone, and that is my goal here.

As the final project in my exploration of 4D art, I would like to attempt creating a laser effects show. However, unlike most shows that are controlled by expensive switchboards, I aim to create a low-budget show that is controlled by the music itself.

This laser light show has no circuitry attached., and therefore requires no expertise in the electric, programming or engineering fields. In fact, he only materials I will need are a laser pointer, an old styled speaker and a mirror. Brining the budget for this project well under thirty dollars, by my estimation.

The design is really quite simple. First the small mirror is attached to the face of the speaker. This can be done either by directly gluing it or by rubber-cementing it to a piece of latex that can then be stretched over the speaker. Once that is set up the laser pointer, preferably green as it shows up more strongly than the reds, is directed at the center mirror so that it reflects either onto the ceiling or the center of a wall.

The basic idea is that when music is played, it causes the speaker to move to the beat. This is the reason that an older speaker system is preferred, most new styles have a cover over the speaker that does not vibrate. So unless one has a speaker system with a subwoofer lying around, old cheaply made speakers shake the most. Naturally when the speaker moves, the mirror moves with it. When the mirror moves, it changes the path of the reflected beam. So as the music plays, and the base pumps the speaker, the reflected light creates designs on the wall. Designs that are made solely by the music.

The final result is a cheaply made laser effects show that, not only is it available to everyone, it is unique every time you use it. Also, best of all, there are no adjustments needed; you can simply set up the music playlist and never have to touch a button again (except for skip).

Skeleton Dance

It’s just a cute little animation of a skeleton, you guessed, it dancing. It was a fun project except that we had to work with these things called “oblique strategies” and mine were to work with the flaws (so excuse the blurriness) and to do it all in one sitting – no reshooting anything
I’m not sure if i like the result or not…

An Experiment in Animation

It started as a quick test for stop motion software, but I ended up having a little too much fun with it. Here are the results…

Learning to Fly

I wrote a narrative about a small but profound piece of my childhood, when I moved from the city to the suburbs, and how my life changed because of it. I was planning to set it to video clips I had taken some time before, but I didn’t think it captured the imagination of the piece so I switched to animation. I have innumerable animations – each of them quite brilliant – collected on my desktop and I figured I should do something with them. The animations I used were…rac by Frederic Back, Diary (Dnevnik) by Nedeliko Dragic, Dreamscapes by Sean McBride, Grasshoper by Bruno Bozzetto, The World of Interiors by Bunny Schendler.

The Narrative:
Did you ever play those games as a little kid, the ones where you come up with a story and act it out, making up the plot as you go along? I did.

When my parents moved us away from the city, they decided on a place that liked to pretend it was untouched by the urbanization they so longed to escape. It wasn’t, really. Drive five minutes, no, less than that, and your back in the shitty run-down shopping centers and overcrowding that now characterize northern Virginia. But that’s not the point. The point is that there were trees, lots of them.

Suddenly, my dangers of the world went from hobos, rapists and kidnappers to left and forgotten bear traps and getting lost in the woods, and well, the occasional camp of hobos living near the creek. Really, I didn’t know what to make of it. Until that time, I had known sidewalks, cars and concrete; now I knew trees and grass and animals. I couldn’t have been more out of place. I was a city girl to the very heart and core of me.

To make things worse, children in this new place were few and far between. My heart sank. I thought I was destined to forever be alone, isolated by these trees, forever longing for my concrete jungle. Fortunately, it wasn’t long till I managed to make a friend. I shudder to think how my life would have been should the circumstances have been different.

Her name was Nikki, and she was all of one day younger than me. We looked like twins, down to the mischievous sparkle reflected in our eyes and hearts. We wasted no time getting in trouble.

School days now ended with play sword fights by the creek and weekends began with the ringing of my doorbell to come out and play.

Life was a fantasy. She and I were knights, our kingdom in dire peril, and it was our duty to rescue the maiden fair. (Of course neither of us would be caught dead as the damsel in distress.) Every passing car was an enemy spy and every tree a dragon to be conquered. We lived by honor and measured our valor by counting our wounds at the end of the day. Oh such times they were. We lived and breathed adventure.

My fondest memories are of those days. Of sticks beings swords, of being tackled to the forest floor. Of fighting dragons, Of running the creek start to end, of beginning the day at dawn and never coming back until hours after dusk.
But nothing lasts forever.

These days weapons are no longer made of sticks, and the dragons I fight aren’t trees but people. I have more to worry about now than just my mother finding out about that wooden bow we made.

I’m back in the city now, though it’s not my city. Through it all, I am still, and probably will always be, a city girl through and through. But now, there’s a small green patch in my heart, a tiny vine of ivy that weaves it’s way through my soul. I will always carry those forested memories with me, and I know that people can see those woods reflecting through the brown of my eyes.

And these days, when I still see Nikki, it is like we are still there, back in those days. Our eyes meet, and they rekindle our twin sparks. All of a sudden, we are kids again, running towards the woods, wrestling each other and fighting with sticks. It brings laughter and joy even into the darkest moments of our lives.

We can conquer anything.

Because we conquered dragons.

Bad Apple

This video was made specifically to scare small children on halloween. Creepy. Gross. Disturbing. Those were our goals for this project, and so I talked to my friends about there experiences with the creepy and strange in their lives (from nightmares to mental breakdowns) and essentially made a bit of a montage for it. Happy Halloween

Insomnia and Migraines

It was supposed to be a sensory overload video, but considering only 10 clips downloaded from the class library uncorrupted, the video aspect of it didn’t turn out as spectacular as I had hoped. Well, at least the sound is pretty good. all the clips were taken from movies like Fight Club, Lord of War, Ferris Bueler’s Day Off, etc.

A Day Revisited

This is my first project for my Time Arts class =^_^=
It’s meant to be an introduction video, but with a few (complicated) guidelines:
You cannot mention your name or where you’re from.
You cannot show your entire face in one frame.
Do not say what you like (show it).
No use of pre-recorded audio.
Do not record all at the same location.
It’s not necessarily a huge success, but I did finish it. I’m most unhappy with the music. I keep telling myself NOT to go back and remix it AGAIN…this is why I’m not a music major (sigh). In the end though, it was a fun and interesting project.

MEow

I feel awfully like a blank page today so i’ll have to introduce myself later =^_^=