as an artist, academic, and serving on the board of directors of my local hackerspace, it can feel like I often don’t have enough studio time for my creative work. in the last 5 months, I’ve been especially busy with teaching + related activities, however, looking ahead I anticipated that my art-making schedule would be quite limited during this time.  I like to give my creative making a lot of space to really suss out new ideas and let the work lead my thinking to interesting places, but I knew it’d be counter-productive if I forced myself to make a lot of “new work” (hint: it’d probably be some tired rehashing of ideas I already had.  ::yawn::)

so, rather than lament the fact that I couldn’t be in the studio every waking hour, I came around to the fact that this was kind of an opportunity to get into my creative research on 3D printing – more specifically, finding ways for 3D printing to become more accessible to artists + art students.  it helped that coincidentally right around the same time, one of the members of my hackerspace, red, started a 3D printer build group. now I’m a bit pleased to say that I’ve reached one goal of the whole project – build a printer that produces consistent and “acceptable quality” objects (I could spend a lot more money and time tweaking my current printer to get print results down to the micron-level tolerance, but let’s push things forward…). now there are a few more steps I’d like to have done before I’d like to present the whole project somehow, but I think this is a pretty solid “middle-of-the-project” place to be at the moment.  so just take a minute to watch some object being printed in my studio if you’d like.

now I never intended to set out making new pieces – however, I’ve also found that making this creative tool jump-started a lot of new ideas for my artwork – ideas that would’ve never come about if I would’ve muddled around in the same studio-mind I inhabited after putting up my show last September.  in other words, this creative research was actually beneficial to the studio practice in the long run – a bit of an investment really. now that I can actually make fairly decent print, I can follow some of these ideas – so, +1 for the artwork too.

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in the video, I’m making bracket for a spool of plastic filament (the material the printer extrudes.)  I combined these two designs:
Filament Spool by Cubic Print
Filament Holder

today I got a hands-on demo of the vinyl cutter that’s living at the hackerspace.  so far I’m impressed + excited at the possibilities – stenciling, circuit board etching, large-scale wall drawing installation, etc.  using a vector image, the process is a lot easier than what I experienced w/ the CNC process. different mediums + applications, sure – but as far as bringing digital art data into physical space, this seems fairly painless.

now I just have to resist the urge to cut out hundreds of miniature stardotstar vinyl stickers in super hot pink…

I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a 3D printer for a while now – but since there’s a build group it’s the perfect excuse to finally jump into the whole process.  I’m pretty excited at the prospect of being able to print out designs for my art pieces in my studio, and eventually I’d like to work on a way for artists to jump into 3D printing w/o the big technical/programming learning curve (see my post on CNC for artists…)  subscribe to the blog (that little button in the upper right-hand corner) and I’ll keep you posted with updates to the build.

I did the design in Illustrator, then had to open it in Inkscape in order to use an Inkscape to generate the g-code (the programming language that CNC milling software uses.) In order to generate the g-code, I had to futz around with a lot of finicky, complicated settings…manually.  I had to manually take the size of the bit into account, and manually adjust the width of the stroke on the paths, and do a bunch of other manual calculations and adjustments. Then, I took the g-code and imported that into the milling software. Only then was I ready to mill the design.

The problem is that this is a totally ineffective solution for artists.  It adds unnecessary layers of complication and removes the immediacy of working with materials in the studio.  There has to be a way to automate all those manual calculations and adjustments. Right now, using the CNC machine feels like programming my own analog synth patches, when what I want to do is just pickup my keyboard and start making music right away.  Or, it’s like I have to write my own OS every time I want to use my computer, when what I need is a plug-and-play solution. I’ve decided I’m going to try to figure out some sort of solution to this problem so that artists can retain the creative relationship with materiality with minimal hassle.  What I’d like is to be able to go relatively directly from my drawing to the milling software, with all the calculations taken care of more or less automatically and invisibly.  You know, like a file conversion: I upload my Illustrator (or whatever vector graphics format) file, and it gets translated into data readable by the milling software.  Maybe I have to check a few boxes or input a few numbers, that’s fine–I just need to have the process streamlined enough to make using the CNC machine something artists can use in their studios (without also having to be programmers and engineers).   Like I said earlier, I imagine that CNC can be a pretty revolutionary tool for artists to use in their studios – not just me, but other people as well. 

Now, I know there are both expensive and proprietary solutions out there – things like CAD and CAM software – but there’s a pretty big barrier to those solutions.  Mainly, they’re designed for industrial engineering, large-scale factory manufacturing, product design, etc, and they require years of specialized technical training.  That’s not going to work for fine artists – first, we need something like SketchUp that you can learn in an afternoon that doesn’t require engineering degrees or a background in computer sciences to become proficient in. Second, the things we’re going to produce are small-scale, one-off pieces that are, because of the nature of art, impractical and based off of imaginative and creative processes and don’t adhere to the same standards and compliances of some industrial widget thing.   I’m hoping that somebody has already figured out a solution to this problem. If so, let me know! I’d really appreciate any and all suggestions. If not, I guess I’ll have to figure this out myself. Either way, I’ll post updates about my progress on this particular problem.

I first started to problematize robots back in November 2009 after watching the Vanguard documentary Remote Control War – exploring the current trends in military robotic technology.  this led me to think about robots as this tool, these bodies of military + industrial capability.  recently I came back to this idea, wondering how to locate the robot in terms of systems of power.  the origins for the term robot is Czech – robota – meaning labor and work, but with the implications of serf, or slave, labor.  Hegel’s master-slave dialectic would tell us that robots are these things that mediate labor and further distance the operator from the body.  these robotic drones are operated by soldiers trained on video game systems, and the violence of war, the violence of the body, is abstracted and removed from the operator’s embodied experience.  watching Iron Man 2 last night, Robin made the comment that war doesn’t really exist without killing – and I began to imagine scenarios where two opposing sides enter armed conflict against each other.  instead of human soldiers, the fighting takes place between armed drones and killer robots.  I’ve heard the argument that this future of war is preferable, because there’s no loss of life.  but, when capitalism produces an endless supply of robotic soldiers, there’s nothing at stake, and the war could never end.

of course cyborgs are also a product of capitalism and the military, but rather than using technology to further remove and mediate the body’s experience, I wonder if the cyborg’s use of technology allows for creatively exploring new possibilities of embodiment.  in other words, the cyborgian body opens up possibilities for hyper-abilities, while the robot immediately disallows any exploration and creative use of the body.

so I’m wondering how to negotiate this position in the studio and when navigating an art community (esp. new media) that seems to value (I won’t quite say fetishize) the robot-as-art-(maker.)  on one hand, I’m enthusiastic and actually really like folks like Eric Singer + LEMUR, and there’s no doubt any of the hackers making graffiti-bots have any military or capitalist intentions.  I’m also the last person to have any vested agendas in any sort of artist’s-hand-gestural-mark-making-purity; that kind of old-and-new sincerity snake oil doesn’t have any currency in my studio.  No – I’m wondering if there’s something to be hacked and subverted from robotics, applying to the body in order to instigate creative ideas outside a tired man/machine dichotomy.

well, I’ll let you know how well that turns out for me…

it’s no secret that I enjoy re-purposing consumer (esp. @ the junk-shop level) tech., and the hacked animatronics in sshhkk and a few of the leptaxis pieces are pulled from scavenged toys.  now though, I want to have a little more control over the motion, and for that, I need to start designing + building the mechanics.  I think I have a fairly good knowledge of basic electronics, sensors, connectivity, etc – but I’m still grasping at the kinetic mechanics involved in all of this. 
I’ve been looking a lot at the 2nd section in Simon Penny‘s “Gizmology” handbook Chris Cassidy gave me last year, and that’s a real _basic_ starting point in understanding how to build kinetic devices.  It helped me understand how to make the furry breather with a servo + camshaft.  Penny’s handbook is a quick and dirty explanation of things, but I think I need a little more.  I spent most of this week trying to find a good resource on mechanics written for artists, makers, and other non-engineering majors (something like the Make: Electronics text I’m including in some of my class syllabi.)  I’m super interested in Dustyn Robert’s Making Things Move, because that might be what I’m looking for, but that doesn’t get published until December…

I’m also looking for a good way to prototype some simple electromechanical ideas.  I picked up a few of the Tamiya educational mechanics kits from a hobby shop a while back, but I’m looking for a broader solution to prototyping mechanical parts for my projects…. For example, if I wanted to figure out the best way to use two servos to articulate motion, I’d like to just pull out a box of parts and start tinkering away. I’m thinking an Erector set or the Lego Mindstorm kits are along the lines of what I need, but they still seem more “toy” and less “robust prototyping platform.” My next impulse turned to software – I mean, how do mechanical engineers prototype and test their designs?  All the high-level 3D CAD mechanical simulation software is _way_ too complex for what I’m looking for.  Maybe a better way to put it is – iMovie is to Final Cut as __?__ is to TurboCAD.

This is what leads me back to robotics – there’s a large community of professional, academic, and maker roboticists that I can look to.  I just got a whole gig o’ txts on robotics, written from the perspective of both “academic theory + practice” and “projects for makers.”  hopefully this’ll serve a good starting point for making my new cyborg prostheses move, howl, pluck, dance, and squirm.

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(quick note: in an effort to keep thinking + moving fwd. with the wrk, I’m going to try to post on a regular basis.  for now, I’m aiming for at least once a week.  these notes might be build logs, what I’m currently experimenting with, ideas I’m tossing around, etc.  feedback, crits, suggestions are welcome – kthx)

unfortunately I melted through the logic board two days after shooting this test; it limited the motion to that strange jerky on/off sequence.  now it’s just a dumb circuit (by “dumb” i mean just a simple voltage -> switch -> motor, no controlling board.)

at any rate, can’t wait to install it in a few days @ the Christina Ray gallery in NYC; lots of fun rattling plz to enjoy.

christian.ryan
Eric Kniss
Heath Montgomery
Kristin Ashley
Liliya Zalevskaya
Matthew Thomason
Melissa Sullivan
Sam Peck

Christina Ray Gallery
30 Grand Street, Ground Floor
New York NY 10013
212.334.0204

opening reception:  
Thursday, August 5 ___ 7-9PM

pixelDrop – ActionScript projection mapping interface from christian.ryan on Vimeo.

in this test, I’m using a particle emitter to bounce cubes off things in orgSpace (the digital lab @ UNCG art dept.)