Zen Machine

Zen Machine
Overview – The Zen Machine is a cobbled together set of old printers, scanners, 2×4′s, tiles, sand, and lots of electronic bits which synergizes to make an automated zen garden. The viewer is expected to appreciate the algorithmic beauty of the designs created, and also to consider the dichotomy between the nature of a zen garden and the mechanical aspects of the machine. Does a grinding printer motor destroy all that is zen? or have we found a new tool for human expression? We must consider that the engineer and the monk may merely be two parts to the same coin.
Materials/Parts -
2 Old Printers – specifically the inkjet print heads which contain
-metal bar which acts as an axis
-DC motor
-linear encoder
Wood frame pieces – for both sides and bottom of container and apparatus
40 lbs of sand
River rocks – stolen from Home Depot
Arduino + Motor Shield
Bamboo stick

Technical Description -
The Zen Machine consists of two distinct parts, the sand bed which contains the garden, and the mechanical drawing apparatus. The garden is a simple wooden frame, painted sand colored and tiled with both rocks and earthen shaded tile. Inside this rests the sand upon which the machine draws, as well as the accent river rocks.
The mechanical apparatus is a square wooden frame to which are attatched the two printer actuators. The two rods are arranged perpendicularly so as to form an X and Y axis, with a third rod providing support to the Y axis. The first two rods have motorized actuators which operate by DC motors pulling a toothed plastic belt. Linear encoders determine the positon of the machine at all times, and this feedback allows the Arduino to control the machine precisely. The two motors control a bamboo drawing stick which is the actual interface between the sand and the machine.

Projectt Proposal

The basic idea is to make a sort of mechanical mandala (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala) which is generated on the spot.

World of sand falling is an interactive display where the media is a bed of sand. The artwork is both the creations made in the sand itself as well as the mechanical process by which it is created. A machine will create a sandscape in the display area, much like a mandala. This project is an attempt to fulfill a few longtime desires of mine. To create a device which works with the motion of sand and physically realizes the flow of data. The initial goal is ambitious but I will propose a number of ways in which the project may be scaled backwards or forwards depending on the progress I am able to make. The main area will be a flat surface with raised edges which is filled with white sand and lit by a single bright light source from a slight angle. The sandscape may be interacted with in a number of ways, not all of these will necessarily be included depending on their feasibility and desirability. An adjustable stream of sand from above, which will rain down to create mountains. A weight on a string or rod which can be used to trace out lines on the sand. A series of ball bearings which are moved via magnetic force from below. A series of small tools which viewers can use to participate in the sandscape, such as a small rake. The proposed size will not be incredibly large, approximately a foot and a half to a side, however I think that this can be scaled up or down without too much difficulty. This will be displayed like a free standing table and will have a statement of theme and use which will encourage users to interact with the piece.

Keywords: sand, drawing machine, sandscape, mechanical mandala, permanence of data

Timeline: 4 Weeks 1st Week

5 Things to Change About the World, plus project ideas

I’ve been starting to think of ideas for what would be possible to make with an Arduino (or more accurately, I’ve been thinking about how awesome it is that some of the stuff I’ve thought about before would be actually possible).  Not all of my ideas might be feasible but its just some thoughts.

-Make a portable text message blocker/cell phone jammer/WiFi coldspot

-Track buses by GPS so I know when the next bus is showing up

-Understand the invisible world of radio waves

-Make a custom controller for a game system which allows for more physical interaction

-Make a robot which, when plugged in, attempts to unplug itself as the light fades from its LED-eyes

 

 

Hard Drives are Actually Quite Hard

Short aside, this week has been pretty good.  Got my laptop fixed and I’m reformatting/installing everything.  Threw windows 7 on half and am going to put fedora on the other half as soon as I find a USB stick to contain fedora.

As a note to this I got to take apart some computers today which were no longer wanted by their previous owner.  Manged to scrounge up a few fans and power supplies (going to see how this all works with an Arduino).  In return however I had to destroy their hard drives due to some paranoia about data being stolen.  Founded or not I got to pull apart a hard drive, explain to onlookers how one worked and marvel at all the little pieces, then take a hammer to it.

Much to my suprise it didn’t fall apart like a matza cracker during an air raid, the things were actually pretty tough.  Took a few solid hammer blows to dent the thing and even then it still just seemed to be mocking me.  A few more hammer blows sorted the hard drives out however.

I also got a chance to see 64 MB of RAM in a computer, it was old….

Cody Jordan

-blog for the blog god

A Response to “A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design” and on the Excessive Use of Prepositions

Heres a link to the original article in case you haven’t read it: http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/

(This blog is for class so I do assume a certain audience is actually going to read this)

As it turns out I have thought about the future of technology and design quite a bit, and have formed some radical opinions which I hold for unfounded, ridiculous reasons.  In some ways I find my distaste for new shiny technological advancements somewhat ironic because I am a computer programmer and designer.  I AM the wave of the future.  However, this also means that I have a say in which direction we’re headed.

On the whole I don’t like smartphones or touchscreen in general.  They are very cool and sleek, but hard to work with.  They tend to be small, finicky, and most importantly they don’t go *click*.  When I’m typing, I can feel they keys, keys click, click*click*click, I hear it, and even without looking I can tell what I’m typing and have a definite sense that letters are appearing onscreen.  Additionally we are limited by screens being two-dimensional objects in a three-dimensional world, something will always be lacking there.

Despite all the claims the article makes if we actually examine the video we can still see touches of a better future.  The attendant at the hotel flips over the transparent info-card for more information on the client, and the data which populates the space (on the walls, the window of the taxi highlighting the meeting area) still has some merit.  More than just how we interact with technology we can see here that the video’s version of the world of the future is made up of a constant influx of information.  Importantly, information is traded easily to those who need to know, and the division between a personal device and a public terminal fades away (much like “cloud computing” and “cloud storage” and “cloud stuff”).  Technology is less about the hard, and more about the soft.

Theres more flowy, glowy stuff, and less concrete solid stuff.  Perhaps this developed because technical limitations have been fading away as better and better hardware becomes available.

Look at the aesthetic of the future.  Everything is white, with a soft glow, full of gradients, simple elegant vector art, with a focus on brighter colors and ease of use for the user.  I call this the “iFuture.”  The world of the gentle white gradient.

I do not like this.

Perhaps I’m just resentful that technology is becoming easier to use.  People can do innumerable things without understanding a single piece of it, accessing complex internet protocols or performing advanced image manipulation with the simple click of a button, all the while having no idea about the glorious underlying mathematics.  Maybe I don’t like that in order to make technology more “user friendly” it loses out on underlying functionality.  Have you ever stared at a device and said “you ought to be able to do this?  I know you can.” and known that the only reason it wouldn’t is because some designer didn’t deign to let us use our own technology how we want to?  The “walled garden” of Apple, pretty on the inside but hard to get out of.

I also like thing because they are ridiculous, I enjoy watching bad movies to see how campy they are, and over-the-top 80s post-apocalyptic science fiction appeals to me in some strange way.  My future would have more corners, and brass, and be a whole lot more complicated.

Try typing “help” into a terminal, depending on which shell you’re using it will probably say “Command not found.”  Yeah!  A future where technology still holds some of its mystique, where its not all clean and clear cut but still has edges and holes, and gears.  Technology which is hard to use, and can do anything if you know how and shake it hard enough a few times.

In all seriousness however, while I find most “modern” looks to be clean and sleek and professional, I do find them a bit boring.  I also find it interesting how much technology we use every day and don’t understand.  Some might argue that the entire goal of technology and computing is to boil down technical details in a way which allows for everyone to make use of them.  Think of how much more you can do when you have a bit of know-how, small hacking projects, making your own games, fixing your own stuff when it breaks, even speeding up work by automating it (rather than trying to work inside the walled garden some designer provided you).  I like to think of technology like the Wizard of Oz.  You can either prance around in the field of poppies, or learn how to use a microphone and some lighting tricks and rule as a god.

Week 3 – Radiolarians

Last week we took a look at Ernst Haeckel drawings of radiolarians.  Taking inspiration from this I decided to create a project based around the strange look of those tiny creatures.  So far I’ve made a processing program which generates a tiny creature made up of little Voronoi regions inside a hexagon, not impressive yet, but working on it.  Next I need to figure out how to make them follow that drawing style, and appear as more than just a series of lines.

 

Week 2 – Quick Post

Made a second project for class, bouncing jello cubes, can read more about it on the link.

http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=49201

Have to run, blog for the blog god.

Week 1

Soon I should be changing around the background and theme of my blog.  As much as I like their class default theme I’d like to make it a bit more me.  I’m split between dark colors and abstract flowing fractals, or just making some hardcore classic pixel art, maybe some of both.  With that in mind I have the first project for class.  Currently we’re learning processing, something which I already know a little bit about.  Portfolio here:

http://www.openprocessing.org/portal/?userID=14291

More than willing to teach people what I know, although I have to admit that I rather dislike java.

Our first project was to demonstrate basic proficiency with Processing by making some shapes and distributing them randomly on a background.  I decided to throw in some nice fade effect to make it look classy.

Heres a link to the actual sketch so you can watch it in action:

http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=49148

Getting Started

Well I’ve just started up a blog for the first time.  This will mostly center around my participation in Owen Mundy’s Web 3 class, but expect plenty of technology, programming, and role-playing game design to eventually accumulate itself here as well.

I’m Cody (Ethan) Jordan, I am a Computational Science undergraduate at Florida State University.  I program things, some of them are fun to watch.  I also play role-playing games, and argue about how they should be run.  I also spin fire poi

Cody Jordan

-blog for the blog god