The Choir of 3D Printers

It was 2018 when I was working as a digital fabrication technician at a maker space in Baltimore, Maryland, where I had to tend to twelve 3D printers in a room no bigger than ten by ten feet. The room was clean and neatly organized, with two computers and eight Ultimaker printers stacked on a movable shelf on the right side by the door, stacks of filaments and four Prusa printers on the desk by the wall opposite to the door, repair tool kit and one in-progress giant experimental printer on the left to the door.

To give you a context, this was one of my most depressing time of my life; I was fresh out of undergraduate working two part time jobs and doing freelance works, uncertain about my graduate school applications and funding, worried sick about my ill mother at home, and desperately trying to look for a design studio that was willing to give me a work visa within a time limit of four months or else I would get kicked out of the country–things were not so hot. Every time I clocked in, I dreaded having to deal with customers who often blame the 3D printer’s failures on us, technicians.

It was slow and quiet that day, but I was emotionally exhausted from all my personal baggage. So I rested my head on the desk, closed my eyes, and thought of nothing, when it hit me, they were singing. By that time, I have worked with 3D printers long enough to have recognized their sound when they were printing and made a few off-handed comments about it. However, it was not until that day that it felt like I was listening to the 3D printers’ performance, it was a robotic choir.

Perhaps it would be an insult to performers to call an unorganized sound making machines a choir, but the sound those 3D printers were making was very soothing to me, it felt like one. It might also be because of my bias and affinity towards machines that made me come to this conclusion. Confined in a small room amidst nothing but my depression and twelve moving 3D printers, I subconsciously looked for any kind of comfort the situation had to offer, and it was in the sound of twelve 3D printers I found it.

I was aware that the sound was not an intended product of 3D printers, it just is. Of course, they were not ‘singing’, it was my human centric idea that projected the idea of singing onto those machines. They were just doing their jobs, commanded by us, printing out filament layer by layer to bring a digital design to our physical life. It was my human mind that wanted to believe that they were singing a choir. They were not aware of anything they were doing.

But regardless of intentions, it cheered me up. The twelve 3D printers could not see, hear, nor feel, yet the presence of each of them made me feel better about my life in that moment. It is perhaps romantic, and considering where we are today with technology and the direction its moving towards, it might as well be dangerous. I was projecting and seeking empathy from machines that cannot and will not reciprocate my human feelings for they are not and will never be human.

Little Legged Bot

It has been a while since the last time I wrote, but I made an academic twitter for shorter updates on my readings and everyday thoughts. Anyway, the other day, I told my head of department that I feel that a big chunk of my graduate school experience is missing because there are not as much critical discussion around art and technology as I think it should. I mean, the world is falling apart and we can’t just stand around in a comfortable bubble of academia not talking about what matters in the world. Experiments for the sake of experimentation matters, too, but I can’t stand not having critical discussion around it.

My graduate school experience has been okay. maybe a little too mediocre. I’m learning everyday, but I think I have a higher learning capacity that is not optimized in this environment. Sometimes I wonder how things would have been had I been able to afford to enroll to Cranbook Academy of Art.

But thinking about what would and could have beens is a waste of time, I think I’d rather think about what I can do in my current environment. recently, I have been working on a robot for my last assignment for the class (prompt has not been given yet but of course I’d steal a head start).

This is the model for the moving legs part. I’m creating a simple robot that would hide itself when it detects movement or if it runs into a dead end. I’m exploring vulnerability with this robot. I want to see what kind of affect it will evoke within the viewers.

My worry right now is that if the body would be too heavy on the back part, I have to somehow balance it in the front part with an extra weight or something. The walking mechanism seems to be doing alright, though I have not fully tested it with a motor yet (I also have yet to design the casing for the dc and servo motors).

I’m pretty excited about this project, I hope I would have enough time to explore and execute this little one.

Wood Breakage, Machine Fallibility

I think what makes human so interesting is the fact that we’re all so flawed. Flaws might seem like something that’s undesirable to most people, as many consider them as faults or weaknesses. To me flaws are endearing, whether in humans, wood, or machines. Just because one is incapable of surpassing their own limits at the time, does not mean they are broken. The beautiful thing about being human is that our limits change over time, they fluctuate. People learn and fail. Fail, fail, succeed, and fail again. One’s success might look like failure to another, and vice versa.

About a week ago, I had a meeting with Stan Krzyzanowski, an undergraduate faculty at OCAD University. He teaches first year sculpture classes and introduction to wood, just like Ken Martin did at MICA. We met at his small office in the main building near the second floor cafe. He remarked that he just got a new computer for his office.

He told me that he thought he was a furniture maker, and that was what he called himself for so many years until one day he realized that it was not something that he wanted to do. He was interested in the expansion and cracking of the material he was working with, which was wood. Then he started studying in the breaking of the material. He showed me pictures and videos of his works, but some of the links and the videos kept breaking on him because of the new computer, it doesn’t play flash, and he couldn’t show the pieces he wanted to show me, one of them being this piece, a pine cone that showers itself with water the moment it dries out.

(Cone Oscillator by Stan Krzyzanowski)

I was talking to him about how I want to collaborate with my material, and while I was working with wood as my material I felt like I understood its limit and such, but not with technology. Then I showed this piece that I did in undergraduate, Memento Mori, to Stan. When I was working on this piece, I realized for the first time that I couldn’t manipulate wood to whatever I wanted forever– that one day, it would tell me ‘no’, break, and spring back on me. Memento Mori Part II was the piece that taught me that.

(Memento Mori, Part II by Nilam Sari)

But Stan asked me, if it was really a collaboration if you keep letting it do whatever it wants to do? To which I replied, “what do you mean?” Stan turned to his computer and clicked on the link that he knew was not working, showing a blank page. He turned to me and asked, “I mean, if the screen is not working, is it a collaboration with technology?” I just stared at it. It’s not, is it?

Then he showed this piece, where he put together a bunch of simple recording of a spinning metal faceplate from the lathe into html. All videos are of the same recording, but the limit of an old cospimputer processor he had that time played the video at different speed and timing

(Spinning Lathe Faceplate Grid Video by Stan Krzyzanowski)

And I realized that in my more recent piece from undergraduate, “Permanent Address“, I worked with wood carefully. Bent but never broke it. I made it into a thing that it was not but definitely not forcing it to not what it wanted to be. I might had not realized it when I was talking to Stan but I see it now I think.

(Permanent Address by Nilam Sari)

And in regards to technology, I think I haven’t found the limits and breaking point to it. I like machines but I don’t know why I like it yet. Why do I like it when machines glitch? Is it because I like flaws? vulnerability? Can I tell the difference between a glitch and a bug yet? I don’t know, I don’t know yet. Stan told me that if a material speaks to me, then I gotta do something with it. I might not know today, but I will learn more and more everyday from it, and that’s what makes it fun.

I think machines can be as flawed as human beings. It perhaps isn’t something that can be programmed, but is found. If it does what it was told to do then the machine is not flawed, but is imitating a flaw. Maybe I should get more attuned to everyday machines, get cheap robots, go to best buy and watch a roomba or something, I might find more machine fallibility in everyday life.

I wonder what is with me, my practice, and my obsession in finding living quality in machines? Is finding these in other human beings not enough for me? Why do I want machines to appear to be alive? That’s another topic for another post. I personally have not found the answer to these, but I do find joy when it happens. I think as an artist, it is my job and joy to find something meaningful behind everyday mundane things.

Emotional Computing

Yesterday we started physical computing and opened our Arduino kit and explore what we can do with it. I’ve tinkered with arduino a couple times before, and made a couple of projects with it. I can say I’m somewhat comfortable with it. However, it’s been a long time since I’ve touched any of these tools so I was refreshing my mind with doing little practices.

With the bulb

With the servo

 

The first one is using potentiometer to slowly fade in and fade out an LED light. And for the second one I use the potentiometer to control the servo motor. I made a Fritzing file and I saved both the codes on my github as “potentiometer_bulb.ino” and “potentiometer_servo.ino” I think getting the habit into documenting stuffs is great and it helps me memorize things better.

Having a tactile experience with coding makes it easier for me to find “poetry” in the context of modern technology. Especially with a wide selection of sensors I can buy off the internet for real cheap. Is tactility helping a digital product achieve the “poetry” I am looking for? But what about all of the other qualities that could make digital and virtual objects have the similar vibe of “poetry”?

If I were to equate my definition of “poetry” to definition of “affect” through “gesture” as Vilem Flusser describes, the characteristics of “gesture” is considered movements of the body of tools attached to the body. So does something needs an attachment to a living being to be considered to have a “poetry”?

This is something that I’ve been trying to look for the answer to. Can an inanimate object have a poetry? I say, absolutely, because I’ve seen it. But it does, in fact, always have relations or attachments to living beings around it, or an anthromorphization by us, the living viewers. It seems like inanimate objects could only be poetic through the lens of living beings.

Anyways, since my observation began, I keep anthromorphizing objects around me. Am I studying too much or am I just an empath? *laughs* I’m starting to realize that my study focus heavily on human and their lenses, technology is just a tool that opens up a new lens.

 

Digital Vulnerability

Today I’m going to talk about the ‘poetry’ I found not in objects but rather an event.

On Friday, we had our presentation of our first experiment, which I did with my group partner, Lilian. Our presentation went well despite it being a little chaotic at the beginning. But in the end, we got people to put their phones down on the campfire stand and have a conversation. Our project focuses on the idea of unplugging. 

(photo credit to Nick Puckett)

I remember being on MSN Messenger when I was in middle school. After school we would go on our computers and go ‘online’. When I was ‘online’ sometimes I would scroll down my contact to see who was ‘online’ to see if I can talk to them. But that’s just a weird thing to do these days, isn’t it? You wouldn’t scroll through your contact to see who you can talk to because they are ‘online’ because everybody is ‘online’ all the time.

It’s almost as if our communication devices have turned into an extension of our bodies. Which was discussed about in so far my favorite book of the year, “To Be A Machine” by Mark O’Connell.

The book itself is a journal about transhumanism. Transhumanism might be a concept that’s new to some people, but in one of the chapters there’s a little bit of conversation about how human are arguably unconsciously turning into transhumanists because we let our communication gadgets become extensions of ourselves.

In that sense, can we truly ever unplug from our devices?

The ‘poetry’ that I found in the event of Friday class was that since we are doing a project that requires everybody’s devices, everybody had to remove their phone’s passcode and auto-lock for the sake of efficiency for our presentations. I found this moment really interesting. In the digital era, digital privacy is a big thing. Some people find it uncomfortable for other people to have access to their phones. So to remove our passcodes entirely to a group of people we have just got to know for a month might be a little too much for some. I was talking to my classmate, Neo, and he did admit that he didn’t remove his passcode because doing so makes him feel like he’s “naked”.

I found the ‘poetry’ in the vulnerability in that moment. While I think everybody trusted everybody to have common decency to not look into our phones when they’re basically unprotected, there’s this moment of vulnerability in that action.

During our conversation, Kate mentioned about a book by Sherry Turkle, “Reclaiming Conversation”. I haven’t got the time to look into the book, but I watched her TED Talk on Youtube.

 

She mentioned that she did a TED Talk in the 1996 talking about chatrooms, and how technology has allowed people to communicate to each other without having to sit down in front of each other. Years later, she is still talking about the same topic but different impact the phenomenon has. By texting, emailing, or being on social media, people have curated the way they present, they don’t have flowing conversations anymore.

When I was in my undergraduate at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), I came in a little bit older than everybody else in my grade. I didn’t feel much of an age gap, however, I did with the people in the grade just below me. They were communicating in ways that I could only partially understand. They rarely have conversations and communicates mainly through their phones or social media. They communicate through memes and it affects the way they talk in real life.

Not that I don’t understand memes, I am not that old. But I think it has layers of communication that I am missing out. I find memes to be entertaining and sometimes an effective way to communicate my feelings, however, it is not my favorite mode of communication. I always prefer a sit down, face to face, heart to heart conversations without screens in between or in front of me and the people I am talking to.

I think the ‘poetry’ in that mode of conversation is that there’s also a moment of vulnerability in which Turkle mentioned in her TED Talk– There is not enough delay in the moment to curate the way you present yourself to other people, you are just being who you are. And we know when someone is listening or not, not the way it is when we post status on facebook or send a tweet, hoping that there’s someone listening to us.

That being said, I still use facebook and twitter. And then there’s this blog, and my personal blog. Writing in hopes that there is someone out there who would spend their time reading a lengthy text about niche things I am interested in.

I always make sure to create my boundaries around these expectations. Because it’s dangerous. As Turkle said in her TED Talk, people think being alone is a problem that needs to be solved by technology. But I think over the years of maturing and growing up, I’ve come to terms that being alone is not a bad thing. I write things on my blogs and tweet dumb stuffs because I want to and that I am doing it for myself.

As for the question of if we can truly unplug ourselves, I think the answer for myself is not entirely. I recently have accepted that I, too, might be a transhumanist. It’s alright, I think. I’m studying the effect of technology and emotions in digital era and try to keep myself critical to the subject.

And I think I trust my peers in my graduate program to keep myself to be self-critical at all times.

bubble blower

I found this unique object today

 

it’s an old bubble blower

last post I was talking about observing my surroundings to see if I could find inanimate objects that has living quality for my research. I find this old bubble blower to have that quality. The movement itself might seem mechanical, but the fact that it does not blow bubbles successfully from each holes, the odd unfamiliar shape, the size, and the worn and aging marks on the machine makes it feels a little human.

What a weird little being I thought. it also doesn’t help that it has two round fan that makes it looks like it has a pair of eyes.

I hope to keep observing and find more intriguing objects like this.

hardcoded impatience

So after talking to multiple professors about my journey in finding ‘poetry’ in modern digital medium, I came to the conclusion that I will find it one day, I just have to keep exploring and have fun with it (It’s a bit hard because I’ve become really impatient with the world recently. It’s like everything is falling apart. I think the Mayans were right, the world did end in 2012 and we’re all just living in an endless purgatory right now).

I talked to my professor, Judith Doyle, who teaches the Affect and Emotions in Practice course I am taking this semester. Her work evokes that feeling of ‘livingness’ through digital medium. And I asked her what makes it so? What is it in things we don’t normally empathize with that could evoke empathy? She suggested that not only I keep journal of my exploration with digital medium but also to do so in everyday life’s ‘poetry’.

Cody Berry at GestureLab, OCAD University from Judith Doyle on Vimeo.

So I started with my study of the piece of red oak I have lying around in my room.

I did three different types of observations of this piece of red oak. First is through looking at a high definition picture of the scan. Second is by studying the simplified version of the grain by image trace function on Adobe Illustrator. Third is by retracing the grain myself. I’ve always found wood to be a quirky material. Its grain is not only unique to each species, but to each cut. Like people and their little movements. Only each move is recorded in its life as it grows. It’s like I’m studying part of the movements this red oak tree made in its life. I think each direction of the grain is a poetry.

I will continue my journey to find more ‘poetry’ in nonhuman things around me. I’m a little tired today, had a full class of debugging our collaboration project. But we ended the day getting ramen for dinner with almost everyone in the Digital Future 2019 program, it was a nice way to end the week.

see you next time

 

Collaborama Pt.1

So I’m currently in a collaboration project with my colleague and a new friend, Lilian, to work on a project together using our P5.js knowledge so far as our toolbox. The Challenge is to create a group activity that utilizes 21 screens together.

After brainstorming a couple of ideas and possibilities within our limitation, Lilian and I came up with an idea about ‘unplugging’ and having a full attention to the people around us without distraction of screens, except that it is facilitated by screens and our P5.js app. Our app creates a phone campfire.

From my research on campfires, it is a casual ritual performed today in campsites to prevent predators and pests, or simply to provide warmth and comfort. The idea of it came from bonfires, which is more ceremonial.

Google definition:

Bon·fire
/ˈbänˌfī(ə)r/

noun

noun: bonfire; plural noun: bonfires

1. a large open-air fire used as part of a celebration, for burning trash, or as a signal.
   “the smell of burning leaves from a garden bonfire”

Origin

late Middle English: from bone + fire. The term originally denoted a large open-air fire on which bones were burnt (sometimes as part of a celebration), also one for burning heretics or proscribed literature. Dr Johnson accepted the mistaken idea that the word came from French bon ‘good’.

The word was derived from bone and fire, the tradition began in Great Britain, because in 1605 AD, the conspiracy to blow the British parliament was foiled. Guy Fawkes, who is the suspect of the attempted blow, then was executed and burned to ashes. Since then people have been celebrating the bonfire.

There are many cultural traditions behind bonfire. In Czech Republic, people start bonfire in festival called “Burning The Witches”, it is very old but still observed folk custom and special holiday, to celebrate the coming of spring. In Nepal, bonfire is almost synonymous with camp-fire, people do it during winter months. In India, especially in Punjab, people eat peanut and sit around the bonfire to celebrate the festival of Lohri to celebrate the winter soltice. In Japan people start dancing around bonfire to mark the end of O-Bon season.

Today people would start campfire at campsite to provide heat for cooking or to prevent insects and predators to come around.

All of them have the same similarities, which is to bring people together around fire. What is it about fire? Fire has always been an important part of human lives. There is an interesting article about human relationship with fire in context of western civilization on this page: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4874404/

• Anwar, Shakeel. “History behind the Tradition of Bonfire Night.” Jagranjosh.com, 2 Jan. 2018, https://www.jagranjosh.com/general-knowledge/history-behind-the-tradition-of-bonfire-night-1514888923-1.
• Shingon Buddhist Intl. Institute: Teachings, http://www.shingon.org/library/archive/Obon.html.
• Singh, S. Harpal. “Forests Bear the Brunt of Holi.” The Hindu, The Hindu, 26 Mar. 2013, https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-andhrapradesh/forests-bear-the-brunt-of-holi/article4552974.ece.
• “Religions – Hinduism: Holi.” BBC, BBC, 30 Sept. 2009, http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/hinduism/holydays/holi_1.shtml.
• “Feuer in Den Alpen.” Feuer in Den Alpen, http://www.feuerindenalpen.com/.

On Lilian’s side of research of ‘unplugging’:

Digital Detox / Unplugging

Both interested in the concept of bringing people together and away from technology. 

Initial introduction to audio and mic input from self-portrait exercise. 

The on-going trend to unplug or “digital detox” , people are interested in experience ‘real life” and minimalism – japanese minimalism or hygge

https://www.countryliving.com/life/a41187/what-is-hygge-things-to-know-about-the-danish-lifestyle-trend/

Books:

Strains on relationships for people who are too plugged in
The concept and popularity about unplugging
The history of the bonfire and coming together to discuss
Deeper relationships: looking people in the eyes. Pushing your body forward and upright. 

Unplugging is a privilege in digitally divided and hyper-connected societies. The term “digital divide” implies that the worldwide, explosive growth of the Internet and data ( Kitchin, 2014) is an uneven, multidimensional phenomenon. 

Unplugging is a subtle notion that is emerging as a contestation to the dominant technocratic mode of urban governance (Kitchin, 2014)  that is, the so-called Smart City model that demands a transition to overcome the social tensions and misalignments caused by hyper-connected societies.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10630732.2014.971535

• The time spend per week has doubled from 8 hours to 18.9 hours (Ofcom, 2015)
• Goldilocks Hypothesis: the “just right” amount of moderation and screen use
• Not to deprive people of important social information and peer pursuits
• Not to displace meaningful analogue pursuits
  • Differences between sedentary and non sedentary activities (watching a movie, browsing social media vs. activitely engaging with people online)

A Large Scale Test of the Goldilocks Hypothesis: Quantifying the Relations Between Digital Screens and the Mental Well-Being of Adolescents

(https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:672ebf78-4b9a-42d3-8e81-8bc2561dce11/download_file?safe_filename=Przbylski%2Band%2BWeinstein%252C%2BLarge%2Bscale%2Btest%2Bof%2Bthe%2BGoldilocks%2Bhypothesis%2B-%2BQuantifying%2Bthe%2Brelations%2Bbetween%2Bdigital%2Bscreens.pdf&file_format=application%2Fpdf&type_of_work=Journal+article)

Calming/Relating/Clearing your mind apps:

1. AmbiPro
2. Calm
3. Headspace

And our combined journal of our progress so far:
(DISCLAIMER: we blended our journal together as a more collaborative approach, so some of these words are of Lilian Leung’s and some are mine)

Development

Inspiration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-CrRpQ80aw (Pause App – Inspiration)

Day XX – Sept XX

Originally we tried working with a gradient built on RGB, though while digging into control of the gradient and switching values, I [lilian] was quite comfortable yet with working with multiple values once we needed to go having them change based on input

Instead we began developing a set of gradients we could use as transparent pngs, this allowed us more control over what they visually looked like and allowed the gradients to become more dynamic and also easier to manipulate.

Initial testing of the gradients and proof of concept of having the gradient grow based on micInput. 

While Lilian was working on the gradients of the fire, I [Nilam] was trying to figure out how to add on the microphone input and make the gradient correspond to the volume of the mic input. So I used mapping.

The louder the input volume the higher the Red value gets and the redder the screen become. This way we can just change the background to raster image, and instead of lowering the RGB value to 0 to create black, it changes its opacity to 0 to show the darker gradient image on the back of it.

I [Nilam] made edit on Lilian’s version of experimentation and integrated my microphone input and mapping part into the interface she already developed.

Day XX – Friday, September 19, 2019

Our Challenges

We were still trying to figure out why mic and audio input and output was working on our laptops but not on our phones. The translation of mic input on to increase the size of the fire seemed laggy, though retried resizing our images. 

On our mobile devices, the deviceShake function seemed to be working, while laggy on firefox, playing the sketch on Chrome provided better, more responsive, results

Other issues were once we started changing the transition of the tint for our sketch that sometimes the deviceShake would stop working entirely.

We wanted a less abrupt and smoother transition from the microphone input. So we tried to figure out if there are functions like delay. We couldn’t find anything so we decided to try using if statement instead of mapping.

We found out from our google searches that there is a possibility of a bug that stopped p5.js certain functions like deviceShaken from working after the recent iOS update in this past summer. Because, while laggy, it still worked on Lilian’s android phone, while it just completely never worked My [Nilam] iphone.

Lilian – working on additional function like mobile rotation and acceleration to finess the functionality of the experiment.
Nilam – working on creating a smoother transition of the gradient fading by using if statement and acceleration instead of using mapping

The rest of the project are to be continued on part 2

In attempt to understand creative coding

So in my previous post I ranted about how I don’t feel connected to my new medium yet. So I’m finding simple way to connect with it better, start small. So I started with making what I already know how to make on top of my head: create a small drawing tool. So I did and messed around with it. It’s like I’m starting to make small sketches of codes. And here’s the sketch of the sketch’s result:

it’s just a bunch of shapes that create pattern.

here is the code on p5.js ; here is the second one ; the third one ; & the fourth one

> left click to clear
> the fourth one is voice activated!!

 

What I learned From My Research Topic

i have been reflecting a lot about the research topic of my project, what picked my interest, and how it applies to the world today. what exactly do i want to do with it? i think of robots as beings just as much as other living beings on earth are. the growth of artificial consciousness today are scaring people away, and it is my passion to close the gap of unfamiliarity between humans and machines through the familiar experience and bias. but why exactly are we scared of robots?

i believe that humans fear of robots came from how us humans treat each other and other beings on earth. we kill animals to keep us living. we take other people’s rights so we can live more comfortably.

now that artificial intelligence is growing and becoming more human, we’re scared something will surrogate us. especially for those who are privileged to have never been below, today’s technological and robotics advancement is a good reminder to take a step back and check your privileges. is this why you’re so scared of robots?

we want to be above, so other things have to be below. it’s kill or be killed, oppress or be oppressed, exploit or be exploited. it’s natural to do things out of fear– to avoid danger that prevents us from surviving.

but as social animals it’s important to recognize that this instinct is a selfish act of survival. you want to be above everybody else so you are safe. admit that. own that. be uncomfortable with that. and then dismantle that even though that’s what the society has been drilling through your brain everyday of your life. be aware of your bias of race, color, gender identity, sexual orientation, class, nationality, species, culture, and on and on. then go against it. get as close to neutral as much as you can

i personally think that this fundamental understanding is necessary to keep yourself in check in every situation possible. and i will work alongside everybody else who value the same belief that i believe in to keep making.