Hexagram Ahoy!

Today.... well, more precisely, last Tuesday, Shannon and I were supposed to be the "blogmasters " for the day. Now, technically, I think Daniel MacGibbon should be considered the blogmaster proper, as he did blog every day while we were there, but I did get a few pretty nice shots during our tour of Hexagram's facilities. It wasn't the only thing of note we did that day, but it's where the majority of the action happened for me. I was just in production mode for the rest of the day, drilling holes for enamel wire around the circumference of my rotary switch and adding enamel wire to the momentary switches. But enough of that, let's see some pictures!

Ricardo was excited about the tour from the word Go.... Strange fellow...



Before the tour started we waited around a little bit in the lounge on the 11th floor. The view was pretty spectacular, but more on that later.



Mmmm... Gigantic Displays.... This is one of the TML's many media labs. This one I believe was for digital video, and like the rest of the labs we went to, it was served by a huge network (40tB) that ensured that anything you do on one computer can be instantly accessed by any other computer in the TML. Futuristic.



I'm not entirely sure of this room's name, but I do know that all of the small pieces you can see in the picture were manufactured by various rapid prototyping machines the TML has at its disposal. The room was filled with all kinds of crazy little projects, and some of them looked very fragile, but it was all pretty high tech stuff.



This is a little picture from the TML's Metal shop, which was also pretty impressive. This is just a small piece that was done on the metal lathe. One of these days, man, one of these days we'll have our metal lathe!




A shot from inside the sound mixing room, which was also pretty mindblowing. The room was only set up with your average 5.1 Dolby surround at the time, but the sound it was generating was in full 3d, and the effect was truly amazing. It was one of the coolest parts of the tour, for me anyway.




Just a small detail of the sound diffusion boards in the sound mixing room. Apparently they're specifically designed to diffuse bass, but I think they were also designed to look cool.



Next up on the tour was the first of two fabric laboratories. This one had a giant fabric printer, which managed to print out the image below.




Cool, no?



Behind door number two was the Jacquard Loom. This one was particularly interesting to me because the Jacquard loom is considered by many to be the first ever binary computer. It used punchcards back in the day, but at the TML, you can upload a picture (8 bit black and white) and the loom here will print out your picture. I enjoyed it, but I thought Candace might have wet herself.



Of course, there were a few nice vistas, but any place that's eleven floors up usually has them. Especially if they're in Montreal.

After our tour of Hexagram's facilities, Mark Sussman came in to talk to us about puppetry, poetry, and the arts in general. It was a pretty stimulating lecture, and luckily I managed to snap a few shots.



He talked with his hands just as much as he talked with his mouth. At least that's what my pictures say.

After that it was production time, and I was on my way. I used my enamel wire to create some quickswitches, which ended up working quite well.