(Radio)Active

Something's Gotta Give

2008-04-04T21:07:00.001-07:00

Current stress level: 1.9 Ks (KiloShannons)

Something is terribly wrong here. I don't know what's going on, but nothing seems to be turning out the way I expected, and it's taking ten times as long as it should to turn out badly.

First thing's first, Andy's apartment, which I made a nice drawing of to figure out where all of my framing was going to end up. This thing looks awful. I think that it looks pretty cool in drawing form, but somewhere I've gone wrong and it's not turning into the pretty thing I thought it was going to be. And by pretty, I of course mean industrial and haphazard. It just looks bad right now.

I think part of it is my technique. I had resigned to the restriction that I wasn't going to use any glue to put this thing together, which worked out fine for my roof and floor structure, but when I started to try and maneuver a drill around there to try and put up walls and studs, things got out of hand. First of all, the floor and ceiling took me three or four times as long as they should have. Second, they're just as representative as they would have been if I would have used glue, which might have saved me some time. Third, they're not rigid enough to accurately measure things. I'm constantly cutting things and then realizing that what I just cut was out just a touch because I was pushing the floor down a little when I did it, or I had the piece a little bit slanted.

I think I have to abandon my current method of working, and find a better way, because this project can't happen unless I get my shit together and make it work. Friction connections take for-bloody-ever, and they look awful. Plus, no one in their right mind would ever take a six inch piece of pine and sharpen the end so that they could pound it through two other pieces of wood in order to make a friction connection. It's an apartment, not a 1600's log cabin. I'm switching from the friction connections to glue. I know that's not what I originally said I was going to do, but that's what has to be done. Glue is no more representational than friction connections, and it's way faster.

What I'm going to start doing is making AutoCAD drawings of my spaces and laying out the studs and sheets of plywood, and then I'll build the walls on a desk so that I don't have to worry about wobbly or weird things happening. I will then attach said frames to the building and then glue the plywood sheets over top. Then I will dance. Poorly.

I think the closeness of this deadline just hit me, and I need to get my ass in gear.

The Story So Far - Remix

2008-04-03T00:17:00.000-07:00

So, we've once again had to have a chat about my narrative, but this time I think the talk was a lot more interesting. What were the motivations behind this random act of building, who are these people, and why are they building the way they are and where they are? All excellent questions, of course, and in order to answer them, I've written up a little story.

I will update this tomorrow morning when I can upload some images, I'm not sure what's wrong, but I'll work it out then, I think.

In order to write the story, I had to make up names, so I used names from a now defunct TV show that I really like, bonus points if you can guess which one! Anyway, enough blathering, on to the story.

My project’s life begins five years in the future. The Canadian economy is in a recession due to the North America’s recent housing crash, and industry is at its lowest point since pre-war times.

Andy French was a contractor whose business in Winnipeg finally succumbed to the plummeting economy. Not being able to afford his mortgage anymore, he wasn’t resigned to his fate just yet. He went to talk about his situation with his friend Jim Kubek, a Winnipeg artist in a collective that worked (and sometimes lived) in the Watkins building on 90 Annabella in Point Douglas.

While Andy and Jim talked, they came up with the idea that Andy could just live on one of the two floors the artists had rented out for the past few months. Andy was excited about the idea because he still had a lot of leftover materials and tools from his work, so he wouldn’t have t pay anything at all for the initial setup.

The other artists, however, weren’t thrilled about Andy living completely for free while he used their power and water, which has to be paid for on top of the rent. So, in order to get the project off the ground, Andy agrees to become the janitor for the artists in exchange for the permission to start his building.

The first building goes together pretty easily, but Andy and Jim decide that there is one more mutually beneficial thing that can be done on the floor. A bathroom was needed for a long time, and so one is built near enough to Jim’s new place so that he could use it when necessary, but it was also accessible to the artists.

Andy’s new place is good enough for now, but the artists aren’t doing any better than him, and he worries about the stability of his new situation. If the artists somehow can’t make the payments on their floors, then Andy is also out of a home, so he decides to call on an old friend to help him out.

Bill Oakley was also a contractor, but his specialty was solar panels and passive solar energy. His company went under almost a year before Andy’s did, and Andy had given him a few jobs here and there to help keep him afloat. Since people felt that solar energy was too expensive to implement at the time, Bill had loads of solar panels and pre-built solar heaters lying around. Andy knew that Bill had fallen on hard times as well, and was also looking for a cheaper place to live. Bill agreed to help Andy out, and Andy was one step closer to being independent from the Watkins building.

When Bill came to the building, he wanted a spot nearer to the southern elevation, but close enough to Andy’s shelter, so that Bill could use the bathroom, and the two of them could confer on what to build and how. As Bill got set up, he took three windows and covered them with solar panels, enough according to him, to power both of their shelters.

However, there was a major problem with Bill’s plan, and the office workers on the floor that he put his panels on were not pleased with the light being blocked out for them. They complained to the landlord, who, until now, was unaware of Jim, Andy and Bill’s project. The landlord, Ron Wiedlin, was quite angry about what they had done, but Bill rationalized it to him by saying that they could also generate some power for the building and lower the building’s power bills.

Bill still had to move his solar panels to a better spot, and so he moved them to the left side of the south elevation of the building, and he also added a fourth panel to supply power to go back into the grid for the building.

Meanwhile, Jim’s girlfriend Posey Tyler kicked him out for spending so much time with Andy and Bill. Without Posey, Jim had no place to live, either, and so he had no choice but to move in to the outside of the Watkins building like his friends. Andy, Bill and Jim quickly whipped up a new space for Jim to live in, but it was decided that Jim also needed to contribute to the group somehow. Jim had apprenticed with a plumber before he went to university, and so he knew a little about how to cobble together a plumbing system for the group. This plumbing system would incorporate mostly collected rain water.

This poses a lot of problems, but the group worked through it and created a gravity-fed system to give rainwater to the inhabitants. No matter what, though, the group will have to tie into the building’s water supply every now and again.

Now that the three of them have their spaces, the building slows down to a crawl. There isn’t much new construction for a while, but word starts to spread around the area about the three crazy guys who have taken over the edge of a building and are living there for free. As quickly as the word spreads, interest starts to grow, and people start to ask both Ron the landlord and Andy about the possibility of living on the outside of the building with them.

Andy, Jim, Bill, and Ron have a meeting and they all come up with a plan. In order for Ron to allow extra people living on the outside of the building, they have to start paying rent as if they are another floor. Ron needs the extra cash because two of the floors are as yet unoccupied, and an extra possibility of income would be very useful. Andy, Bill, and Jim also come up with some terms for the new tenants of the building:

Each tenant must contribute to the overall operation and building of the exterior space. If a new person comes, that person must be able to contribute in terms of finance, materials, or expertise. Each person is expected to help build other units for other people to move into, as well as providing some of the money, materials, or connections to do so.

Once the agreement is drawn up, everyone shakes on it, and the project moves into phase II.

What is phase II, exactly? Good question, and one that I'll be thinking about as I'm building phase I. I plan to have it thought out and written up by Monday at the latest, so stay tuned.

Suspended Floor

2008-03-27T10:49:00.000-07:00

So, I started to suspend a floor plane on my building a couple of days ago to try and get a living space set up on the outside. It started out rather well, with a piece of wood suspended from the awning I had made previously. It started out innocuously enough, but then I had to grow it out a bit by exploring some new connections.

Here is where I started to use friction connections to hold my plates together. Basically, it's just a hole that's slightly less than 1/8" in diameter with a 1/8" dowel, sharpened to a point, punched through either piece of wood. The friction produced is more than enough to hold it all together, and it was even still balanced when I attached it.
When I attached the third piece using the same friction method, the whole thing went out of whack, but it was easily remedied by adding a second tensile support to each side. Now it sits right up against the building, and could be entered via windows on the fourth floor.
After I got it all together, though, I don't know if I'm completely happy with it. Compared to the awning, the floor is really bulky, and I don't know if that's where i want this side of the building to go. I know that I want the eastern side to be a little bulkier and use more compression techniques, but this side is all about being light and airy. I think this would have been more successful of I had suspended three planks and then placed smaller pieces of wood over top of them. I'll have to think about it some more before I get too gung ho and rip it out, but I think that may be the way to go right now.

Photo Studio Phinished

2008-03-27T10:03:00.000-07:00

My photo studio is finally done, new table and all. I finished the table a couple of days ago, and then got to work suspending my second light. Originally, I was just going to get another tripod, but tripods are expensive, and I already had clips and string to suspend the light with. It weighs next to nothing, and I'm getting valuable practice hanging and suspending things from existing structural pieces.
The light was a lot harder to suspend than I thought, but it really helped me in my thinking about suspension. It's a really dynamic method of doing things, and if you don't think it out just right, you'll mess up your previous lines and have to re-hang them. A lot.

The toughest part was just getting it to point in the right direction. I had to re-clip the back line three times to get it right, but now that it is, my studio is complete. The only thing I'm missing is the camera attachment for my tripod, but I'm pretty sure it's in 111 somewhere.

Tension

2008-03-23T21:48:00.000-07:00

Once again, not the bad kind. I just finished making a little addition to my building, the first of many. I basically just set up a base for the rest of that side of the building to evolve out of. I based my initial structural member off of something Lancelot Coar showed us in a tech class, where he used bent 2x6's to create curvilinear shapes. His has trusses in them, but I decided that for the purposes of mine, I didn't need trusses, I wanted to exploit that tension.

It's basically just a bow-string, as was pointed out by my studio mates, but it was really strong, and exceptionally light. I liked it, and I decided that I wanted to use it to create some kind of awning.

I liked them so much that I decided to make three of them and then mount them on a fairly simple clamp inside a window. I also switched out the butcher's string for some fishing line, because I didn't like the look of the white string. It seemed exceptionally bulky for something that was meant to be light and airy.

Once I had that all done, I added some cladding to it. I think that it looks really good, and it'll be a great roof for the structure that will grow out of it. I have it on the East side of my model, even though it'll end up on the West side later on, once I get my top piece re-cut.

There are a lot of opportunities for future pieces to tie into this piece, and the actual connections that I used to start the tensioning to the building were really simple, too, and I can keep using that system all over until I really take over the building and envelope it. And I will...

Once again, I am excited. Thank God.

Photo Studio Suspended

2008-03-23T21:22:00.000-07:00

Not suspended in a temporal way, don't worry. I finally suspended something for the first time in this whole studio year. I suspended something and it felt good.

What did I suspend? The background for my photo studio, which is basically just a white sheet.Since I'm using opportunities in my building to tie in extra structures, I thought I might as well do something similar for my photo studio, so I used some clips, some butcher's string, and the lights in room 111 to hang up my background.
I think it's looking pretty good so far. I'm currently minus one light, and I need to make a new (lower) table, but I'm pretty happy.

In the Woods

2008-03-23T20:57:00.000-07:00

During my last crit with Patrick, we ended up scrapping the pod idea. He likened it to trailers, and I don't liken that, but he told me to check out an artist/architect named Lebbeus Woods. The way he works is that he chooses a single point and sort of organically grows some kind of structure off of it without any regard for property lines or the building's own architectural language. The results are extremely cool, and I really think that taking a similar direction would be in my best interests.
This one is my absolute favourite. I think that if I can accomplish anything even close to this, I can consider it a success. I'm not sure how I'll do it, but I'll figure it out.

I like this one because it looks like an AT/AT, and I'm a giant nerd... sorry...

I think that this image is more like my starting point for this term, where I was looking at in-between spaces for people to inhabit. This is just an alley where Woods has started playing with the structures to create a new space that exploits the buildings around it.

This is very Waterworld-esque, I think. I think that the use of fabric is really interesting in it, because it's a good, cheap, and effective way to cover a large area and create shade.

I'm actually excited for the first time in a long time, and I think this could get very interesting, very quickly.

Drawings and Details

2008-03-20T13:00:00.001-07:00

I did a few drawings while I was working out my pods and details for my project during my model building.

This was what I used to determine which side I wanted each person to live on, based on my previous post about the narrative. While I was coming up with that idea, I was making this drawing, so that I could have a better idea of what context my building was in.
This is me starting to think about what kind of space is required for the workshop pod. This pod is essential because the people who live here are going to have to build things on their own, and they'll need a space that can sustain that type of activity. I don't like the curving brace on the outside of the pod, but I still haven't figured out a connection that I do like.

This is a plan for a "living pod". I'm not entirely sure how large I'll have to make them, but 8x12 seems to be pretty good, if a little tight. I'm trying to keep them as small as possible in order to keep them efficient. Less volume means less heating and cooling required.

This is a detail for a cockamamey (sp?) lift mechanism. I like the connections and gearing system, but I think this will be pretty tough to design properly. It's critical that the building have a few elevators, though, maybe not at this exact scale, but it does need them for vertical movement and access.

Model Makery Redux

2008-03-14T00:45:00.000-07:00

So, after my talk with Patrick on Monday, I was much dismayed to find out that I was going to have to re-do my entire model. I won't lie, it was a huge kick in the teeth, and I was bitter, but I'm better now. Now my substrate model is pretty much half done, which is a lot better than I can say for my previous one, so I guess things are going OK.

The first thing I had to deal with in this new model was how to connect my walls together without glueing them together. I thought I had achieved this with a small connection I had cooked up. This is the connection with a slight modification on it. Basically, the piece on the left goes through the first sheet, then through the second, leacing a small hook on the end, like this:That hook would then be fastened by the piece on the right hand side, like this:
The problem was that this didn't quite work because the tolerances of the MDF are just slightly off. If it was truly 1/8th of an inch, the friction between the outside (bottom) of this piece and the front piece would have been enough to fasten the outside piece into place, but since it was loose, the outside pieces could quite easily fall off, and that was a problem.

It was easily fixed with a small piece of black card paper which you can see fastened to the bottom of that top piece. With those pieces worked out, the rest of the model started coming together really quickly, and it's already looking pretty good.
This is how it's looking right now, which I'm actually pretty happy with, considering I had to re-do the whole joint system in a day. I laser cut again on Monday, which means the whole thing will be together, and then I can start getting the pods cut out and put on, and then I can start creating all the wacky connections and interactions between them, which is when the real fun will begin.

The Story So Far

2008-03-14T00:24:00.000-07:00

Since it was brought to my attention that my narrative for my project was in need of a lot of work, I decided that it would be one of my mian focuses for Friday's sort-of-deadline. I've been thinking about it quite a bit anyway, but I decided to put pen to paper this afternoon after I got my model together and wrote out my inentions for how the project would go.

To start my narrative, I had to develop a few conditions that I had to abide by for the project, such as how many people would inhabit the space and their methodology regarding the site. I decided to have four different people inhabit the outside of the building, each with a different area of expertise. These four people would work together to create a functioning building on the fringe of another building.

In order to live on the outside of a building, there were four main problems I have to address:

Structure

How the pods and spaces are actually resting on the building and interacting with each other

Electricity

How am I going to provide power to each person to accomodate their needs?

Heating and Cooling How can I keep people comfortable without resorting to on-the-grid techniques?

Water

How do I ensure these people don't die or reek to high heaven?

There is a nice coincidence with all of this, of course, in that I have four people, four problems, and four sides of a building. The question is, how can I make a plan so that all four people can actually get going?

The first step is to choose which sides each person is going to inhabit. To do this, I had to look at site conditions to figure out who would benefit the most in which area.

West Side

The West side would be occupied by the structural specialist, and this is also the jumping point for the whole project. The reason I chose this side for the structural specialist is that there is a parking lot directly below this side. That way, a truck could come in and deliver materials to the person on the west side, who could use a shop to create the rest of the structures for the building.
This is a really important side as well, because the size of that shop will determine the maximum size of any piece that can be used for the rest of the project

South Side

The south side is the side that is exposed to the maximum amount of light on the building, and this makes it the perfect spot to gather solar energy in many different forms. This is where the electrical specialist will reside, and it will be his or her job to harvest, store, and distribute the energy that can be obtained from the south facade.

North Side

The North side is the least enviable spot to be in for this project, and this is where the heating/cooling specialist will have to reside. The reason I chose to put this person back here is that I wanted to create a computer controlled system for operating the heating and cooling devices around the building, and since this will probably require a few computer terminals, it means that this person is naturally going to have a couple of heat sources to rely on when it gets cold out.
This is the toughest side of the building to live on, and will require the person on it to have a lot of mobility, and this person will most likely have to be the biggest draw on electrical resources due to its shaded facade, meaning that things like solar cookers and radiators will be much tougher to employ.

East Side

The only side left is the East side, and this is where our plumbing/water specialist will have to live. This is a tricky thing to stick to, as the water will have to be gathered and stored in many different spots about the building, but it is the only side left to work with. The plumbing system will more than likely be gravity fed, but there may be some kind of pump involved for things like showers and waste removal, but this is all preliminary.

So that's where everyone will live and what everyone will be doing on the building. I think that the premise for this exterior inhabitation will be that these four hackers will rent out a single floor on the building to start their first platform, the workshop, and when they can start to exist on the outside free from the rest of the building's systems, they can simply stop renting that floor and then move on to living on the outside of the building exclusively. That's my hope, and I think that's my project.

It's All Been Done Before...

2008-03-13T10:53:00.000-07:00

Nigel sent me an e-mail a little while ago about something called the Backpack House. Basically, the Backpack House is a small, welded steel box that you can add to your apartment that's accessible through the window. You basically just bolt it to the side of the building and then use chains to hang attach it higher up. The idea is similar to mine, but different in a few ways. First of all, it's really just meant to be an extension outside the building, like a small room to have a studio in or something like that, it's not actually meant to be lived in on a regular basis like I intend mine to. Also, the chains at the top of the box preclude any other boxes being put up, which is kind of a shame, because it would be really cool to mount a bunch of different looking boxes all over your building, but this isn't the case, unfortunately.I think they look interesting, but I don't know if I'd want one hanging out of my apartment building. They're nice, but they're nice like a pug is cute, I think...

Model Makery

2008-03-10T13:33:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been focused on making my substrate model for studio. Its been going pretty well, minus a few goofs, and I only have one side of it left to cut, which is pretty exciting.This is a picture of one of the connections. The other side simply slots into this piece and then they can't move. It's been working fairly well, but I am experiencing a few slight problems with it, but it seems quite fixable.
Here's a couple shots of the connection in action.

This is the part where I screwed up. I can't actually believe I did this, and I talked about it in my presentation, but it still bears repeating. Basically, when I got the first couple of pieces of the North facade cut, I realized that they were about an eighth of an inch too long, and the front wouldn't fit together unless I changed it. So in order to change it, I did what any logical person would do, I MADE IT BIGGER. Of course, this was completely idiotic and set me back pretty badly, because now each piece was a whole quarter of an inch too long, which really sucked. I've since rectified the problem, but my ego is still experiencing some pain from the bruising.
Here it is in its current state. I don't have the back so I have to use front pieces on the back as well, limiting me to just a few floors at a time. It's encouraging to see it all coming together, though, and I think I should be able to be finished the substrate model in only a few days, and then I can really go to town on this thing.

Review

2008-03-09T19:19:00.000-07:00

During our reviews on friday we discussed my project and its direction, and it seems like I'm basically on the right track. I think the two major concerns were the narrative that I want to explore as well as the sameness of the pods I was making.

Patrick suggested that I could make them in any shape I wanted really, and I think that makes a lot of sense. They don't necessarily need to be squares or cubes, and they certainly don't need to look the same all over. If my idea is that I want this building to react intelligently, then I'll need to let each pod play itself out in a smart way, and then work on making them breathe, heat, and do whatever else I need them to do.

My narrative came into question as well, but I kind of expected that, since I was really unsure of what I wanted to do with it. I knew that I wasn't building this for homeless people anymore, even though I had done some research on that. If this is going to work, the pods need to be inhabited by technologically savvy hackers so that the building can be wired and tinkered with during its operation.

I think my real question is who are these people? How many of them are there? Why are they living on the side of a building? These are all questions that I really want to consider and have a solid idea about, because when I start building, some of that character needs to come out in their pods.

I have a lot to think about now, but I think I'm on the proper track, there's just a lot of work ahead of me.

Connections

2008-03-09T18:27:00.000-07:00

During the laser cutter's hiatus, I had to look for something else to do other than my model. This was tougher than it seems, but I did manage to get a bit of thinking done about what I want my building to be and how I can accomplish it. I decided that I wanted to have small pods on the outside of the building that could hook into the existing facade for support. This was actually a pretty tough thing to do, since I have no spot to actually cling to, and I have to come up with a way of securely fastening the pod structures to the exterior of the building.

This was my initial design for the platform connection.

I think it should work out pretty well, and it could be built rather easily. The second thing that I looked at was a system of cooling the building. I already know of a few good ways to passively heat the building, but cooling is another issue entirely. I felt like I wanted to do something pretty drastic, like have the building actually react in a physical way to the changes in its environment. Instead of just activating a fan or something like that, I could actually change how the building looks.

To do this, I came up with the idea of the "breathing" pod structure. Basically, two of the walls were on some kind of mechanical connection, when the pod was too hot, it could shoot two of the walls outward and let fresher, cooler air in, and promote air movement inside. This would cool the pod, and hopefully its occupant(s).

Here is a REALLY quick drawing of what I think my structure might look like towards the end of the project. This is quite rough, and was more of an exploration than a careful drawing, but I started to notice that some of the pods could use tension to be hung off the building, while others could rest on cornices and use compression to stand up, while still others could use a hybrid system. It's all pretty preliminary still, but I think I like the direction this is taking.

B&E is Fun For Me!

2008-02-09T22:12:00.000-08:00

So, a while ago, Randy decided that he needed to get into his site so that he could survey the inside and take some photographs for his project. I know it sounds like a simple goal, but there were two big problems with his plan: a great piranese and a mutt. There were two guard dogs in the way, and so Randy had to enlist my help in distracting the dogs while he ran inside.

Just in the interest of scale, Randy is holding a treat out at WAIST level and the dog is bending DOWN to reach it... This is my favourite picture of the whole escapade. I was feeding them both canned dog food off of a giant metal spoon. I was kind of worried, because it was just about absolute zero outside and I thought their tongues might get stuck to the spoon, or to the fence. I would have felt like a jackass, and the dogs would most likely have retreated to the building Randy was sneaking into, which could have turned out pretty terribly.

However, the whole thing went off without a hitch. Randy got his pictures, I got a cool story, the dogs got a big meal they otherwise wouldn't have had, and now one was incarcerated.

(Borrowed)Research

2008-02-08T16:24:00.000-08:00

I was pretty interested to find that the ED1's were doing their solar cooker assignment outside the Russell Building a little while ago. I remember doing the solar cooker assignment, but I hadn't really thought too much about it since. I decided that since I was going to need something to cook food and possibly boil rainwater to drink, that a solar cooker is certainly a good thing to be thinking about.

I think the designs are interesting, especially the umbrella one pictured here. The problem that I found with this particular crop of cookers is that not very many of them have any kind of insulation. Getting the sun to be focused on your cooker is only half the battle in this case, I think. The other, even more important thing to consider is insulation, and it seems like most of these designs are without it. A pane of glass has an R value equivalent to a sheet of printer paper, which is nothing at all, really. If you can keep the heat in and let the sun keep adding to it, I think that the solar cooker can really be a valuable tool, and it doesn't just have to cook food, it could also heat water or some other kind of thermal mass so that it can radiate out later on and contribute to the internal comfort of a building.

Drawings!

2008-02-08T15:08:00.001-08:00

Since I've chosen my site already, I've decided that I might as well start making a few drawings. Initially, my intention was to go inside the building and use the existing infrastructure to support my own replacement infrastructure until I could move completely off the grid and live in there without relying on anything but what the building provided. I think this was spurred on by my desire to use sterling engines place on hot water pipes as an initial source of free power. After speaking with Patrick, we decided that this wasn't the best way to go about attacking my problem, and that creating a building using only the outside layer of another building was more interesting.

Since I decided to move in a new direction, I had to start mapping out the exterior of the building, using the previous drawing.

Here, I've started to dimension the building so that I can draft it and get it laser cut. I initially only intended on only modeling three floors and working on them by connecting floors together using the infrastructure I created. Using this method, I would decide where I was going to place the floors on a smaller scale reproduction of the building, but since I changed my approach, I had to change my method of modeling.

What I'm doing now is modeling the entire Facade, as well as the roof of the building in order to be able to latch on to it and start spreading across the building.

In order to latch on, though, I had to think about connecting to the building, and this is where I set a constraint for myself. I don't want to puncture the building with a drill or do anything that will harm the goings on inside the building. Rather than being a parasite on the building, I'd like to be in a symbiotic relationship with it. If, by latching on to the building I can also help it in some way operate better, then I'll do it. If that connection will adversely affect the occupants in some way, then I can't do it and I'll have to find another way. I just think this will make it more interesting, and will force me to consider the rammifications of what I'm doing to the building in a deeper way.
This is the first connection I drew up, and it's kind of interesting. Basically, it's a wrap around on the lintels of the building. if I can latch on to the lintels, I can create a plank to walk on or stick out poles or other surfaces to attach to. It wouldn't hurt the building, either, so it would be OK to do, in my book.

This is my favourite connection, due to its craziness. Basically, it's for sticking in between the channels that run down either side of the front facade. The idea is that you would take a steel pipe, insert a metal plug, a nail, and something to hold the nail straight. Then, on the other side, you'd pour water in, then add another plug, nail, and stabilizer on top of the water. You could then stick the pipe in the channel and let the water inside freeze. When water freezes, it expands, and since it can only expand in two directions, it'll force the nails into the brick, making a solid connection that you could hook around.

Patrick said it was strange... and if by strange he meant awesome, then I agree.

Thinking Outside the (Power)Box

2008-02-08T14:28:00.000-08:00

So, I've been doing even more research into sustainable (what?) technologies. I really enjoy learning about these kinds of things, I have to say. I don't know what exactly it is that draws me to it, but I just love imagining new kinds of technology and applications for these things. The stranger, the better, I say.

Obviously, the first place I started looking for alternative energy sources was photovoltaics. I'm not really a fan of solar panels to be truthful, I think that they use a lot more energy to create than they need to, and the fact that they wear down over time is a huge downside for me. Nonetheless, it's a very established energy source, and it certainly warrants investigation if you want to generate electricity.

The most interesting book I found was called "Off the Grid Homes", and the nicest thing about it is that it was published in 2007. The houses are beautiful, and the systems are recent, and the solutions seem pretty ingenious at times, but I always notice a few key things about these houses that bother me a bit.

The houses are always in rural areas, in order to take maximum advantage of the sun. The climates they're placed in are almost always very temperate, or very hot, never in conditions that swing like the conditions in Winnipeg. The other thing, which is strange considering the name of the book, is that all of the houses have backup systems that will put them back on the grid in case the occupants overload the system.

What if you have no redundancies? What if you can't relocate to a rural area? What if you live in a climate like Winnipeg? Everyone seems to want to explore sustainability, but no one seems to want to push the boundaries and come up with solutions for less than optimal climates. No one wants to do without, either, which is a problem to be reckoned with, because at some point, people are going to have to give up a few things to do their part.

Something for Nothing

2008-01-28T17:31:00.001-08:00

On Friday I started to do some research into various forms of green energy solutions, and it was a rather fruitful search, I must say. The thing is, none of the things that are mentioned are viable all on their own, but I have the feeling that if you combined them smartly with a building and really integrated them in just the right way, you might be able to get something that is trul self-sustaining.

Solar panels are a bit of an obvious choice, but I was looking in something called "Earthship Housing", which uses solar energy, but doesn't completely rely on it.

It also uses wind energy, but it uses the sun's rays to heat it as well, using a more passive approach to heating and cooling. Each Earthship has its own water treatment facility, which uses plants to process grey water and black water, and the whole thing is supposedly self-sustaining. This is really interesting, but all of the ones I've seen thus far are situated in a desert climate, so some serious modifications would be necessary.

Here's a link to the Earth Ship homepage.

Another thing that piqued my curiosity was something called a "stirling engine". Basically, a stirling engine is a small engine that is powered by the expansion and contraction of a gas inside a cylinder. All it needs to operate is a difference in temperature between the top plate the bottom plate to keep it running. Basically, it doesn't need to burn anything as a fuel source to keep on going, which is really interesting, because it could be put to good use as an electrical generator, I think. It's also interesting, because you can make one out of a tin can and some PVC piping, so it's extremely accessible to almost anyone.

This is the one I found on instructables, and it can run using only a small candle underneath it, but there are other that can just by putting them on top of a cup of coffee or even just on your hand. That's a pretty interesting possibility, I think, and it's something I'd like to build and test out.

Instructable
How it works
Tin Can Stirling Engine Plan

Subversion Center

2008-01-27T19:35:00.000-08:00

So, I have my site.... I think. This lovely building is on the corner of Annabell and Higgins, and it's a nifty little place to be sure. It has eight stories, 9000 sq.ft/floor plate, a high load capacity, and two freight elevators. How do I know this? It says so on the sign outside the building, and for the low, low price of 175 dollars, I could rent a floor inside of it!
I was thinking that what I wanted to do was retrofit a certain building within the city to run on green power alone, and take it completely off the grid. Once this was accomplished, I could use the space to disseminate the information on how I managed such a feat to everyone who wanted to help me out. The idea would be something like a central research laboratory, where I would develop the essential means of gathering energy for free. Once I got everything up and running, I could have an info session with interested parties and show them how to do the same thing with their homes and businesses, in order to get them off of the grid.

This way, everyone could have free, or extremely cheap, electricity and heat in their homes or businesses. Instead of being parasitic to the building, it would be more symbiotic. I'd have to study the building and come up with solutions to heat it using nothing but what the building already has, like sunlight, heat mass, and airflow.

I think that's how I want to approach the project at this point. I don't know the strategies I will necessarily be using, because I haven't found out exactly what I need to know about the building, but if I build a model and study lighting and heating patterns, I could adapt the building to its surroundings and hopefully make it self-sustaining.
It's also right beside a railway line, so I could use that somehow, I'm sure. Maybe I could order in specific parts and have them delivered or something like that, or if the things I need to make electricity are too heavy to come by truck, they could come by train instead. I don't know if that's necessary, but it's an angle I'll most likely need to consider.

Dark Days

2008-01-21T21:36:00.000-08:00

Due to our potential site in Winnipeg, which has a lot of homeless people in it, I decided that one of the things I'd like to tackle is homelessness in Winnipeg. In order to do that, I needed to do a little research, and fortunately for me, I remembered a movie that we had to watch way back in the old days of ED1. The movie is called Dark Days, and it's about a group of homeless people in New York who took shelter underneath the tunnels of the Amtrak Subway system.

The film takes place in the year 2000, and follows the lives of people who actually lived there . It's really an amazing documentary, and I remember being really moved by it when we watched it before, and I was again when I re-watched it tonight.

The situation is incredibly sad. The conditions are filthy, the people are plunged in darkness all day long, and many of the people who live there are battling drug addictions along with their other obvious predicaments.

I think the most striking thing about it when I first watched it was that the people in the film are so normal. It seems odd, but the people who live in this awful place are really just average people in an incredible situation. Throughout the movie, you see people cleaning their homes, painting walls, taking care of pets, and even going to work.

Even in this picture you can see that the person who lives here has cobbled together a home out of found materials and is actually hanging laundry outside to dry. It's surreal when you hear these supposedly homeless people talking about their balconies, their living rooms, and their various home renovations that they've made while they've been living there.

It's also strange because they also go to work like regular people. One man goes up every weekday to collect cans and bottles, while another rummages through garbage to find electronics and CD's and other things that he can pawn to make a few dollars. On the weekends, they rest and relax, so that they can go out and do it again next week.

The movie is incredible, and I think if you're going to work on any kind of homeless project, this is a great place to start, because it gives incredible insight into the lives of the people who live in these conditions.

I plan on taking some cues from this movie as well. Tomorrow, I'd like to go through one of the first shots in the movie and study the structures that the people have built underground, making not of what materials and methods of connections are used to build these "houses". It's all found material, but what works for them? I think it would be an incredibly informative case study to look at, but I have to take it all with a grain of salt, as homeless people in Winnipeg face much different problems than homeless people in New York subways.

I plan on exploring how I can take these building typologies and adapt them to a much harsher climate, as well as to the outdoors. It's going to be challenging, but I think it will help define my project that much more and give me a solid base to make some good decisions.

Site Selection

2008-01-20T21:18:00.000-08:00

Shannon and I went to the site yesterday to try and find some appropriate sites in Point Douglas for our buildings to inhabit. We just about ended up freezing to death, but I think I might have actually found something that I can use. Plus, I got to test out my new camera, which was pretty sweet, I must say.

This is pretty much it right here. This is just a little way down Higgins ave. The building at the back is Syrotech industries, and the one on the right is the National Lamp building. I'm not sure what the building on the left actually is, but I do know that it was the site of "Mural Fest 2k7".

One of the things that drew me to this site was the fact that it was already a point of communication. I've been getting into graffiti for a while now, and I've always been fascinated by it because of its ability to convey a message of territoriality with just a little bit of paint. It's a method of communication that's completely different from how we normally do things, and I find that really interesting.Another interesting thing on the site is on the right hand side behind the National Lamp building. It appears to be some kind of electronics graveyard, and we found the remnants of a bunch of old photocopiers and overhead projectors. This is a good source of junk that could be used for some kind of makeshift shelter, which is where the direction of my project seems to be heading.

I ended up finding another potential site, as well, just a little further down Higgins. This is just behind the railroad, and just west of the railbridge, and has some similar qualities as the other site.
This site is quite a bit smaller, but is still pretty interesting. It also has a lot of graffiti on it, but this site's graffiti is more obviously illegal. It also shows signs of previous use as a shelter, which the other site didn't have at all. This one is a little bit better hidden, which could be helpful in terms of building parasitic architecture, because it would be harder to notice. The only big problem here is protection from wind, as the left side is completely open. That, and there are constantly trains going by, but it might just be something that has to be dealt with.

I don't know which site I'm going to go with just yet, but I was thinking of using both sites and somehow networking them together. The second site has less of a chance to be networked because there aren't other buildings around to be networked with, while the other site can be somewhat networked using physical connections.

The next thing I have to decide is what I want to actually do with my site. I was thinking about going all around the site and finding sources of junk and building materials and building a catalog of pieces that could be used for building or communications. There are a lot of places to find bits of junk, and even the first site has wooden palettes to be used for building. It's something to think about, for sure, and it'll definitely take some more research to figure it all out.

(Radio)Active Shelter

2008-01-17T17:11:00.000-08:00

I've been wracking my brain for last little while trying to come up with some kind of solution to my architectural problems, but I just haven't been having a whole lot of luck until now. I was told to go back and examine my machine a little more, and I did. I thought I had examined it enough, and that I had already come up with a solid idea, but it just wasn't working out, so I had to take a bit of a harder look.

So, look harder I did, and what do you know? I found out some interesting stuff.

What does it do?
The machine basically listens to info(sound) from a remote location and then relays that information to an observer at a central, hidden location. The user, in the case of the final build, was able to see the information as it came in, in order to expand his or her perception of the area.

What are its unique attributes?
One of the things I built into it, which was somewhat frowned upon, and certainly not explained very well, was the ability to pick the machine up and move it to another locale and instantly be able to see what was happening there. This is why the machine was on a small box, rather than on a wall or in some other kind of more permanent fixture.
The transmitters can also receive different kinds of data, so the idea that only sound can be broadcast isn't necessarily true, meaning that I could narrow down the info being recieved by the end user. The transmitters are also very mobile, and could be placed within a room, within a building, or go even further away to monitor different regions within a city, or different buildings within a block.

What are its problems?
As I discussed before, the data collected at the time was very general. I was going for mysterious in my own head, but when you strive for that, sometimes you just wash out all the interesting bits, which one could say I was guilty of doing.
The projection on the project was also limited in a way. Sure, the machine could monitor a very large area, and in that regard, it projected a long way out, but the information was kept to a single room, and the info received was kind of esoteric. You had to be in the know to actually realize what the machine was telling you. This limited my applications for the project, and I believe was why I was stuck.

Now, I've been doing a bit of research and thinking about what kind of problem I'd like to address in my architectural intervention at Point Douglas. One of the things that I knew about the area is that there is a fairly large concentration of homeless people who had resorted to staying in abandoned train cars near the river. This is a sad fact, to be sure, and it was something I wanted to address.

When I was in Chicago this August, I bought a magazine in the IIT bookstore, and inside there was a project done by a designer from San Francisco. What this designer had done was create a cardboard homeless shelter that was inspired by origami, so that a homeless person could fold it up and move around when they wanted to. It gave them a dry place to sleep as well as the ability to be mobile. This might not jive too much with my research so far, but what she did after she designed these shelters was include instructions on how to build a $35 radio transceiver, which would allow the homeless people to communicate with each other wirelessly. I think this idea is really interesting, because it allows even the most marginalized people to communicate and meet with each other when they otherwise wouldn't be able to.

This is a fine idea for San Francisco, but I have my reservations about cardboard shelters in the dead of Winnipeg Winter, and I wanted to look at other solutions. I can't remember the designer's name, unfortunately, since I can't find the magazine anymore, but I was able to find some other similar ideas.

http://www.indexaward.dk/2007/default.asp?id=706&show=nomination&nominationid=160&playmovie=wmv

This is a similar idea to the one in San Francisco, but this one is intended for disaster relief in Japan, and is actually made of paper.

My idea was to create a new kind of Winnipeg-friendly shelter using easily found materials and then create a similar type of radio transceiver. Instead of just existing on one band and working like a walkie-talkie, these transmitters could send sound to a central radio receiver, which would then rebroadcast all of those different channels out to the rest of the point. It would basically be a chat room for the homeless, where they could inform each other about where they are and the conditions in different spots. I think it could finally make my design a useful thing, as well as allow it to project even further, both in terms of receiving and transmitting data.

Thoughts on my Final Critique and the New Term

2008-01-17T17:10:00.001-08:00

I thought that my final critique went pretty well considering that I was actually kind of disappointed with myself. I never had enough time to finish the project completely, and I only had one of eight mechanisms working on the day of my presentation, and even then, the batteries ran out while I was talking!

It could have been a lot worse, I suppose, so I can’t complain too much. The comments I received were interesting, but they all had a similar focus, in that they were all asking what the point of the whole thing was.

The information the machine gives to the user was vague, and I intentionally did that to make the machine more mysterious, but in doing so, I also made it more generic and less responsive. By not narrowing the info down, the info had less use to the person receiving it.

After the term ended, I took a long break from blogging, and with the new term now well underway, I am still confused, I guess. After being assigned to look at sites in Point Douglas, I had a big idea all ready for Monday when I talked with Patrick, but of course I had gotten way ahead of myself again, but let me explain what I wanted to do first.

I have no pictures of my intended site, but it was an old burn out building near a railroad that’s been set for demolition. My original thinking was that my machine is something of a virus. Its ability to move into a new building and immediately start sending data to a central spot with mobile receivers made it kind of a sinister little device, and I wanted to take advantage of this. In order to do that, though, my idea was to make a building that exhibited similar viral attributes. Instead of receiving just information over a wireless network, this building would be built upon the foundation of the burnt out building and use some of its components. It would also use components of other dilapidated buildings in order to make itself up.

I decided that within this building, there could be the central piece to my project, receiving data from other parts of the building that would be integrated with the HVAC system in the building. When an area reported being too cold, a solar heated burst of air made from recycled glass, tins, and motors would kick in and heat the area, all as the result of a set of impulses. The building could be solar powered and solar heated, meaning it could be counted upon to be off the grid most of the time, allowing for infinite rearranging and interior possibilities inside, due to having a mobile thermostat and HVAC system.

You see how I get ahead of things?

Well, Patrick set me straight afterwards and said that my logic was a bit too linear. I had gone from the machine receiving data to a building receieving bricks, and if I kept on like that, I could pretty much do whatever the hell I wanted and justify it in some roundabout way. Fun, but not really in the spirit of the project. I needed to think more about my machine and what it could do, as well as what it couldn’t do in order to find a purpose and pick a site.

The big question is:
I have all this info, but who gives a damn? I need to figure out a way to make this a useful design for Point Douglas, and then I need to apply it in some kind of architectural context.

Final Build

2008-01-13T12:32:00.000-08:00

Once I had my transmitter all ready to go (all eight of them!) it was time to get my device assembled. The laser cutting went really well, and I was quite happy with how all the pieces turned out, aside from one piece that I had to redo, because Patrick said it was too sci-fi. Fair enough, I suppose, I think it looked better after, too. And now... the pictures!

Once all of this was built, it was time for me to make a box for the machine to stand on. I was actually kind of mad about the box when it was done, because I went out and bought some really nice wood, and it cost quite a bit of money to make, too. The wood was warped all to hell, and the wood splintered if you even thought about putting a screw or nail in it. It was tough to put together, and I didn't like how it looked in the end, either. It looked okay, but I would have liked to stain it, but due to the extra time it took to clamp it together due to the warping, I didn't have time to darken the finish.

FFM - (Finally) Frequency Modulated

2008-01-13T12:07:00.000-08:00

Throughout the entire term, I was having a really tough time making one of my main goals actually happen. That goal was FM transmission over a fairly long distance, and even though I was able to get my AM transmitter working for a short time, it was also only for a short distance, so when I ordered ten FM transmitter bug kits from QKits.com, I was pretty excited. These kits were supposed to be able to transmit up to 100' on a stable frequency, and so I decided to get them and use them for my project.

The kits looked like this before they were assembled:The red wires on top are the battery connector and antenna wires. The interesting thing about this kit is that the inductor is actually printed right on the circuit board, and the antenna can tap into the inductor in two different spots. If you use tap A, the transmitter can broadcast a lot further, but the signal will drift quite a bit more. If you use tap B, the transmitter should transmit for 100 feet, but the signal will be much more stable, which is why after I tested both, I decided on using tap B, since my machine can't constantly re-tune itself.

This is what the transmitter looked like after it was all soldered together.

The whole thing is extremely small, and could easily fit inside a small mint tin, but I haven't gotten around to that just yet.

After I got a few radios together, I got my younger brother to come in to studio and be my helper monkey. Together, we found that the transmitter could easily reach 100' on tap B, but if we had to go through doorways in the Russell building, the transmission would instantly stop. The metal doorways don't allow the radio waves to pass through, so it was decided that I would have to have all of my transmitters inside the Russell building, no matter what. It was encouraging, though, to see that it could also quite easily transmit through the concrete floors in the building, which was pretty exciting.

When we tried the radios on tap A, the signal drifted about 5 mHz either way, which is way too much drift in much too short a time.

Laser Cutting

2007-12-09T12:37:00.000-08:00

Once I finally decided what I was building, it was time to get in gear and make some pieces to be cut on the laser cutter. I basically stayed up all night on Sunday to make sure that I got it all done, but we ended up not being able to do it that day, which sucked, but at least I have it done now, and I can just wait until it's time to get it all cut.
This is what the actual sheets will look like. I wanted to make a nice drawing of what it all looked like, but I just couldn't wrap my mind around it. I think I'll just wait until I actually get them cut and together.

Level 2 Ether Machine

2007-12-09T11:59:00.000-08:00

Man, it's been a long time since I posted. I am sorry about it, but I've been so busy with other classes, that I couldn't get this done properly, and I didn't want to just throw up some garbage on here simply for the sake of having a post.

After the my crit on Friday I was completely lost. I've been working on this project and thinking about it so much that I just didn't know where I was going anymore. I had a thousand and one ideas, but none of them seemed to be what I was really supposed to do.

The idea that I pitched to Patrick was a small control box that someone could play with near my machine. Using FM transmitters, a person could create a tone using a 555 timer and then the rotary switch, a few meters away or across the room, would react to the noise being carried over the radio. Patrick said that this was a bit limiting, and I think he is right about that. It is limiting because why would you want FM radios taking the place of a short length of wire? It doesn't really make sense, but that was all I really had.

We started talking about other options, and what we kind of came up with was a way to expand the idea of the control box to something that's placed all around the building. This way, when someone, say, opens a door in one room, it registers on my machine which is in another room completely. It was an interesting idea, and I liked it, but I needed some more thinking to figure out whether or not this was okay.

The other thing we talked about was something called an orrery. An orrery is a nineteenth century device that has small gears in it that, when cranked, spin a small scale solar system around a central axis. These machines are incredibly intricate and beautiful, and since my previous machines had a nineteenth century feel to them, this kind of machine resonated with my ideas.
This is an orrery that I found particularly interesting. It's extremely intricate, and beautiful as well.

I was still confused, though, and I had no idea where all of this was leading. I had a big talk with Gregory about the whole thing, and he had a few ideas, but the main thing that came out of the conversation was,

What is the ether to you? How do you want to show it?

This was one of those questions that I had just completely lost sight of. I had gone so far down the road that I couldn't see where I had come from. I had to think about it for a while and go back to my research to answer it, but I did come up with an answer.

The ether is energy. I want to show where energy is in a building at a given time.

I had to really think about what my machine should be doing, and so I did. I realized that there are three different stages, or levels, of ether throughout the history of the world. The first stage is from ancient Greece all the way up until the nineteenth century, where people believed that the ether was some kind of pervasive liquid that we all existed in. In this liquid were ideas and energy, and the only way you came up with anything, be it ideas or actions, was to tune your body to the idea that was floating around in this ethereal liquid. This meant that there were no original ideas, just things floating into your perception.

When this first level of the ether was disproven by Einstein and Hertz, the second level was quick to follow. The second level of the ether is the radio, and this is where my machine exists. The second level is where there are ideas and information floating around in the air and you can receive them easily, with a radio, of course, but it's very hard to have any effect on the ether. You can build your own transmitter or create electromagnetic waves, but the things you send out are fleeting and momentary, meaning that your ideas are lost as soon as they're broadcast. This is where my machine is, and that's why I was having such a huge problem with this project. My machine is NOT a level 3 ether machine, and I was trying to force it into the third level. This is what wasn't working.

So what is the third level? The third level of the ether is the manifestation of the first, and we call it the internet. Think about it. Every idea that anyone has can be put on the internet, and that idea can then be accessed whenever you want. Not only can you focus on a certain idea, or certain information, but that information stays there. The fact that the information is intangible, but still semi-permanent is the first reason for the distinction between level 2 and level 3, but the second distinction is the ease that you can have an effect on that ether. If you go online, you can post on a blog, you can talk with other people across the world, you can write a web page. You have an amount of control that is unheard of. The internet is the manifestation of the old idea of the ether, and I think if you went back in time and told someone about it, they would recognize what you were talking about right away.

It was with this in mind that I decided to make a machine that was like an orrery, but was firmly grounded in the second level of the ether. The orrery is important because it shows the person who sees it their own relationship to the universe. My machine will show the spectator their relationship to the building instead. My machine will be less representational than an orrery, but it will do a similar job. The machine will have many different machines on it, and they will all be hooked up to radio receivers. I'll put small FM transmitters all over the building and then when someone is in a room making some kind of noise, one of the machines will react to it. This will broaden the spectator's perception of the building as a whole, and show their relationship to it.

This kind of machine stresses something that I've been working towards all term. The idea of connectedness is a big one to tackle, and this machine will aspire to do it. If you believe in ether, or chi, or mana, then you believe that everyone is connected all the time. Our energies and our thoughts, so my machine will show you that connection. Where your own perception stops in the room, the machine will project it out into the rest of the building.

I'm kind of excited, I won't lie.

Phenomenological Drawings

2007-11-27T17:50:00.000-08:00

The drawings of my machine's phenomena took an incredibly long time, but I have to say that I'm pretty happy with them. The drawing at the top of the first picture shows the light intensity of the above my machine changing with the sound coming out of the radio. After I finished the drawing, I realized that it also reminded me of something else. In high school, when we learned about the physics of sound waves, they were represented in that fashion, with changes in air pressure moving back and forth to create vibrations in your ear drum. The drawing is of light intensity over time, but it also shows the data that the light was receiving at the time.

The drawing on the bottom of this page is my favourite one. I call it the "Crazy 88", because I drew eight switches is in eight states for a total of sixty-four switches, then I traced over three switches in each column, for twenty four more iterations, making 88. Plus, Kill Bill was a kickass movie.

The drawing is interesting because it shows the sequencing of the machine, but it also shows that there's some inherent matrix at work in the machine. Each column has one switch that's currently on, one switch that just was on, and one switch that is about to be on. These are the switches that have a bolder outline on the drawing, with the switch that's on having the thickest outline.

The drawing is a temporal one, though, showing a progression in every column and every row. At any one time while the machine is operation, one of those states (column/row) is true, and you can easily predict what the next state is, and easily see what the last state was.

I will say this, though, that scan is completely terrible. I really like that drawing, and it didn't turn out well at all in the CadLab's scanner. I'm going to try and scan it again using some other method, though, because this one is atrocious.My final drawing actually came out really nicely, and it shows the movement of the crankshafts as the machine is operating. I actually have a photo that looks just like this, which I posted before, but this image shows a better geometry, I think. There are two very pronounced star shapes present in this drawing, and I think that's pretty interesting, because when I started making this machine, I was only thinking in terms of circles, and it never really occurred to me that I might get that kind of shape.

More Drawings

2007-11-27T17:27:00.000-08:00

Once I had finished my drawings of the organic radio tuner, I decided that I wanted to explore the rotation and sequencing of my machine, and so I made a few test drawings to try and decide how to approach the phenomena.

Unfortunately for me, I had apparently missed the point. Patrick had a talk with me after I had finished making my new drawings and told me that I was being too representational. I had thought the idea was to find new ways of representing the phenomena without drawing the machine itself, but what I was actually supposed to do was draw the machine in a time-lapse fashion, showing the phenomena as they happened.

Damn...

I know how I want to do the rest of the drawings, but they'll take some serious time to finish.

Organic Radio

2007-11-27T17:00:00.001-08:00

When we were told to draw the phenomena that our machines exhibited in Montreal, one of my first instincts was to somehow draw the way in which a radio actually filters out radio waves and amplifies the one that it needs to.

Another thing that exhibits a similar behaviour bacteria and other single-celled organisms. They have a permeable membrane that allows certain chemicals into the cells at certain times in order to function. I decided that a radio was a similar mechanism, but rather than filtering chemicals, it filters electromagnetic waves. Hence the organic/biomechanical look of the above drawing.The final drawing has splatters or paint to show the different channels coming into the "receiver". On the outside of the frame, there are four different colours, and as the waves pass through the rings, one colour is blocked out, until only the blue radio waves remain.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, anyway. More drawings to come.

Ciphers,Sounds, and General Confusion

2007-11-19T09:53:00.000-08:00

During our crit session on Friday, Patrick asked us a few questions about our machines, and I intend to answer them. The only problem being that I have pretty much no idea how to answer the questions, because I am ridiculously confused about this whole thing.

Question the first: What does your monster/machine do?

Who the hell knows? I know that my machine spins to the sounds of a radio station that it receives, and then taps switches around its periphery. The switches, however, are where my mystery begins. What are the switches connected to? Why? These are the questions that plague my design, and these are the reasons that I feel like I’m in such a bad place right now.

I do have a few ideas, but I just don’t know how valid they are. The first idea came during our discussion about sounds and the audible qualities of our machines. If I could find some way to connect my switches to a microcontroller, which is in turn connected to my computer, I might be able to send impulses from the switches to my computer. If these impulses could be interpreted by a sound-mixing program like Fruity Loops or something like that, then I could have my machine play the sounds. It would be an interesting aural experience because of the machine’s sequential nature, and I think it could be interesting to start feeding the output of the machine to the control mechanism (radio transmitter, audio output, etc). It could be an interesting idea, but I feel like it goes too far away from my original focus on the radio.

The other idea I had is probably the most feasible of the two, but it’s rather complex. Earlier on when I was researching the radio, I did a little bit of research on cryptology. Caesar ciphers, permutations, and other encryption techniques are interesting, but I suppose my interest in it lies in the fact that my machine could be splitting up a message through the ether.

It might not make a whole lot of sense, but messages and information that are flying through the ether are always considered part of a whole. By taking one message and simultaneously splitting it over different frequencies and timings, I’m effectively breaking up the continuity of something that has had that continuity for millennia.

The way I plan on achieving my goal is by playing to my machine’s strengths. It would basically work on a Caesar cipher principle. There would be two machines; one for sending and one for receiving. The machine that is sending would be hooked up to eight radio transmitters, each transmitting on a slightly different frequency. This machine would be driven by my previous circuit, where a radio station is driving the movement between each of the eight switches. As one switch is tapped, the overall message moves to a different frequency, so if you tuned to just one station, you’d only ever get one eighth the overall message at any one time. The second machine would have eight radio receivers, each tuned to the same channels as the first machine’s transmitters. The “key” for both machines is the radio station that drives the motor. If both are moving in sync, then the entire message is transmitted to the receiver, and anyone else who’s trying to decode the message is left with only one eighth of the entire message. Will it work? Who the hell knows, but I think it’s an interesting idea.

Question the Second: What is it about?

The ether, man. Come on.

Really, I also don’t know what it’s about. The whole thing is somewhat patched together from different sources. My brain tells me that the whole thing is about the radio and telecommunication, but my previous efforts seem to have focused on sound and energy. My gut is telling me that I have strayed from my original goals, and that’s not so good.

I think the idea for the sound machine is solid, but I also think it’s a reaction to the fact that I’ve been missing my mark with this project. The cipher machine would be less of a departure, and I think it could even get me back on track a bit, so that’s the idea that I’m currently going with. Maybe it’s too complicated for the amount of time I have, or maybe it doesn’t do what I think it does, but I want to talk it over with my crit and see how it all goes.

Question the Third: What is its purpose?

Being sneaky, I suppose. Really, the idea of using my machine to be an encryption/decryption device is a way for me to bring this back to my original intent. The idea that I can split up a signal and cut the ether into chunks is an interesting possibility, since as far as I know, it hasn’t been done before. I’m more interested, however, in the idea that it can be cut up, making the ether something that can be separated. In all of my readings regarding the ether, its always said that the ether is a single entity, and one that cannot be subdivided or broken. This machine could do both, as well as being a new way to send encrypted data. The idea that the signal is split eight ways only needs to be he first layer of encryption, as you could easily send a digital signal through it, or even a number station if you wished.

Question the Fourth: What is the Site?

The site, as far as I can tell, hasn’t really started to materialize. If I go through with the cipher machine, then I think the site would end up being something hidden, or at least something very clandestine. If I’m going to be sending hidden messages over the radio, then I would imagine my site and my building might start to take on some kind of militaristic bent. Maybe it would facilitate a steampunk aesthetic. Steam has nothing to do with it, but I just love steampunk, and the utilitarian, rusted, Victorian look is something I’d love to try out on my own.

I would say that this type of machine definitely has implications on the planning of my site as well. Perhaps the plan could take on a radial formwork and then branch out into a more labyrinthine layout from the center. Then my building could respond to both the machine’s tectonics, as well as the idea of code cracking and intentional wayfinding disruptions. It would certainly be eccentric, but so far that seems par for the course.

So what have we found out?

Basically, I’m very confused, but I think I might be on to something. God, let’s hope so.

The Exhibition

2007-11-18T23:22:00.001-08:00

Here it is...

The atmosphere of the show was absolutely amazing, and I got some really positive feedback on my piece from a few different people. It was nice to see that people were interested in it at least, even though it didn't technically do what I wanted it to. I was a little bit disappointed in the project to be completely honest, but everyone who saw it seemed to like it, so they can't all be wrong, can they?

CAN THEY?!

T Minus One Day

2007-11-18T22:15:00.000-08:00

Thursday was mostly a frantic working day. I was still getting my floor panel all set up, but today there was a bit of a twist. At the end of the night (and a little bit this morning) Gregory had a bright idea and he was very excited about it. He thought that I should move my piece away from the center of the exhibition and put it near the entrance instead. Through his enthusiasm and sound reasoning, he convinced me, and so I did move it.

Here it is all set up in its new home. It took a long time to move it here, but I think it was the right decision.

Once I got everything ready in its new spot, I had to get the infrastructure ready so that the tile could be lighted properly. To do this, I had to put a dimmer box in the floor a few panels away, then put four lights (RGBB) into my own floor panel. I got the lights in and the dimmer as well, but Harry advised me to build a light box out of foamcore in order to stop the light from leaking out underneath the floor.Once all of this was set up, I had to run the cables from this box all the way across the room to where Harry had his computers set up. This was no easy task, and I had to attach the cable to a series of poles and try to feed it under the tiles. I couldn't do it all on my own, but luckily Dan was feeling spry and decided to help me out by crawling underneath the floor.

Whoa.

Once everything was set up, the testing began, and the whole thing started to come together visually. Unfortunately, I still didn't have my FM transmitters working, and I was still feeling pretty crappy about the whole thing. I had the switch and my tile set up, but no way to communicate and interface with any other projects yet.

Black Box Recap

2007-11-18T21:29:00.000-08:00

I suppose I should finish what I started and tell you how the rest of the week in Montreal went. It was pretty exhausting, hence the extended (ill-advised?) break from not only blogging, but most things studio related.

After being the blogmaster on Tuesday with Shannon, I took a short jaunt to Addison's with JS, Shannon, Nigel, and Candace.
Addison was really cool, and had a ridiculous amount of crazy gadgetry. I could have spent a whole lot more time there, but I think everyone else had just about enough.
Case in point.

When we got back, it was working time again, and work we did. At the end of the previous day, I had my rotary switch suspended in the floor tile with a small light underneath it. This had a lot of problems, including the fact that the light I was using could most likely melt the whole thing in about an hour.

After a talk with Patrick and Xin Wei, we decided that it would be more beneficial to have my switch exposed, rather than hidden away. Here it is before it was lifted from the depths of the Black Box's concrete tile floor. You can see the light underneath, but the light was just not a feasible idea in the end.

Since I was no longer suspending the switch in the ground with strings, I had to come up with a way to hold it up over my tile. I managed to do this by borrowing some wire from Nigel and using shrink wrap on the connections. The thing held up nicely, which was cool, but that was the end of my day.

Of course, the whole thing was starting to come together a bit, and the whole environment was alive with motion and sound, and it was only Wednesday.

Hexagram Ahoy!

2007-11-13T17:52:00.000-08:00

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.

I'm Trapped in a Black Box! Send Help!

2007-11-05T20:39:00.001-08:00

We arrived in Montreal yesterday around 1:00 in the afternoon after a nice, peaceful plane ride. After wandering around the airport and trying to get a cabbie who would actually attempt to take our gigantic load of stuff, we were flying again (120 in a 70, anyone?) to our hotel. From there. we ended up wandering around Chinatown and doing a little shopping and sampling some fine Asian eateries. It was a lovely day, capped by a lovely night.

We got to Hexagram this morning to set up our stuff and show off a bit, and I finally had something new to show. This bad boy is the next iteration of my rotary switch, and it's looking pretty good.

As you can see, I changed things around just a bit. The whole thing is clear so that it can be uplit and projected onto a screen in the black box. So far, I've been able to decide how I want the pistons to activate the switches, and where I want my creation to in the space, but I still have some questions, like what the hell is this thing going to do exactly? I had a talk with Xin Wei and Patrick, along with a few others in the Black Box, and one thing we came to agree on was that I should use not only digital outputs, but analog outputs as well, since the whole input system is analog to analog.

I plan on putting the machine underneath the floor, which might sound a little odd, but it does make sense in regards to my research material. The idea is that the silhouette will be projected from the floor to a screen on the ceiling, and the machine itself will be obstructed. In the history of Ether, and the radio, too, there has never been a natural way to intercept the signals floating through the air. You can't see it, smell it, taste touch, or feel it, you can only ever decode it through an external medium like a radio or television. My project works the same way. You can see the effects of the radio by listening to the sound, or watching the silhouette projected on the wall, but you never see the machine itself, unless its through an artificial medium.

Tomorrow should be interesting, as I'll be mounting my monster under the floor and setting up the screens. I imagine the logistics will be very interesting indeed...

Nocturnal Transmissions

2007-10-31T23:35:00.000-07:00

After a fairly promising day working on my rotary switching mechanism, I ran into a few major stumbling blocks. One: My amplifier which was supposed to make my motor go along with the music stopped working, and Two: my radio transmitters didn't work yet. Both of these things were hugely critical for my project to keep on advancing, so I spent the last few days just banging away at my circuits.

Unfortunately, so far I've only been able to crack the amplifier circuit, and it was a bit of a stupid problem. What happened was that I tried to insert a darlington transistor into my circuit, in order to alleviate the heat runaway I was experiencing with my normal transistor, but when I did it, I ended up feeding a nice nine volt shock straight into my iPod's headphone jack. Initially, they only damage was a burn to the left hand side of the screen, but alas, my problems didn't end there. As I figured out today, after two days of buggering around with this circuit and getting extremely frustrated, was that my iPod was now constantly putting out 1.3 volts, even when it was paused. This meant that my circuits were always on, and led me to believe that I was using PNP transistors or something else was wrong, and so I've been working this circuit over for the last two days unnecessarily.

The happy news is that this thing will work, and I even have proof!

As you can see, the switch is rotating along with the beat, which is exactly what I want it to do. Now the only thing that needs to be provided is the music, which will be transmitted through the ether to my machine.

This calls for an FM radio transmitter, of course! I found a great website with a few different FM transmitter circuits on it, and so I decided to try them out, with sometimes humourous results.
This eventually turned into this:

When I actually tried this out, I had to take it outside to due crazy interference inside our studio space. When I took it out, though, I got a very interesting result. With my radio tuned to 88.1 MhZ, I started picking up a Kanye West Song, which was odd, since I was playing AC/DC. I didn't think it was my transmitter, but as I was adjusting the trimmer, I got the channel to come in clear as a bell, and when I listened for a bit, I found something incredibly interesting. I was broadcasting a perfect signal from 107.9 MhZ over my transmitter... Weird, no? Somewhat disheartened that my circuit didn't work, but encouraged by the fact it actually did something, I went back to studio and made a new radio transmitter.

This turned into this:

The second one is a lot more complex, but I think the result was a bit better. I didn't get a clear signal, or anything discernible at all, but I did manage to detect a strong distortion that I could control with my trimmer while I was using it. It doesn't necessarily work just yet, but I plan on doing a lot more work on it tomorrow, and playing with the inductor coils to play with my frequencies a bit. I imagine I will be able to get a signal tomorrow, so here's hoping.

Wish me luck, I'm going to need it, that's for sure.

Rotary Switching Mechanism

2007-10-26T12:26:00.000-07:00

So, after a talk with Patrick yesterday, we decided that maybe locomotion of the actual monster wasn't the way to go for my project. I had been working on making my machine move for quite some time, so I was a little bit dejected after our talk, but I found solace in my favourite online forums. During my visit on these particular forums, I came across a poster who had an avatar with a rotary engine animation in it. It didn't click at the time for me, so I can't remember his username, or which thread I saw his avatar in, but I did remember the rotary engine.
This is a picture of a rotary engine, and basically it just worked by using a ring of pistons surrounding a crankshaft. As the off-balanced crankshaft spins, it pushes and pulls the pistons in and out. My switch mechanism isn't quite like the rotary engine, though, because it will be powered by radio waves or audio input of some kind, so the power will come from an external electrical source, not a series of explosions.

First thing's first, I had to create some pistons for the crankshafts to fit into.
I used brass tubing for the piston, and millboard to hold the whole thing up. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the crankshaft being constructed, but its height determined the height of my millboard braces. Once these were created, I had to make connections from my crankshaft to my pistons, and thankfully, I found a great material for this type of thing.
This copper wiring that I borrowed from Candice worked perfectly, because it's malleable enough that it can be shaped easily, but strong enough that it can easily hold its shape. I made eight of these and eight pistons, and then connected them to my mount that has the crankshaft on it.

This it the mechanism with just four pistons mounted to it, but it looks much cooler with eight.

So no what I have is eight switches that will be controlled by the speed of the motor, which will be controlled by the volume and strength of the radio waves coming into my monster. I'm going to mount a small motor on this board to power the crankshaft in the center. Both pulleys are from my previous locomotion experiment, so I guess that wasn't a total loss. I plan to turn this into the nerve center of my monster, and I also plan on using my arduino board to start taking inputs from this switch and counting the number of rotations so that I can control my monster with more precision.

Everybody's Doing a Brand New Dance Now...

2007-10-26T11:07:00.000-07:00

Locomotion is the name of the game for this post. I hate that song, by the way, but I suppose it fit.

After spinning my wheels for a few days trying to look for proper components to build my moving radio bot, I decided that it might be more productive to mock it up out of less desirable materials, so that I at least know what I'm building. The problem with looking for my good materials was that I had no real idea of what I was going to make, so it was impossible to find the parts.

So I started whipping things up using millboard and my remote control car that I had previously dissected.

The first step was just to attach some doweling into the holes in my wheels. Then, I had to construct something to hold the doweling in place and allow for a central axle to be put in.

These two small axle pieces now just needed to be connected to a main axle that would allow the center to spin independently of the chassis I would create afterwards. I put wooden doweling in between these two pieces to create the final axle, and then attached a self-made pulley to the axle so that it could spin with the motion of the motor.

The next step would be to connect this axle to a pulley powered by my radio, but that might have to wait.

Motor Madness

2007-10-21T18:46:00.000-07:00

Finally, blogger is letting me post images and movies.

On Saturday afternoon, I made a breakthrough in my struggle with the MOSFETs and Darlington transistors. Basically, I said to hell with them and started back at square one: the regular transistor. After three days of slaving over a breadboard, making crazy, complex circuits, I finally prevailed using the simplest circuit yet.That's it... Seriously, that's all it is. It's just the positive of the radio and the nine volt battery hooked up to the collector, the negative of the radio hooked into the base, and the ground from the motor hooked into the emitter. Now, when voltage is applied to the base, it allows the circuit to be connected in the motor, which is powered by a nine volt battery, amplifying my signal enough to cause movement in the motor.

It took three days of being frustrated to come up with this. KISS... Anyway, I finally figured it out, and here's a little video of the setup in its working form. The small green wire on the top was added so that you could actually see the movement in the motor, and won't be there later on.

That's my proof of concept, I suppose, now it's time to create some kind of rigging so that this motor can somehow cause my radio powered monster to scuttle around.

Dr. Death and the MOSFETs

2007-10-19T22:37:00.000-07:00

So, I was thinking of starting a band, and I think Dr. Death and the MOSFETs would be a pretty awesome name... Not really, it just describes the last couple of days for me.

The Dr. Death part refers to my Thursday morning activities. In just a few short hours I managed to wreck my AM transmitter and killed my radio for good, and the next few hours were spent feverishly researching MOSFETs and trying to create some sample circuits.

My AM transmitter bit the dust when I was trying to fit the assembly into the mint tin I was using. I desoldered a connection to another antenna, and when I was resoldering it to my good antenna, the whole antenna pin, which is connected on the inside of the chip, popped right out. I tried to put it back in, but it was a no-go. I was pretty sure Active Tech would have more, but of course, they don't. Uh oh...

After speaking with Carl, it was clear that my radio was pretty much buggered. By taking off the RF transmitter, I basically made the entire thing so sensitive and erratic that it won't function properly anymore, and I can't properly re-mount it. Fortunately, in my next visit to Value Village, I found a radio that was almost exactly the same. The only difference was that this new radio has a black case and a DC in jack. So, at least I still have a radio.

While speaking with Carl, he pretty much informed me that he wasn't sure how MOSFETs worked, either, which sucked for me, because I couldn't figure the bloody things out, either. I know that a MOSFET is supposed to be able to take a very small signal and amplify it. Nigel suggested a Darlington transmitter would do what I wanted, but a problem arose when I was researching them as well.

The difference between a darlington transistor (or any transistor) and a MOSFET is that a MOSFET is linear, meaning that it uses a ratio to determine the final output. That means hat if there is a very small signal on the gate, the MOSFET will only allow a small amount of the amplified current through as well. That means if you turn down the volume on the radio, the amplification will also be turned down. In a darlington transistor, a certain amount of current is needed to activate the switch, meaning if you turned the radio down, the signal that is amplified would be cut off completely, or would cut in and cut out as the song or speech reached a peak in signal strength.

I found a nice amount of links for MOSFETs, but i just couldn't get anything to work.
MOSFET Basics
MOSFETs
Do You Know Your Transistors From Your FETs and MOSFETs?

Since I couldn't get any of these circuits working, despite my research, I decided today to get back to basics and try to make some regular transistors work, and then work my way up from there. In my research today I found a really great website that explains all kinds of components and projects, and it's actually readable. I'll be posting this on the main blog later on.

The Electronics Club

From this site I was able to create two transistor circuits using a light sensor, which I think will have some application in my later monstrous transformations.

I was going to post images of the circuits, but apparently I can't, because Blogger is having problems...

Doctor Death Strikes again!!!

I'll update this post tomorrow, I suppose.

iPod AM Transmissions

2007-10-15T12:02:00.000-07:00

I finally got my iPod AM transmitter working! It's kind of dirty still, but it does the job just fine for now.

This is the whole setup right here, but with one exception. The 7uF capacitor on this version I made last night was improperly mounted, causing my transmitter to cease transmission. I figured out the problem today and was able to test it with Matt "Fozzington" Vandenburg's radio upstairs in Russell. The result was pretty cool, and the signal is very clean, especially for an AM radio transmission. Range, however, is a problem, as it only works from about two feet away, but I'm going to try and rectify the situation with different types of antennae.

If you want to make something like this, you can just follow this simple little circuit diagram.

I made a small change to this, though. I used a 6V battery supply, as well as a 220 ohm resistor to handle the extra load. The capacitor I used was a 7uF one, instead of the recommended 10uF, but that was only because I had no 10uF capacitors at the time. The magical element here is of course, the crystal, which can be bought at Active Tech, and pictured here.

Bionic Monster

2007-10-15T02:54:00.000-07:00

I feel like I haven't been posting enough, but I have been working. I'm just forgetful, that's all. I've been working on my radios and playing with the lights, but I had another idea that I'm somewhat excited about, but I'll get to that later.

After my little LED rail experiment, I set out to create a more pleasing looking array of LEDs, and perhaps in different colours.
These two beauties are my rings of LED lights that I was going to attach to my speakers. The LEDs' positive sides are all connected to the outer rings, and the negative sides, connected to the inner rings. They work quite nicely as I intended them to, but after I tested them out, I had a brainstorm because of my own childishness.

After I finished, I decided it would be funny to put the rings in my eyes, because they fit rather perfectly. This is when the brainstorm started, and I set about creating some light up goggles to wear around like an idiot.

As you can see, mission accomplished. This got me thinking, though. What if I became the monster instead of creating a brand new one? It's come to my attention through my various bits of research that although we've been theorizing about the ether for thousands of years, there's still no way to actually sense it... But why not? What if I could create some piece of clothing, or something of that nature to respond to changes in the ether. I came up with the idea of the clothing a long time after the glasses (at about 1:00 am, at which point I came into studio for the night) and I decided I should probably whip up some kind of sketch.

So, here it is, and as you can see it's basically a hat and a coat on the outside. The inside, however, is laden with LEDs, muscle wire, and unbalanced motors inside. The hat would contain three radios, and later on, a micro controller, to control everything inside the coat. The experience would then turn your experience with the ether into one that wasn't strictly aural, but haptic as well. I can imagine walking around at night while LEDs flash under your hat and light pulses out of your sleeves and the bottom of your coat, all induced by radio waves as you walk around. Sounds like fun, no?

Radio Light Show

2007-10-11T22:01:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know that makes no sense, but I don't care.

Today I was completely stuck, as you can see in the previous post, and I was basically just screwing around and trying to make my two machines interact with each other in some kind of crazy way. I decided to take one of the motors from my remote control car and hook it up where my speakers were supposed to be on the radio. To my surprise, I actually got a reaction, just not the one I had hoped for. The motor wouldn't turn with the music coming from the radio, but it would vibrate, which held some promise.

The next step was to hook up some LEDs and give that a shot. A single LED pulsed along with the music and looked pretty cool, so I constructed a small rail and soldered 5 LEDs to it, and then hooked the whole thing up. It was a truly serendipitous moment, because just as I started up the radio, Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" started to play, and the lights pulsed along to the unmistakable guitar riff at the start.

Fuckin' Awesome.

This is the very start of my new monster. Tomorrow I'm off for some 555 timers and I'm going to try and figure out how to control my monster's movement using radio waves. Could turn out to be very interesting indeed...

Ether Has a Strange Effect on Me

2007-10-10T21:38:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not talking about the drug this time, I'm talking about that intangible liquid we all live and exist in. What is the Ether and what does it do? Who can sense or control it, and to what ends?

Who the hell knows?

I have to say that I am very confused right now. What is the ether? It is simultaneously nothing and everything, nowhere and everywhere. Now that we have that cleared up, how does one go about demonstrating such a thing? Should my monster do nothing? Should it swing in the breeze, or randomly flit about with no rhyme or reason? I suppose that it could, but it would still be far from explaining or demonstrating the ether.

Maybe I should start with what I know. It's not much, but I suppose it's a start. I've been reading Milutis' book entitled Ether: The Nothing that Connects Everything, and my mind has been blown on many separate, non-consecutive occasions. The book is full of incredible ideas, but it's density and mystery are getting to me.

What is ether? It goes by many names, including more popular ones like Mana and Chi, which if you are a gamer like me, you have heard many times before. This goes to show that the very idea of Ether, while not perceived in exactly the same way by everyone, is a seemingly ubiquitous idea all over the world and in many cultures.

In ancient Greece, the ether was defined as the area outside the "crystal". This crystal was believed to be a giant sphere in which the whole universe rested. The stars were nailed to this sphere, and whatever was outside of it was considered to be ether. Later on, as philosophers began to get more and more scientific, ether started to be considered one of the elements of the universe and became interchangeble with air as one of the four elements. Ether could neither be seen nor heard, and this is still true today, but it was a major factor in how we lived our everyday lives according to the greeks.

As we progess further into history, the ether remains an offshoot of the air, but since we discover that the air is oxygen, the ether shifts to become an intangible liquid essence that we exist in. Ben Franklin, Isaac Newton and Anton Mesmer are three scientists who explore the ether, but in much different ways. It is with Mesmer that I am the most interested, but the similarities between the approaches of all three men are eery. Even though Mesmer is denounced for his work with electricity and magnetism, his ideas about what the ether is conform with those of Ben Franklin and Newton. They believe that the Ether is a liquid medium that is susceptible to oscillations caused by thought and now, of course, electrical impulses and electromagnetivity.

The three are also similar in how they show their work to people. The ether is always tied to a great spectacle. Whether it's Ben Franklin's experiments with lightning, Newton's electromagnetic machines, or Mesmer's animal magnetism and cure-alls, all three used the ether to put on some kind of show as if it were magical. This mystery of the ether led to many strange and fantastic supernatural ideas, including seances, psychics, and hypnotism to achieve a higher perception or sixth sense.

Later on, the ether is almost disproved by Einstein and Hertz, after cultural milieu shifts and allows such experiments to go forth. Hertz's attempts to measure ether and Einstein's work on the theory of relativity render the ether debunked, but Marconi's radio transmissions open up a new kind of ether that lies in the electromagnetic spectrum, which is one of the places the ether still has currency today.

The internet is the new ether, with its communication through ones and zeros (luminiferous oscillations?) giving the world a single consciousness to connect through. The internet, radio, and earlier ideas of ether all have certain strands that keep come through in all its permutations.

Spectacle: The ether is almost always used to put on a show. Anton Mesmer, in particular, was proficient at using magnets and electricity to mystify and audience and create an air of awe and connectedness with the ether.

Communication: Even in ancient times, the greeks believed that the ether connected us all and that oscillations in this medium could have an affect on everyone connected to it.

Mystery: Ether has forever been a source of contention and speculation because of its intangible nature. It can be neither proven nor disproven, and its construction in our minds shift with new paradigms and cultural changes throughout the ages.

So there we have it... That's what I know so far... So how do I go about demonstrating ether? I have some ideas, but they are only shells of ideas and I can't seem to put the pieces together.

I've thought about using electromagnets and phosphorescents to create a "healing area" where people could go and be aware of the magnetism bombarding them, as well as an eerie, protoplasmic light that emanates from the machines. If the area was fogged, the people going through could be made aware of the very air they breathe and the medium through which the magnetism travels to them. Will it actually heal anyone? Sugar pills do it all the time...

Maybe I could make a show of it using radio waves that affect how my monster reacts. Perhaps a motion sensor could trigger a remote controlled sensor on my bot to make it scan the airwaves and reposition its antenna while it walks around a crowded area moving spastically due to the radio waves it receives. I like the idea, and so far it's the only one even near my reach, but I fear the idea will only demonstrate radio waves, and not the ethereal experience that I'm looking for at all.

I don't know what to do at all. Perhaps my third eye will open tonight as I sleep and some creative energy will flow from someone or somewhere, allowing me to show you the luminiferous oscillations going on all around you. Perhaps not, though, perhaps none of it is real in the first place.

Radio Controlled Radio?

2007-10-05T09:51:00.000-07:00

Well, I sure as hell hope so.

A couple of days ago I started my vivisection of Skrash, a loud, skeletal fellow who rides around in a badass car. The first order of business was to crack open the controller and see what was inside. I was somewhat surprised at how complex it was, but I decided that it probably makes sense. My mistake was thinking it was more complex than the car itself.
What's this? A crystal oscillator again, I see. This one operates at 24 MHz, but the D10 is somewhat mystifying. If I had to guess, I would say that the D10 is for the variation in frequency or amplitude that will make sure that only this car runs on this controller. I'm sure if I opened up another character from this series, his crystal would have a different combination inscribed on it, but would still communicate at 24 MHz.
Gah, this is the speaker that's in the remote control. It's the reason this toy is so thoroughly annoying. No matter how far away the car is, when you press any button on the remote control, this speaker will produce a loud, annoying sound, such as squealing tires, guns firing, or Skrash laughing it up like an idiot.This part puzzled me a lot, actually. This is the headphone jack, and it's easily the most intense piece of electronics in the whole remote control, and yet it serves no purpose at all. Of the six wires that come from it, only two are necessary to keep the remote control working properly. The jack is simply to be used when the toy is in the box. This way, without having the power to the remote on and wasting batteries, customers can put their fingers inside the box and press the buttons and hear what sounds the remote makes. It even says in the instruction book to discard the cord because it's "not for use in play". Weird...These little rubber pads are siting on top of small switches that allow you to make the car move forward, backward, and side to side when you press them. It's fairly simple, really, especially in comparison with the vestigial headphone jack.

The next victim in my vivisection was the car itself. I thought that the car would be a lot simpler than the remote control, and of course I was completely wrong, because that's just how things work.

This is just one of the circuit boards on the actual car. There are two, and I certainly didn't expect that.

This is the whole shebang after the vivisection. As you can see there are two regular motors that I could pull out and one motor that has a casing with a load of gears inside. The nice thing about that gear box is that it should allow me to attack that piece to the tuner mechanism of my radio. Since it moves so slowly, I won't have to fiddle with any gear ratios or resistors along the motor's circuit to get it to move at the speed I want. The other motors, however, are a bit of a different story.

What's the next step? Monstrification. I will now combine my remote control car with my radio, to make a remote control radio. I already have the radio mounted on a board, now I just have to create some motor mounts for the motors I'm attaching to the radio dials. Hopefully this should do the trick, and if it does, videos shall be posted.

Skeletons and Labyrinths

2007-10-02T21:06:00.000-07:00

This video is of my favourite little friend Skrash, pre-vivisection. I went out shopping today, looking for a 9.6V battery pack to put in this monster, but I found out that 9.6V battery packs cost upwards of $40, and O instead opted to cheap out and rig up two 9V batteries in series to get the job done. One 9V will make the hood open and shut, and will allow the wheels to turn, but it won't drive the big motor enough to get things moving. I finally found out that it was my amperage, not the voltage, that was the problem, and a quickly cobbled together parallel circuit was just the ticket to make this thing go. It works just fine now, and it's already a little monstrous, so I'm happy as is.

After my first little victory, I decided a change of pace was necessary. I started to do a little bit of research into my area of studies and related tidbits. I started out with radio and the history of Radio, and Guglielmo Marconi. I found a book about him as well, which is told like a story. It's a bit wordy for my purposes, but it's a nice contrast to the other technical stuff I found. In the book's description, it talks about how Marconi himself didn't even know how the machine worked at first, and that he had somehow managed to transmit signals through the "Ether".

I also found a book about the Ether, which is a little bit on the odd side. It talks about how ether is the "Superflux of the sky". When I figure out what in the blue hell that means, I'll let you know, but it certainly sounds cool, and I'm all for it.

I also found a couple of books that dealt with the anecdotal side of radio history. "Voices in the Purple Haze: Underground Radio and the Sixties" has insofar been an interesting read, if a little on the strange side. "Free Radio" is a book that I actually found while looking for "Voices in the Purple Haze", and I actually think it might be a bit more useful. In it, the author talks about the various kinds of pirate radios that have sprung up over the years and how the government is trying to regulate them.

"I Hid it Under the Sheets" is interesting, too, but it also has a more verbose and less to the point writing style. I did find it quite interesting on a personal note, though, because the author, Gerald Eskenazi, talks about his experiences as a child with the radio, and I have to say that it reminded me of my own childhood. The connection for me, however, wasn't to the Lone Ranger, the Green Hornet, and Superman like it was for Eskenazi, it was for Link, Mario, and Samus Aran from the games I played as a kid.

In his intro, Eskenazi describes how he enjoyed the radio programs he listened to so much because, as a child, he had such a vivid imagination. He never saw any of the characters, but his imagination filled in the blanks while he listened and helped paint a picture in his mind. this is the same for me when i was young, playing my 8-bit games on the floor of my bedroom with my brothers. In the original Legend of Zelda, there's not much to look at in the labyrinths you enter, but in my mind, the blue bricks that formed the pixelated walls and floors were covered with fine dust, old vines, and smelled like my friend's musty basement. The bats that are in it look like a simplified batman logo in black, with big, blocky pixels, but in my mind's eye they were hideous flying creatures with four foot wing spans and glistening teeth, intent on ripping the flesh from an unexperienced adventurer's bones. The graphics were very simple, but that's never what I saw, because imagination played such a big part in the experience then. Now, when you play video games, each enemy and area is intricately detailed and spelled out for the player and almost no imagination is needed. I miss those old days, and I still find myself using emulators on my computer to recapture them.

In my day.... Oh, God, it's starting already....

An Unexpexted Hiatus

2007-10-01T13:01:00.000-07:00

My three day absence is finally over. Why, you ask, was I gone for three days? Well, let's say two parts sickness and one part stupidity, and we're pretty much on the money. On Friday and Saturday I was sick as a dog with some kind of flu. I stayed at home and read things I had meant to read earlier and wallowed in self-pity until Sunday, when I finally felt good enough to get back to some meaningful work. Of course, after I had done some of said meaningful work, I toddled off home and forgot to bring my camera card with me, hence the one third stupidity portion of my absence.

It's OK, though, don't worry. I have the pictures now, and I will show them to you... I know you're excited.

Sunday started off rather groggily, as I wasn't fully over my flu, which I most certainly picked up from a certain Darth Vader mask purchased earlier at a certain frugal village. I had to revisit the Village of Values before I came into studio in order to pick up a shiny new radio to hack into bits.
My new radio is scarcely larger than your average pop bottle, and takes four double A batteries for its power source. Interestingly enough, I believe Superman himself works at the factory in China where this was assembled, because it was damn near impossible to get the four screws out of it. In the end I had to resort to using a thing screwdriver with a large pair of pliers clamped to it in order to get the bloody things out. Even with my new leverage advantage, I still had to lean all my weight on the radio and have someone hold the bottom so the radio itself wouldn't swivel in order to pry them loose, and I still stripped two of the four in doing so. I wasn't supposed to see the insides, I guess, but to hell with Superman, I always thought he was kind of a lame superhero anyway.

So what's inside of it? More of the same, really.The mechanisms all appear to be the same, only with fewer variable resistors (silver squares), and much smaller everything else. The volume knobs and tuner mechanism are almost identical, but I still haven't figured out what the coil of copper wire wrapped around a piece of iron do, although I have my guesses. I'll know for sure when I sever it from the rest of the board and observe the results, I suppose. Until then, it's a mystery, and mysteries are fun.
This is what it looks like when everything is separated from the case. I find it interesting that not only does the case have nothing to do with the shape of the actual pieces necessary to make it work, but that it also mimics the style of something that it's not. If you look at the front of the radio, it looks like it's a mini cassette player. It's like a vestigial piece of what a radio SHOULD be, which is pretty bloody strange if you ask me.

So what of my next vivisection? I'll have to take apart this lovely character, named Skrash.
Skrash is a character inside a remote control car I bought at Wal-Mart before I came into studio. It's a pretty sweet car, and I feel kind of bad taking it apart, but I must know how it works. What I do know is that I need a 9.6V battery pack to make it operate at a proper speed, but so far I've just jerry-rigged a 9V and made it go. It's good enough to make everything work, but it's not enough to power the huge motor in the back and make it actually move. All the other functions, like opening the hood of the car and playing its horribly annoying sound effects, work properly, but it doesn't move yet. I'll have a battery pack tomorrow, and I'll find out what makes ol' Skrash tick.
Aww, yeah. This is Skrash's ride... He's actually inside there, all tucked up. It must be very uncomfortable, but soon he'll be in a thousand pieces, so it's OK.

He's Dead, Jim...

2007-09-26T20:19:00.000-07:00

Damnit, Jim! I'm a Doctor, not a radio man!

Tonight, while trying to take apart my FM/AM switch, I have apparently killed my radio. Everything seemed fine as I was soldering tyhe wires back, checking every four wires for functionality, but when I finished up, my radio no longer produced sound in the AM band, and there are no radio stations coming in on the FM band. I'm sure it can be fixed, but it's most discouraging, to say the least.

I haven't blogged in a little while, so I guess I should say what I've been up to these days.

I finally managed to get my hands on a soldering pump, so I was able to get those knobs off the top of the radio. It was a gigantic pain in the ass, however, but I did manage to get it done after much longer than I had anticipated. Here are some pictures of the offenders.

These little buggers were lots of fun, and took a long time to
wrangle into place, but I eventually got it done. The whole thing looks like an even bigger mess than it was before, but the whole thing still worked.

There's the whole rig in all its glory.

Now, after I finished this, I got a little sidetracked. One of the projects I've been meaning to try out is the AM Transmitter I found on Instructables a little while ago. The problem with that transmitter was that it had no style, so I decided to fix that.

When I was at Active Tech in the morning, I found, along with my sold-a-pult, an extensive selection of Crystal oscillators. This meant that I might have some luck in making a little AM transmitter, and so I picked it up. When I got back to the U of M, I went to the bookstore and grabbed a tin of cinnamon mints and a small pair of cheap headphones for an audio jack.

With all my gear ready to go, I set to work creating my AM transmitter. I soon found out, however, that my oscillator was at too high a frequency to be picked up by any radio. My 2.574 MHz oscillator was no good. It's OK, though, I found a 1 MHz oscillator in the Digikey book, which I'll order on Friday, and hopefully pick it up on Monday. In the mean time, I mocked it up to show what it'd look like.
Sexy, no? The headphone jack will plug into an iPod or other music device and the crystal will generate an amplification modulated signal at 1.ooo MHz, so I can listen to my iPod in my car. Or other places. It's going to be sweet.

The day after I played with my AM transmitter, I tackled, and ultimately buggered up, my AM/FM switch.

Both of these crazy things had to be connected together, and apparently it didn't go so well. Everything seemed to be working until the last four wires that were soldered, but I just couldn't seem to isolate the problem tonight. Tomorrow morning I'll give it another go, so hopefully I'll get things back in gear.

A Day Wasted?

2007-09-24T20:43:00.000-07:00

Well, I certainly hope not. Most of my day was spent waiting for an incoming paycheque, which would enable me to go to Princess Auto and pick up a desoldering kit and a few other knick-knacks. Unfortunately for me, I couldn't find a desoldering kit, so I was kinda screwed. Since I can't really move forward very much in terms of my vivisection, I decided to do some research instead.

During my crit session with Patrick, he showed me some alternate plans for making a crystal radio.

Simple Crystal Radio

FM Crystal Radio

The FM Crystal radio is intriguing because I thought, as the blog says in the intro, that and FM crystal radio was impossible to make. The fact that it can be made is interesting because it means that I can use both AM and FM radio waves to construct my radio wave power system. Well, hopefully anyway.

Fancy Crystal Radio

This is the original crystal radio that I found. I think it looks really amazing, and I still want to build one. I think that I will, but I might make the one that's simpler first, so that I can learn a bit more before I rush headlong into building a complex radio set. However, if I do make this kind of radio, I want to use a clear panel on the front instead of a black one so that you can see all the guts while it's working. Really, isn't it just more interesting that way?

Short Wave Radio Kit

After reading the Shortwave Uberthread on the General Bullshit forums on Something Awful, I am very interested in what I can find scanning around the short wave radio frequencies. For only 30 bucks, it's not a bad deal, so I think I'll be ordering one up right away.

AM Transmitter for Your i-Pod

This one is really cool because I am also very interested in creating radio waves. This one can be made to transmit AM radio waves to about a block away, which is fairly decent for such a small unit. I think I'd like to make something like this and then stick it in an Altoids tin and carry it around with me, or use it in the car. Illegal? Yes. Fun? Definitely.

Vivisection Mk. II: Radiola

2007-09-24T08:33:00.000-07:00

The patient is alive once again!

After disconnecting the solder joints I made yesterday and breaking out my jumper wires, I was able to determine the reason for my short that I was having trouble with yesterday. There were originally three black wires going to the power supply, and even though I had made a drawing detailing where they should connect, I still managed to switch two around, resulting in my short. Once I figured out where the sticky wicket was, I fixed the power supply and my radio came back to life.

The next step, then was to crack open the case a little further so that I could get at the speaker. That was simple enough, and the speaker came out pretty easily. A couple of snips and cuts later and I had splayed out the speaker from the rest of the radio.

Now that I had the speaker out, it was time for some other fun. I decided that I would tackle the main piece of hardware: the tuner. On the front of the circuit board, I pried off the metal dial and was then able to get the tuner loose.
This is a view of the tuner with the metal dial taken off. The phillips head screw in the center connects to the actual resistor responsible for getting a signal. When you turn the tuning knob at the top of the radio, all it does is wind or unwind a string that was connected to this mechanism, causing it to turn and tune in on your station. It's pretty ingenious, I think, and very simple, too.

The tuner mechanism, pictured above, was tough to remove, since it was connected to seven different things, including wires and resistors, but once it was loose, it was pretty simple to extend from the main body of the radio. It still works fine, but you lose quite a bit of fine control when you use your fingers instead of the actual tuner.

The odd thing about this tuner is that there are four screws on the top, which I assumed would enable me to open it up, but after playing with them for a bit, I found that they don't unscrew at all. If the radio is on, you can adjust the signal using these four screws. It was kind of disappointing that I never got into it, because I am curious, but I'm also glad because I'm sure if I did get in there it would end in disaster somehow.

And now for a little before and after!

Before: A sleek, elegant radio...
After: A crazy-ass concoction of wires and weirdness...

And Now For Something Completely Different!

2007-09-23T01:01:00.001-07:00

I found this a long time ago, but after our viewing of Motorhead's "Ace of Spades", I was reminded of this video. It's made by an electrical engineer who rigged up his house to flash his Christmas lights along to the tune of the Trans Siberian Orchestra's "Wizards of Winter". Awesome stuff, but it makes me wonder what his neighbours think of all of this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqExHV99iPQ
Enjoy the show!

Vivisection Day 1

2007-09-23T00:40:00.001-07:00

My lovely, extra old-school, 1950's-ish, 11 transistor TobiSonic radio is now in the midst of its vivisection operation. After making careful drawings of all its elevations, I finally was able to crack open this crazy thing and take a peek inside. I was shocked, but in a good way.

Inside my new radio was a veritable cornucopia of craziness. Transistors, capacitors, and thingamajiggers everywhere! Not to mention the silica packet and paper insert detailing how to put 4 AA batteries in series in order to create a proper 6 volt power source. The guts of this radio amaze me. It's not even a printed circuit board, it's a breadboard. You can even see small holes that haven't been used up. I'm pretty excited to get even further in there, but for now I'll have to wait.

After I finished being in awe of the craziness contained in our TobiSonic, I decided to take out the antenna and the power supply. The antenna came out fairly easily, and works with a simple gator clip attached to it. It seems like all you need is a piece of metal connected to the base of the antenna stand, because when I had only the gator clip attached, you could wave it around and have a distinct affect of the radio signal. Minutes of fun!

The next step was to fiddle with the power supply. First, I simply elongated the wires that hooked into the 9V battery supply. This worked well enough, so I decided to take apart the AC adapter/headphone jack piece and move that way from the main body.

The AC Adapter has proved to be a bit of a quandry. As it stands right now, the patient is flatlining. When I attach the battery to the power source, nothing in the radio works, but the battery gets extremely hot. It's just a short in the wire somewhere, but it's a fairly complex assembly, and there are 7 wires total going to it, so I have to suss out which one is the sticky wicket tomorrow morning, I suppose. It might not be working right now, but it'll be better tomorrow. It can't get any worse, I suppose.

Anyway, here's a fun picture of the whole things spread apart. Tomorrow I plan on tackling the speaker and tuning aparatuses.

And the winner is...

2007-09-20T20:41:00.000-07:00

The radios! Well, the old school radio in particular will be my subject for vivisection, which will commence tomorrow morning. My interest with the radios doesn't lie in simply receiving or transmitting the radio waves, but in generating power using radio waves.

I first became interested in the idea of harvesting radio waves when I was watching an old episode of Mythbusters(Number 24, to be exact). In the episode, Jamie and Adam, the protagonists of the show, were testing myths involving free energy. Most of the free energy devices claimed to be perpetual motion machines of some kind, but the one that harvested radio waves was the only one that was even remotely successful, although a little disappointing. Using a 100' antenna, Jamie and Adam were only able to get enough energy to be able to power a small watch LED screen.

I had some problems with this test when they did it, but I refuse to be one of those people who writes letters to TV shows expressing my nerdy disgust. The main problem was that they never made more than one device. If you made several of them and tuned them to various channels, you could hook them up in series and hopefully get a little bit more energy. They also never experimented with different kinds of antennae, instead opting to use a 100' insulated wire. Perhaps a smaller, more efficient antenna could be used. I don't know all about it yet, but I do have some ideas for experiments I'd like to try.

I do, however, have some resources to draw on in my quest for radio knowledge.

Something Awful Shortwave Radio Uberthread
An amazing post by a short wave radio enthusiast and dealer. It explains all kinds of things, from how to use a short wave radio to number stations. Very interesting, and probably worth checking out.

Radio Module
A project I found in Good Magazine by a designer named Carolina Pino. Her project is a homeless shelter made of cardboard and based on origami. The shelter can be folded up when the person wants to move, but the thing I found interesting was that the project included plans for a $30 two-way radio. The plans are located on this site, but I don't think I'll be using them, because you have to send the micro-controller to Pino's team to be programmed, and I think I can make something a little bit simpler.

Something a Little Bit Simpler
These are plans for an antique style crystal radio on instructables.com. The interesting thing about a crystal radio? No power source. The entire thing is powered solely by the radio waves it receives, and it's this type of device that I want to start my research with later on.

Interesting stuff for sure... For me, anyway.

It Begins!

2007-09-20T08:10:00.001-07:00

Studio begins today, and what have I got to show for it? Why crazy electronics and odd toys, of course. But what exactly do I have to vivisect?

Item number one is actually three in one! It's three clock radios, ranging from contemporary junk to stone age. The bottom clock radio is probably my best bet, since it only uses a nine volt power source, but the others might have some interesting gears and such to play with later.

The second item in my parade of oddity is a Fischer Price "CD Player". It runs on two double A batteries, plays Twinkle Twinkle Little Star ad nauseum when turned on, and when you try to eject the "CD" it sounds like pure death. This one will at the very least be filled with some cool gears and motors to play with.

The DJ Play Station is for the aspiring scratcher of the family. It plays four different beats at the touch of a button as well as four cheesy sound effects. The scratching functionality doesn't seem to work, but it does have two Piezo speakers and a volume control to mess around with.

This Polaroid camera was a bit of a heart-breaker, I have to say. I would have kept it for my greedy self if polaroid papers didn't cost so much money, but since they do, it's the vivisection table for this old camera. With an autofocus mechanism, as well as gears and other fun innards to shoot out polaroid pictures, this will certainly suffice. Plus, whoever heard of a size "J" battery?

This is probably the coolest of all of my finds at the Village of Value. This helicopter lights up, plays two sound effects (sirens and helicopter blades spinning), and records and plays a short sound clip. It's all kinds of fun, and it looks bad ass.

So, that's what I've got to rip apart, destroy, and otherwise play with on my first day of the Dedale Studio. Wish me luck...