Projection Mapping with Interlocking Sculpture: Prototype Designs
Integrating sculpture and multi-digital processes has been my primary research this summer and I began with sketching out designs for my chandeliers. These chandeliers are inspired by sun patterns throughout the day as the final sculpture will emulate sun rays through a light installation with digital projectors.
I began with the pattern of Solar Noon, also known as the point in which the sun is highest in the sky during the day. I will complete a plexiglass sculpture that is reminiscent of sun rays shining and reflecting in a light-controlled installation space, creating an immersive atmosphere for my audience to experience. I’m close to the finished piece as I’ve begun prototyping for the chandeliers in question through the use of cardboard in order to move onto the final material of plexiglass.
The prototyping stage is crucial to the final design of the chandelier as plexiglass is a material that is costly, therefore it’s important to get the design correct on the first cut. Cardboard is a cheaper alternative that lends itself to many attempts. It’s here where I’ve been perfecting the designs and editing them through test runs that will be more fulfilling once a final plexiglass design is rendered. The chandelier is made up of six arms (three pairs) with a central structure that allows arm designs to be switched out at will. Solar flares are the inspiration for many of the designs, but the point of the day at which they’re represented (Solar Noon, Sun Rise, Sun Set) determines the design of the primary arms of that sculpture.
In my video below, I explain my process and my journey with the Digital Scholarship throughout the summer. It features video of the laser cutting process, specifically of the cardboard prototype cut-outs, as well as one of the cardboard chandeliers as it’s finished design. The next step is to print a plexiglass version of this on the laser cutter and then to prepare them for the projection mapping phase.
Workshop: A Creativity Podcast Post #2
As I write this I have about a week left in the Digital Scholarship Fellowship. I am grateful for this time and space to work on my podcast Workshop: Writing in Progress. It has been a great learning experience to go from an idea to an actual thing that exists. Since this project involves the creation of a podcast and relies on the collaboration of other artists I break down my learnings into two primary buckets: podcast design and podcast logistics.
Podcast design can be best described as what the podcast was actually going to be? What would be the format? What would be the tone? And how can I make each episode exciting and unique to the two guests while also establishing a consistent experience between episodes? This last factor became the focus of the work of my fellowship. I had figured out a format that the show would follow, but how to direct the conversation between creative writers who might have drastically different processes became a challenge.
About two weeks into the fellowship, I realized that I could create consistency between episodes by standardizing some of the questions I asked my guests. Many interview and discussion shows have a “signature” question and I began to brainstorm mine. The question I landed on was “what prompts you to write?” This question felt simple yet integral to the focus of the show. Since Workshop askes writers to write on a theme or a “writing prompt”, the question takes the parameters of a traditional writing prompt and turns it on its head. It is a question that asks the guests What inspires you? What motivates you? What interests you? As writers grow in their practice, they move away from the traditional writing prompts of introductory creative writing classes, but they are still prompted by the world and I wanted them to talk about that.
The second piece of the podcast I had to wrestle with was podcast logistics. This meant that I had to develop a methodology and lifecycle for how an episode is recorded, edited, produced, and published. Since I have yet to publish any episodes, I had to determine the frequency of a release schedule. Since I am a full-time student with a final year of class, I decided that could feasibly release episodes once a month. This meant that I had to figure out a production lifecycle that could accommodate such a timeline.
The biggest challenge to this was scheduling guests. Traditional interview shows needed only a guest, but this show required having two guests to compare and contrast their writing. Furthermore, the guests needed to bring a piece of writing to the recording which meant that I needed to build in time between when they are scheduled and when we record to give them ample time to write.
Over this 8 week fellowship my goal was to record and produce 2 complete episodes, unfortunately all I was able to do was to record two episodes. I only had enough time to edit one of the two recordings. I still have much to learn when it comes to the logistical side of this project, but I’m excited to iron out the wrinkles as I continue working.
Workshop: A Creativity Podcast – Post #1
I used to love NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Her smooth calming voice paired with her insightful questions motivated me on multiple occasions to purchase the book of her guest, be it Ocean Vuong’s poetry collection about grief after his mother’s death or Michael Pollan’s tome on psychedelic drug treatments.
But ever since starting my MFA in Creative Nonfiction here at the University of Iowa, interview shows like Fresh Air have started to feel flat. Don’t get me wrong, Terry Gross is still amazing and her conversations are still interesting, but her chats with her guests do not deliver the insights I am looking for. I have the urge to want to know “how” these amazing writers write what they write but an 45-minute to 1 hour long conversation can never get to the heart of a writer’s process, how exactly they put pen to paper and arrange the ink in the way that they do.
Writing to non-writers seems like a magical creative process. One moment there aren’t words and the next moment there are. But like any craft there is process and technique and tools that many of us use to help us say the things we want to say. The thing that I have learned here at Iowa with my cadre of amazing classmates is that the process varies widely from writer to writer. I have only been able to witness this diversity in approach after reading the work in progress, the throwaway writing exercises, and the pressureless free-writes of my friends.
During this Digital Studio Summer Fellowship, I am working on a podcast that tries to demystify how writers write. The show brings on two guests and invites them to write on a single prompt, for example “The feeling of home”. There are no expectations of aesthetic, structure, voice, or even genre. Over the hour-long episode, each writer will read their work and explain their thought process behind the decisions that they make. We will hear from writers who purely write by feel and instinct and from writers who are highly strategic and structural.
This podcast is an attempt at hybridity. It brings together art and process into the same space. Come to hear a writer read their work and stay for the conversation. The two writers along with me will react to the pieces, and through a casual conversation highlight the similarities and differences between the two guests’ processes.
As I start this project, I am thinking a lot about how to keep the conversation natural and welcoming. The general institution of creative writing MFAs have developed a focus on critique and feedback, but this podcast is meant to celebrate the fact that there’s no right way to write. The process can be fraught and infuriating enough, perhaps talking about it will help?
Blog Post 2: Susa Imports
When I first began this fellowship I had hoped that this post would be one of celebration, one that highlighted the fact that I was finished with my Omeka project. Unfortunately that is not the case. I’m not finished, and I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t reach my initial goal. I started with the idea of finishing the 650 object entries, filling in the nearly 40 different fields in a basic entry, and nearly 60 in a longer entry. My first mistake was I underestimated how long this would take. In the video walkthrough I have provided, I went through a typical entry, and this took, even as a recap, nearly 8 minutes for an entry. On average each entry took between 5-10 minutes. This adds up, and likely contributed to me getting further behind than I anticipated.
Video Walkthrough: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCGu77h9_KY
The second mistake was that I did not expect the nearly 300-400 additional objects I’d have to catalogue in addition to my original entries. Apparently, when I first made my list of objects I neglected these additional entries, or they have been added to the Louvre since my initial list. I expected a few entries to be added since I had to manually go through nearly 31,000 objects in the Louvre catalogue, which I did again at the start of the project. This time I also didn’t consider as part of the project and should have. The other thing I did, that likely contributed to me not getting as far into the project as I had anticipated was related to the fact that I spent a considerable amount of time going initially going through the entries and making their accession numbers were tagged to facilitate easier checking off of the entries off my list. I completed this within the first couple weeks of the summer, thinking I’d prepared myself for what was to come. It took time, but it was necessary and worth the extra time in the end as it took only a few seconds to see if I had already entered the various objects.
I made great progress considering all of this, but I still have a lot of work to do to finish, especially when it comes to the entries regarding tablets which I saved for last because of their lengthy and specific answers, some of which I will have to look at special databases for. Considering I completed almost all other entries, this is huge progress, even if some of the blanks can only be filled after further research. I’m happy with the progress that was made, the amount of work I put into this project was substantial and should not be discounted. Often the field forgets about data entry processes, and the time and energy it takes to complete these as part of a digital project. I surely underestimated the time so I imagine many people do. But it’s important work that needs to be done, and unfortunate as it is that it isn’t all fun and games, I did get a better handle on my objects and the collection as a whole.
COINTELSHOW 2.0: The public private partnership – a video teaser
Measuring Moral Judgment Project Reflection
This summer I have been working on a project that will test the validity of a social psychological theory in measuring human moral judgment. To facilitate my research project, I began by constructing a survey that was posted on Amazon Mechanical Turk to pilot the test. My survey presented participants with moral transgressions, where they were asked to rate the stimulus on a scale from -5 (Extremely morally wrong) to +5 (Extremely morally right) on how morally wrong or right they find the action. Through the course of my fellowship, I learned a lot about what makes a strong online survey and areas that need to be carefully considered when collecting data through online surveys. This experience taught me a lot, not only about methods, survey design, and online data collection, but also about time management, flexibility in project planning, and how to respond to unexpected challenges and hurdles.
Over the next few weeks, I plan to turn my attention to practicing other important skills for facilitating digital scholarship. Firstly, I plan to find creative and compelling ways to visualize my data to best share my research findings. This is a skill that I believe will assist my research presentation now, but also be critical to my success in research throughout my career. I also want to spend time creating a narrative for my research that can be shared with specialists and non-specialists, alike. This has been one of the bigger challenges of the current project because the theory that I am testing is very complicated and not intuitive to understand. This is the most technical project I have completed in my career, so far. In trying to explain my project to others, I have struggled to communicate effectively. I believe that through compelling data visualization and reflecting on presentation and communication, the presentation for the fellowship will allow me to practice these very important skills of research communication.
For me, the studio fellowship has been a great opportunity to practice skills that will be crucial for me as I continue my career. In the future I plan to present this work at the American Sociological Association conference in late August. The dedicated research time and presentation practice will go a long way in my being ready for the presentation. After this, I plan to adapt this work into my Master’s Thesis and hopefully into a published academic paper.
Blog Post #2: Conspiracy Theories
This summer has allowed me to use my current skill set of basic text analysis while also improving on my flexibility and open-mindedness in research. While I have made progress on my research project, and accomplished many of the goals that I set out with at the beginning of the summer, I understand that there is still more work to be done.
Over the next few weeks, I will be working on displaying and showing my results. I have found the major themes of the misinformative tweets and found certain themes that are not as prominent. Certain themes, such as “anti-vaccine” and “government oppression” were prominent, while other themes such as “climate change isn’t real” were less prominent. Overall, I have found that there is a definitive relationship between time and prominence of other themes. However, there are a few themes that are also constant and consistent over time. I am excited to present these findings.
I have begun to use Tableau to generate the visualizations and will use that for the timeline as well. Because of my prior experience with Tableau, I only required a refresher course. Hopefully this data will be even more accessible to information seekers with the visualizations that I have created. I hope to place them on my personal website.
I have also begun to work on the paper component for this research. Discussing my findings and placing them within the context of current misinformation research will show the importance of viral misinformation. Furthermore, as we seek to identify how misinformation spreads, misinformative handles such as the one I used will prove invaluable. I am still unsure which platform to place the finished paper on (journal, open access archive, etc.) However, I would like to share the findings.
One major struggle was the medium I chose to use. Over the last year, Twitter as a platform has become harder to access without a verified account. Obtaining a verified account is also substantially more expensive than it was a year ago. As a result, although I was able to avoid a worst-case scenario of being unable to use any of the tweets or images, identifying and revisiting tweets online proved to be difficult. I chose to avoid certain tweets that contained only images with no context simply because it was so challenging to revisit the tweets (even with the Wayback machine.) However, this only affected a relatively small number of tweets, and I am still able to present text-only tweets as well as tweets that contained an image with a description.
Projection Mapping with Interlocking Sculpture: A Start
Within my current graduate research I employ light and shadow in immersive installations meant to captivate my audience in a world of my design. Throughout my degree I’ve implemented programs that utilize technical design and execute it in interesting interconnective ways. My primary material has been cardboard due to its democratic nature, but in the past I’ve used plexiglass as an entryway to having my sculpture interact with the environment that surrounds it.
This summer I intend to continue my exploration of digital methods of producing art using AutoCad as the primary method of design and construction towards an interlocking piece. My goal for this digital fellowship is to combine sculpture with projection mapping through the execution of a chandelier. I’ve implemented chandeliers and light previously within my research, but never to this degree. Through projection mapping in a program called Isadora, I will map out the structure of my interlocking sculptural designs and project directly onto the surfaces in a three-dimensional manner. Isadora is a projection mapping program that has a multitude of functions which can produce installations that encapsulate the audience in its’ ambience.
Over the past few weeks of the Fellowship, I have begun to design the ‘arms’ that will make up the main body of my chandeliers. It’s pertinent to create a fully realized prototype before moving onto the final piece when it comes to interlocking sculpture, and my first prototypes will be of cardboard construction. The center structure of each sculpture will remain constant. In this way, the aesthetics of each arm may change, but their connective design remains the same throughout.
I’ve also been exploring Isadora in small ways in order to more familiarize myself with the program. Projection mapping on cardboard is interesting in and of itself, and my practice has led me to think that I may be able to have multiple chandeliers within my finished product that coincide with my plexiglass designs. As I continue working on this project, I will begin to tweak my designs based on the printed cardboard prototypes. From there I will be able to begin the final design with plexiglass, and I will be able to explore projection mapping on the prototypes themselves with the video I’m shooting that captures different moments of the day and how the sun is affecting the environment around me.
Milling About
When the first generation of “mill girls,” Yankee farmers’ daughters, arrived in New England’s textile factories in the early 19th-century, they were not completely sure what they would encounter or how much work they would have to do. Two hundred years later as I begin to collect and organize an archive of their writings, I imagine we share similar feelings: uncertainty, anxiety, excitement, and anticipation.
The female operatives had aspirations that extended far beyond the factory walls. For many, the mill served as a launching point where they could pursue other careers or earn extra money to set aside for a future marriage. Many joined “improvement societies,” typically church-sponsored groups that encouraged them to write and discuss literature. Emerging out of one of these societies, the operatives produced a magazine dedicated to their writings: The Lowell Offering. The Offering ran from 1840-45 and quickly came under the editorial control of two operatives: Harriet Farley and Harriot Curtis. Factory owners publicized the magazine, using it to showcase the refinement and education of their workers. Non-mill residents like Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Harriet Martineau (the 19th-century is lousy with Harriets), were impressed by the young women’s literary productions.
The pages of the offering are filled with poems, essays, short stories, editorials, and songs that demonstrate the factory workers’ familiarity with existing popular writing, occasionally crediting their inspiration, and more importantly, their creative experimentation, subverting generic formulas. These women were written about so often, it can be difficult to uncover their own thoughts. Even in discussing the Offering, a lot of time is spent addressing Dickens’s response or attempting to figure out whether the magazine was mill propaganda, and not enough time is spent reading the words of the workers themselves.
My goal this summer is to create an accessible archive of The Lowell Offering and encourage visitors to explore the rich material produced by this remarkable group of women. As I dive into the texts, it is becoming increasingly clear that there are many aspects I failed to consider. I’m currently cataloging and tagging each of the entries in the Offering’s 5-year run, but the variety is simply incredible. I did not expect “death” and “grief” to appear so frequently in a magazine so frequently accused of presenting mill work in too rosy a light. I’m also busy trying to connect authors with their pen names; fortunately, Harriet Hanson Robinson (that’s the fourth Harriet, if you’re counting) produced a key! UNfortunately, some operatives used multiple pen names and some even used the same pen name as another operative! A task I thought would take me at most a long weekend is taking significantly more time. It is challenging, but necessary to create a complete picture of these operatives’ writings.