from Nairn today

the carpet at my scotland guest house

workshops in scotland

so the fist workshops have been postponed a few days at least, possibly a week?, but i still don't know when i'm going. which is frustrating, but i've been asking and the answer i get is that there are still things being worked out with the schools, and the woman organizing this didn't get back from christmas/new year break until the middle of last week. but i guess this is god because i get some more time to work out what it is i'm doing in more detail.

i wanted to have more time to work on this while visiting my dad for a week, but i ended up having to drive him around to the doctor and to physical therapy and to get food and to help him get dressed and take care of him and all, which was more than i thought i'd have to do, but, then, i guess shoulder surgery is rough and charlotte takes an obscene amount of time to drive around.

maybe i should be less optimistic.
it's hard, though.

i have the gogo boards thanks to roger and michael. i'm ordering the motors today... should be here soon. there are a lot of materials leftover from the first scotland workshops last may... like safety goggles and pliers and soldering irons and glue guns and wire. but we'll need more wire and more craft materials.

thoughts from carolina

while sitting around here reading polanyi and trying to figure out just exactly what i need to do in scotland, there's this TV that is on mostly constantly, which is such a change for me. dad and daryl both watch hgtv and the food network and diy stuff. and although i'm fond of diy stuff, i always wonder why these shows irk me so much. i mean... it's refreshing to see a woman with a drill. but, still. and suddenly it dawned on me exactly why i don't like these shows.

+ the tone of the voice gets to me: "what _i_ like to do..." "you could do this..."
+ their projects are usually a little uninspired
+ they seem so smug about how creative they are

but most of all

+ they show you how to do one particular thing, but don't go into the more basic level of how they came up with this to begin with or how to innovate your own.

because what if i don't want to make a foot stool that's held up by cowboy boots? but the method of drilling/attaching legs was useful for me to know. i just shudder to think that there are hundreds of these foot stools now all over the US looking exactly the same and made by people who think this footstool will make them "B-Original". and then i was thinking about instructables, which, yes, tend to also just show how to do one problem. but i think that having the forum/conversation to ask questions is good for building up your own ideas. sure, replicating something you've seen is good to learn techniques... but at some point, if replication is all you're doing, is it really worth it? what really makes it your own? what if i don't care about cowboy boots or tennis rackets? how do i get from these shows things like, how do you know that you need an 11/64" drill bit with those screws to pre-drill? how do you know you need to notch things? how do you know what tools to use? how do you know what screws? etc. and at some point, the only way to get this knowledge is to either ask someone when you're having trouble or to have it dawn on you one day when you're trying to build something of your own design.

sigh.
or maybe it really just is their smug tones of voice.

scotland

ok. so my first workshops are the year are scheduled to be at the end of january in scotland. the details are not quite worked out 100%, but i think the rough plan is that i'd fly to scotland on the 20th, work with the teachers for a couple of days so they can have some hands-on experience, after that, work with the students for a longer period of time. after that, there's a couple of days i would need to do the youth challenge judging. and then i'd meet with the teachers again before i left to get their thoughts/reflections on the workshops and prepare with them to continue on with the work while i'm gone.

i think it's crucial to work with the teachers first because of the hands-on experience they'll get. i think it will help them help me in the workshops and i also think it would be good to get their opinions/reflections/thoughts on the process. and it will help them build up their confidence and maybe encourage them to carry on while i'm gone. i think maybe something similar to the workshop in costa rica -- two days or possibly three working on one project. introduce the gogo board and sensing. show them my work, ganson's work, maybe some other work if i can find it (tinguely? others? previous workshops' work?)

for the kids, i'd want to give them a preliminary version of a kit. i don't know that i could have much of a resource booklet for them... but they'll have me, i guess. and i could definitely ask them what advice they'd consider useful to have. i need to flesh out the kit contents a bit, still. i also need to make the gear makers, which i can make when i get back to boston. as for themes... um... well. so far it's been nature and dancing. but i don't know. i'd like to brainstorm a list of themes that might be good for this. hopefully i'll have enough time for them to delve deeply. i want to ask them questions about their backgrounds and interests. have they ever built anything before? have they ever repaired anything? what do they want to do in the future? what do they like? hopefully i'll have a good gender distribution in the group(s).

for the follow-up with the teachers, i want to get their opinions on the kids' progress as well as what they themselves learned. maybe get ideas for the next workshop and things that they could work on while i'm gone.

that's still not fleshed out enough. but things i should work on:
1) getting kits together
+ what's in a kit?
+ what am i bringing vs. what am i getting there?
+ how much wire per person?
+ rough resource booklet with drawings of mechanisms
+ mechanism examples?
+ examples of sculptures

2) figuring out travel plans
+ waiting on laura dingwall
+ need to coordinate with jacqueline for documentation

3) camera from david???

why wire v.10

another section of my proposal based off of the why wire post from before. edited many times.

WHY WIRE
From a young age, I have been surrounded by wire. At first, I used wire for practical things around the farm, which led me to make wire jewelry and even small sculptures. When I was in my second undergraduate year at MIT, I saw Arthur Ganson's exhibit at the MIT Museum and was fascinated by the machines I saw there: here were materials I knew and understood being used in novel ways. I was so inspired by seeing this that I decided to start building mechanical wire sculptures of my own. I found that it was a great way to merge wire and the machines in which I was interested. As a result of this exposure, I constructed a gyroscopic kinetic sculpture for my undergraduate thesis in mechanical engineering as a way to build up my own physical intuition. With the Future of Learning Group, I decided to explore the use of wire as a construction material, for I believe it has many benefits that other materials or building kits may not have, especially for people who might otherwise not find these means accessible.
Fixed materials such as LEGO are useful because they are standard, clasp together well, and have spacing that facilitates gearing. They are popular because one does not have to think deeply to use them; their shape informs the builder how to construct with them. The thinking on the part of the designer is limited to how to brace structures and how to incorporate the gear spacings and parts provided in the kit. The size and shape of what one can build with LEGO is for the most part limited to small and rectangular objects. Moreover, the cost of LEGO is prohibitive in most school settings, particularly in the developing world. Working with wire not only loosens the cost constraint but, more importantly, removes the constraints on size and shape, while adding an opportunity for the builder to explore mechanical and structural design in a new and more creative way.
Flexibility is wire's primary advantage as a material; wire provides physical flexibility, flexibility of the final form and scale, and flexibility in terms of the imagination of the designer to be free build what he or she can imagine. The physical flexibility of wire provides limitations for the designer to work around, which results in every aspect of the machine being considered and constructed by the designer, from gears to connections to axles to size to the more purely aesthetic considerations. This includes incorporation of found objects and craft materials. If the builder does not understand the material's limitations and take them into consideration when designing, the structure might fail. Wire's physical flexibility is also important because of the trial and error of mechanism design it allows: the final design can be tweaked until the mechanism functions (at least, within limits of bending the wire to fatigue). Another affordance of the flexibility is that the resulting kit can also be used in places where it is not easy to afford LEGOs or to precision-engineer machines, such as developing nations, rural areas, or even just regular schools anywhere in the world.
The physical flexibility of wire allows for creating curves, a large range of scale, and the inclusion of found and scavenged objects, thus resulting in flexibility of the final design. Such flexibility gives the builder freedom to come up with a project that they personally care about and expressed in terms they select themselves. Rather than being forced into particular expressions by the limitations of the material, wire provides an underlying syntax adaptable to the epistemological and aesthetic stance of the designer. This connection provides an entry point for people who may not otherwise be interested in using and thus acquiring these concepts. As a feel for the wire is developed, prototyping a new design becomes more like, as Alexander Calder put it, “three-dimensional line drawing.”1 In the end, to make a sculpture work and to make it aesthetically pleasing, one must learn and apply principles of mechanical engineering, physics, and mathematics. The proof of learning is in successful design and construction as well as in the ability to articulate the ideas in artifacts and ideas.

thesis proposal intro

in case anyone was wondering where the hell i went for a while, i was caught up in writing my thesis proposal. i figured that since i spent so much time on it, it would be good to put it here piece by piece. so here is the intro:

INTRO
For my thesis I will create and study a more diverse construction toolkit that is to be used for building a wider variety of interactive computational artifacts than what currently exists. Rather than being fully formed, the new toolkit incorporates wire and other found and flexible materials to expand the possibilities for expression and to encourage the designer to learn principles of mechanical and structural design in order to use them. Through using this kit in a workshop setting, I will explore how flexible construction materials enable deeper exploration, learning, and comprehension about key ideas in mechanics, engineering, physics, and mathematics. I will also examine how flexible materials can expand the genre of computational constructions and how such an expansion potentially attracts a more diverse population to creative work in engineering and science.
The basic concept of learning through constructing is that by having to confront the challenge of making something function in the world as desired by the builder, one needs to acquire knowledge about the underlying principles. While the use of robotic materials for understanding control, systems, and feedback has been explored, the limitations of existing pre-fabricated construction kits and materials do not enable the same understanding for principles of mechanical and structural engineering. By incorporating wire and other flexible materials, one changes the constraints on what can be built, thus enabling not only a different kind of expression and creativity, but also demanding that the learner begin to understand and appreciate the properties of the materials, the geometries, and the underlying principles of mechanical and structural design. Some examples of these principles include using triangles to build truss structures, changing geometry to increase bending stiffness, and converting the motion of a motor to the final desired motion.
In working with children, I will use the creation of interactive kinetic sculptures as a means to connect with a population that might otherwise not be engaged with learning mechanical, structural, geometric, mathematic, and scientific concepts. My hope is that the open-endedness of the toolkit will provide an opportunity for the builder to use their own interests to engage with and explore new realms of knowledge.
This thesis will present the new toolkit, explore how the toolkit facilitates learning of key principles in mechanical engineering, study how children learn the underlying principles and put them into practice, and study whether new populations change their points of view about engineering and science.

random thought

while reading john maeda's blog this morning, i came across this statement.

Understanding and "listening" to one's materials is a critical factor to finding the most natural form of expression for a set of given constraints.

which was expanded to the original "fifth law of simplicity."

A material's failure to comply to a specific application
provides indication that its more natural usage lies elsewhere.


i couldn't agree more.
and i think there's something there with the "set of given constraints"
but how do you find those constraints?
how do you physically and intuitively understand?
how can we, as teachers, help others learn these constraints?
how can we, as learners, always "hear" the materials?

answering david's question: why wire?

why wire? good question. and i guess one i haven't answered yet quite fully.

i'd be lying if i said that my choice of wire is completely objective. had i not had the experiences with making chainmail and jewelry and little wire figures and helping dad build fences, etc, i probably would not have been as struck to make things after seeing arthur ganson's stuff. but because wire was a material i was already comfortable wtih and had around, somehow it seemed more accessible. i didn't sit around and ponder the plusses and minuses of the material. it was the material i had and was the material i understood. so let me just admit the subjectivity of my decision to begin with.

but, really, nothing in life is truly objective. we, as humans, don't have enough time to sit around and fully think out every possibility. our choices are determined by our past choices and current comforts. that being said, after working with wire as much as i have, i've come to some realizations as to why it's a great material to build mechanisms/sculptures with. although maybe my decision to come to wire wasn't overly objective, perhaps my thoughts as to why it's a good material can be separated from that.

first off, flexibility... physical flexibility. especially when trying to feel out a new idea, flexibility is important. the mechanisms can be tweaked to get the desired result. once you get a feel for the wire, you can prototype new things quickly and see how it works and then work on a more finished version. the flexibility allows for higher tolerances, so less precision is necessary when making a mechanism. this is good because it's not really possible to precision engineer things in some places. the flexibility allows for creating curves. you're not just limited to right angles and straight lines. also, the physical flexibility provides a very material constraint to building structures. if you don't understand the material or think about the geometries, your structure might fail. this provides insight into why triangles might be a good geometry. also, thickness being important to prevent bending. and thinking about things like how much weight can this hold. etc. (that last bit was rambling, but maybe you still get my point?)

second, flexibility in what you can make with it. not just limited to one scale. can make really small delicate things or larger things. in some ways, much less limited than working with legos or k'nex or something of that ilk. but by the fact that you have to make everything, it's limiting in a different way. also it allows for the integration of found/scavenged parts more readily than other building materials. basically, if you have the scaveneged parts, you can find some way with wire to hold them in place. sometimes they're not the most elegant solutions, but it is sufficient and aids in the prototyping/building/design process.

third, cost and availability. it's generally available everywhere for not too much money. places like africa and south america have a rich tradition of making toys and art out of found objects. particularly if an angle for learning is taken, this could be advantageous. here's one place where people in developing nations might have a leg up over developed ones. or rural vs. urban. and if people are connected via computers ($100 laptop?) maybe this will allow for an influx of ideas into places where ideas often just leave? but back to cost... a lot of schools can't afford lego robotics. and instead of sitting around wishing they had these lego kits, maybe a way to get the same ideas across with cheaper materials (at a bit of a time cost) is a worthwhile solution.

other random thoughts: you can't make anything too precise and as a result might be more likely to experiment? (analogous to the thought that sometimes it's good to draw with your wrong hand or without looking at the paper.) drawing in 3-D. actually making the parts vs. using provided parts.

hrm. yeah. those are my thoughts for now. maybe i have more... i'll add them when they come.

answering glorianna's questions: personal story

"OK now go into what you have discovered about the physical world by building something.... tell a very specific story about making your giraffe -- what did you have to start, how did your understanding change?"

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oh boy. Don't I already talk about this enough? ;) Anyway. Maybe I'll tell several stories. Life is all about stories.

+Giraffe
I needed a demo and I needed it bad. I had one week. I had wire. And I had whatever was around me at the lab to use because I didn't really want to waste my time searching for parts and waiting for them to arrive when I could be using that time building. I only knew one thing: the theme was "dance." One afternoon, I sat down with one of my friends and brainstormed about different objects/animals dancing. I decided that I really liked the idea of a giraffe, mainly due to the fact that I really like the elegand awkwardness of the giraffe. And I really like the way their eyes look so gentle. So I set out to make a wire giraffe that danced. I went through a few different design ideas. I knew I wanted to use a spring for the giraffe's neck so it would wobble. Other than that, I knew I wanted to use a wire gear a la Arthur Ganson. I asked Roger if we had any springs lying around and he handed me that one. I asked Roger if we had any motors, and he gave me that motor... a simple DC motor with a max output of Not Very Fast. I decided upon making a crank rocker and having the giraffe rock back and forth, with its neck swaying extra. Since we had a laser cutter with lots of spare acrylic around, I decided to make the base out of acrylic. I wanted the part that the giraffe was on to be green like grass but all they had was this glass green color. And I wanted the rest of it to be clear, but all they had was black. hrm. I went with what I had. I underestimated the amount of gearing down that a worm gear to a spur gear creates, and as a result, ended up with a giraffe that doesn't rock as quickly as I'd like, even when the motor is at full speed. For the programming of the Gogo board, we thought it would be nice to have some sort of differential for the speed. So we ended up settling on two touch sensors that the faster you could run on them, the faster the motor went. All that was left was to have a base for it. Again... I had wire and one day left, so I decided to wrap wire around until it was stable enough to support the giraffe and its base. I had used this technique before when making little wire figures. It was a fun demonstration of principle, but I think I could do better. The design was heavily determined by my previous experience (mostly none) and by the materials I had readily available (in and around my office).

+my graduation hat
This all started because I wanted to have a thinking cap... a crank on the left side of my head. So I made a crank to a worm gear to a spur gear, again using the same basic beginnings that I'd used on the giraffe, but in a different context. Instead of going to a horizontal rocker, I went more for a swing version with a little guy sitting on a swing in a graduation hat. I wanted it also to have a lightbulb on it. Since I had cleared out the insides of a lightbulb earlier so I could use the lightbulb as a small flower vase, I had this lightbulb lying around. So I put a fake filament inside it. And just for geeking's sake, I made the hat spell MIT. Anyway. Again, this design was heavily determined by the materials I had available... only wire and a bit of brass and some aluminum can from the energy drink I was having while staying up late to make this. All tooling was done using pliers, a dremel, and a knife, which is what I had in my office. It sounds unglamourous to say this, but I'm trying to be honest here. Also, the design was unplanned from the beginning; I simply made it up as I went. Luckily this worked, and I think I ended up with a crank rocker of a bit more simple elegance than the giraffe. I want to make another one for my next graduation. This time more elaborate. But I would be unable to do that had I not had the experience of dealing with this first hat.

+wire man with sword
I talked about this a bit in my entry (below) about my meeting with Arthur Ganson. This is the design that is most driven by a strong idea of what the motion and overall feel should look like. The design process is getting easier but still I find that I fight a bit. Intuition is getting better as to how to get wire to react how I want. I find that I appreciate making arbitrary limitations on the design process (such as using only found/cheap materials) because it limits my vision to a manageable chunk.


Anyway. What does all of this have in common? There was a lot of learning between the giraffe and the man, even though the man isn't done. The man is closer to my original concept, whereas I find the giraffe to be a bit gauche and inelegant at times and not quite what I had wanted. The graduation hat was an important step to learning how to make more elegant things quicker. After finishing the man, I'm sure the next things I attempt will be quicker and even closer to my original design thoughts. My intuition about what is feasible has started to affect what my design is.

Having limitations is nice because it gives me a smaller area to explore more fully and more confidently. I even set limitations in my drawing, even though I feel that's the area in my life that I have the most control/understanding. Setting limitations allows me to push the boundaries of those limits, to explore freely. And through examining the limits, I learn when certain techniques might be useful, and I might also pick up some physical knowledge that I otherwise would not have gained. For example, I've lately been drawing quite regularly with either my left hand (I'm right handed) or by not looking at the page. Arbitrary limitations. By drawing with my left hand, I'm more aware of the feeling of the pen on the paper. And from the beginning I usually just concede that the drawing will have a certain lack of control, which allows me freedom to explore the feeling of the pen on the paper. By drawing without looking at the paper, I've been exploring the link of the line I make to the line my eye makes as it follows around the object. And as a result, I become aware of the link between my eye and my hand.

answering glorianna's questions: imagination

I can't separate myself from my experience; I am my experience. My experience is leading me by my nose... sure. So maybe instead of trying to appear objective, I should be blatantly subjective. Glorianna's comments I think are quite right. And I think her process may be a better suggestion than "give me the first page."

So again. Please be patient. I'm not a writer. In fact, I find dealing with words overly cumbersome at times. Maybe it would be fair to say that this thesis will end up with me examining my thought process just as much (if not more) as I want to explore others' thought processes.

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imagination
+ what do I want to make?
+ what can I make with these materials?
+ what makes me want to build something so badly that I scavenge?
+ what if I have a kit/materials but no technique?

Sometimes as an artist, I feel that the overwhelming pressure is to be "new," to be "unique," to be "cutting-edge" and all that. If someone can look at your work and name your influences, somehow it makes you less of an "artist." There's this idea that permeates -- the idea that the artist is a lone genius living in the wilderness and that one day inspiration, a muse, comes down and the artist creates. No artist lives in complete isolation. Ideas don't come from nowhere. What makes something unique is not so much that the techniques are radically new, but maybe more that the things have never been put together in that order before. What goes for art in this case also goes for design to some degree. People want designs to be "innovative." Following from the conversation over dinner at sponsor week, perhaps innovation comes from viewing the problem in a unique way. Hm. I'm a little off topic now.

Anyway. I think the first two questions fall into the same answer... the first step is usually immitating what's around you. There's a lot you can understand about something by observing an object and interacting with it. But when you try to build your own version, you realize (more) why the design is how it is. Especially when you are able to try alternative designs and see how they may work differently or may not work at all. A good example I can think of this is truss structures. If simply observing a truss structure, it may not seem obvious why there are all these triangles around, but if you try to build something that is only squares (for example), you soon find that it fails. I had this experience as a kid. Cylinders/columns are also another good example. It's easy to build paper versions of different extruded shapes, and simply placing the same weight on the top, you can see which is stronger. And it's this gut intuition that matters... not knowing all the reasons like... well... the mass is a certain distance from the neutral axis and thus has a large moment of (bending) inertia blah blah blah mechE stuff that I learned in 2.001.

So maybe you want to make something that's familiar to you. And the perceived affordances of the materials will depend on your prior experience with those materials. You're more likely to use a material as you've seen it used.

The third question is harder. What makes you want to build something so much you want to scavenge parts? Oh man. Well. I guess I'm a strange person to ask about this; I make things compulsively/obsessively. I was just telling someone the other day that me drawing wasn't a question. In some ways my compulsion to draw exists beyond me "enjoying it"... I MUST do it. And if I didn't have my familiar materials to do it with, I would come up with some way to do it... in the sand, make my own paper, make my own glue, burn a piece of wood to use as charcoal, use hairspray as fixative, etc. I've actually done quite a few of those when I've been in situations where I want to make something and I don't quite have all the necessary materials. I think the simplest answer to this question is the idea that making something might have a personal, emotional meaning to you. "A cidade que a gente quer" (the city that we want) is a good example. This desire is something the student needs to bring. No amount of cajoling by the teacher can force a student to care. So if this is given by them, they'll be working on something they care about, and will therefore be more involved.

At least, this is my own personal experience. I've found that if I don't care about what I'm working on, it's damn near impossible to get me to do it. But if I care about it, I'm fixated on it until the end. And the things I care about end up with better results. And vice versa. (I was once often told about my highschool english papers that I write well, but uninspired.)

So for the last question... What if I have a kit but no technique? Hm. Good question. This is part of the reason I think the kit should go along with a small booklet. The contents of this booklet are up for debate. Perhaps the contents could emerge from my experiences with what the people who interact with this kit want? If I find that people have trouble starting here or going there, perhaps instead of telling them what to do, I could provide helpful questions to ask yourself? Maybe ideally, there'd be an online community of people using these kits and sharing their experiences with others.

Maybe this is enough for this post for now.

oh the thesis

so here is a first stab at what could possibly be a thesis proposal page. plus a lot of parentheticals. plus a lot of blathering. a rough rough draft, i guess. a week later than i'd hoped. but starting is always the hardest part, you know? the first paragraph is a bit of a throw-away. i always have these, but i thought that including it here might help show my thought process. i kind of gave up a bit towards the end. i'm writing in a loud place. i feel restless. i keep getting interrupted. i have homework i need to get done. be that as it may, hey, i've started.

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I once heard it said that mathematicians do their best work in their 20s, physicists in their 30s, and that engineers just get better with age. While I can't vouch for the validity of the first two thirds of that statement, I believe some truth lies in the last third – engineers get better with age. But maybe this is too specific of a statement for my purposes. Let me generalize. First, age is not really the key factor, experience is; engineers get better with experience. Second, the term “engineer” shouldn't just apply to people with engineering degrees. Anyone who takes an idea and makes what they want with what they have avaible to them is performing the role of an engineer, be it mechanical, electrical, etc. Maybe in its most general form, the statement “engineers get better with age” turns into “people who make things become more able to do so the more experience they have.”
This is crap. I can't write.
There is a body of knowledge that exists beyond words, in a realm of pure experience. When dealing with the physical world, and in particular with mechanical and structural design, this ineffable, tacit knowledge is unavoidably present and thus must be knowingly addressed. Due to the inadequacies of language, this experience cannot be fully discussed through any traditional means, such as writing, speaking, drawings, etc., but can only be explored and understood through personal experience, through interactions. The best we can hope for in communicating the inexepressable parts of our experiences to others is to evoke their own similar experience through our words. (z.B. if I say to you that I ate a sweet apple the other day, those words evoke in your mind your own experience of eating a sweet apple, even though you never ate the same apple I did.) When it comes to teaching (or enabling the learning of) an area that is comprised of a large amount of experiential knowledge (such as the field of mechanical and structural design) the limitations of communication become readily apparent and can be quite the obstruction, especially when the other person does not have the same experience base that you do. So how does one, as a teacher, approach teaching such a field?
(Do I need to elaborate on why I believe that mechanical and structural design relies heavily on tacit/personal knowledge?)
Experience. It all comes down to experience. Instead of the teacher trying to transfer their knowledge to the student (which I don't think they should be trying to do, regardless, but that's another matter), the student must be encouraged to explore and to reflect on their experiences. Through experience, they accumulate tacit knowledge. Through reflection on their experiences, the students can build up their own method of critically thinking about what they've learned. Therefore, it is critical in such a situation that the barrier to exploration be as low as possible so that the students feel safe and encouraged. Because of these reasons (among others, that maybe I should elaborate on later), I propose that a low-cost construction kit focused on enabling the building of interactive kinetic sculptures would be beneficial in aiding the learning of mechanical and structural design.

first day of a new month

i had a dream the other night. about media, somehow, though i don't remember. i think i was trying to explain what MAS meant and CMS and all of that... what is media... and i woke up with the words in my head "you can't have media without content" or something along those lines. the media is what carries the content.

media is what carries content
you can't have media without content
you can't have content without media?

oh the things i dream.

in other news, i met with arthur ganson on monday morning and had a really lovely conversation. i finally showed him some of my work. (he really liked my graduation hat.) and we talked about the things i made and the process behind it and the thoughts behind why i want to do what i do. particularly, we talked about my man with the sword and why it's different having it sense IR and turn on when you're in front of it vs. working with a crank. and it took a while, but i think we got to the bottom of it -- by having the sensing and the ability to turn on lie in the machine/sculpture itself, separate from needing a directed cranking, the sculpture is given its own sort of agency... it becomes a separate entity. its own gesture becomes more free. he also asked why i wanted him to swing his sword feebly, as opposed to confidently, and what's the symbolism of his heart making his hand swing. well... when i found the paperclip and built the head/cape, somehow i thought he ended up looking a little old. when i put the sword there, i couldn't imagine him ever looking very convincingly intimidating... so somehow i thought it would be right if his swinging the sword was a little feeble. and i think somewhere along the way i projected myself onto him... and if i were swinging it, i wouldn't be menacing. but i also thought he felt trapped and confined into doing this one thing... that he was made to do it but didn't want to do it, and so he did it but lacking the motivation. which brings the heart into play. he was made to fight, but he has a conscience? symbolically speaking, of course. and so his heart makes it move because he feels bound to doing it, but his heart also makes the action erratic and wobbly and a little weak.

if that makes any sense.

so to tie back into my thesis, why is sensing/programming important when making things? in some ways, i think it's best to learn the mechanics separately and to then add sensing... so i wouldn't say sensing/programming is imperative to learning about mechanisms. but what it does allow is a parallel logic structure between the virtual and physical world as well as it allowing the final machine to have its own agency.... you can put more of your knowledge/logic into the machine.

hm. it's almost lunch time. i guess that's all for now.

in the meantime

i have a paper due today on an existing "dystopic" technology. i was tempted to write it on... i don't know. marketing aimed specifically at kids? corporations? the stock market and the idea of constant growth being necessary? digital rights management and the loss of fair use and the subsequent cooling effect on creativity? tv? but maybe i'll do it on myspace and the shallow social interactions it helps build.

but for now, i thought i'd just put up some comics of mine.


p2 and p3.

fitting.

i've been trying to scan in my work.
here's the first and most fitting for me right now

images and the like

i finally developed some film. five rolls worth. so over the course of working out my thesis stuff, i'll post a few select pictures here and there. so for now here's three. the first above, and then
#2 and #3.

design thoughts

so i was thinking about this some more while i was waiting for jacqueline today. why is it that i bristle against having design competitions like 2.007. and i think the answer is that with a point scoring system, there is an implied "right way" -> the winner. there is only one winner. and with students' robots, there's a lot left to chance, so even some really good designs get kicked out early occasionally. the disappointment of not doing well in the competition can sometimes overshadow any good thoughts you have about what you've learned. this is in addition to the competition overshadowing the design process to begin with. so, really, i don't think that competition is the best way begin to design.

i was also thinking more about gender. particularly, that the people who do well (i.e. score lots of points) in 2.007 tend to be men. i can't think of a worman ever winning, but i might be wrong about this. why is this? the first thing i can think of is that women are less likely to have prior experience with making/fixing things from childhood on. this makes them less likely to dive in confidently and start making things. every mistake seems like the worst failure ever. when really, there's just a lot of back experience that needs to be built up. i guess i've noticed (being a woman engineer) that the most discrimination happens in the machine shop or with things having to do with design. it's a fight to be taken seriously sometimes. it's a fight to be allowed to make mistakes. and i think this is a problem that should be addressed (in general)

i'll try to touch on these things some more later on.

oi. what?

so. i really should get down to work. today, i'll attempt to flesh out a bit more of the what it is that i'm doing for my thesis.

in case you don't want to reference what it is that i wrote down in the previous post:

What?
+Kinetic Sculptures
..... -Wire
..... -Found Objects
..... -Interactive
..... -Ganson
..... -Calder
+Education
..... -Mechanical Design
..... -Structural Design
..... -Hands-on/Project-based
..... -Art as a safe play/exploration space
..... -My experiences with being taught design
......... *007
......... *009
......... *thesis

ok. so.
the broad idea is using art as a way to introduce engineering concepts to kids/people who might otherwise not think that these ideas are accessible to them. to make knowledge accessible to a different set of people from that of the traditional route of learning design/mechanisms/structures/math/programming/etc.

more specificially, what i'm interested in is the use of low-cost interactive kinetic sculptures as a way to enable the hands-on learning of mechanical/structrual design. to use art as a safe place to play and experiment with new concepts. to attempt to bridge the gap between knowledge/comfort in programming/the virtual world to the physical world. to carry over the idea of debugging a program to "debugging" a mechanism or structure. to encourage comfort and intuition in building with physical materials.

i guess this is just rehashing and clarifying things i've said before. so let me try to say something different... or at least expand more fully.

why kinetic sculpture? i was inspired along this path after seeing arthur ganson's exhibit in the MIT museum. i had already been experimenting with wire as ways to make little figures, jewelry, and chainmail. something about it just spoke to me. later on, i discovered calder's work. i'm still finding new artists to inspire me. but, mainly, i like using wire and things i find around me. my budget is always small to none, so this is convenient. as for wire as a material, it's good because you can find it most anywhere, and it's really flexible. with a little bit of thought/understanding the material you can do pretty much anything with it. it's easy to tweak if things mess up. and it's good to use to incorporate found objects into your work. adding the interactivity of sensors/programming is great. it adds a whole new aspect of things that can be done with the materials. also, there's this nice parallel of thought between programming and building. both require trials and debugging. both require logical thought. i think they reinforce each other.

another idea that goes along with why kinetic sculpture is that of art as a safe place to play, a place where there's no "wrong". the only measurement to live up to is your own. through introducing technical concepts through art, some of the intimidation factor is taken away. it's more of (as david puts it) "hard fun". part of my desire to do this stems from my experiences with MIT's mechE design classes. particularly with 2.007 (previous post on that matter found here). since my own experience with that class, i've realized that i wasn't the only one who had issues with the way it was taught. i think there's a problem with the competitive aspect of the class. the competition clouds over the design aspect. also... the competition can be intimidating for people whose first design experience this is. by feeling that whatever they do will be shown in front of a crowd and compared to their peers, fewer people are willing to really try to push the limits of what they can do with design. and as a result, people's machines all end up looking relatively the same, because the people who are less comfortable with design just take the working bits from the people who get something working first. (i really should go into this more at some point). anyway. point is that i think that maybe having a non-competitive, creative way to explore design would be good for a certain set of people.

as for my experience with 2.009, i thought it was better structured. as a group, we came up with our project and worked on it. it was mostly the group dynamics that were a bit funky. i think i would've been better prepared for designing a larger scale thing had i had better design experiences earlier on. and i think hands-on is the only way to go when it comes to design.

but, really, the time i learned most about design was the time i worked on my thesis. i designed and built my own gyroscopic kinetic sculpture. it wasn't until here that i really tried to push my limits when it came to design. and i think it's possible to encourage other people to have similar experiences. to start to experiment. to set a challenge that's just enough beyond your limits that you learn new things. and this is ultimately what i want to do through my thesis... to encourage exploration for everyone. to help make learning mechanical and structural design accessible, non-intimidating, and fun.


maybe a better proposed outline for the intro would be:

+Kinetic Sculptures
..... -Wire
......... *Ganson
......... *Calder
..... -Found Objects
..... -Interactive

+Education
..... -Art as a safe play/exploration space
..... -My experiences with being taught design
......... *007
......... *009
......... *thesis
..... -Hands-on/Project-based
......... *Mechanical Design
......... *Structural Design

thesis

I've been trying to figure out my thesis, but I wasn't quite sure where to start. So I decided that it was best to just try to get thoughts down and simply start.

First iteration. Not so clear. So I tried to expand upon it.

I tried to narrow down the area that my thesis will focus on -- kinetic sculptures as a way to enable the learning of mechanical and structural design. Maybe this is still too vague? Maybe it would be more clear to say "interactive kinetic sculptures as a way to enable the learning of mechanical and structural design as examined by a short study of several groups of Scottish children using wire/found object construction kits"? heh.

But what it really comes down to after that is that I have definite questions to answer. What am I doing. Why would I or anyone, for that matter, want to do this? And how would one go about this.

So I tried to answer and flesh out those questions.

I don't know how successfull that is. I hate to say it, but that's really how I think. Maybe the arrows are a bit confusing for some, but I find them useful for thought flow. I'll try to talk through the last one.

What?
+Kinetic Sculptures
..... -Wire
..... -Found Objects
..... -Interactive
..... -Ganson
..... -Calder
+Education
..... -Mechanical Design
..... -Structural Design
..... -Hands-on/Project-based
..... -Art as a safe play/exploration space
..... -My experiences with being taught design
......... *007
......... *009
......... *thesis

Why?
+Constructionism/Constructivism/Hands-on learning
..... -"Hard fun"
..... -Experiential knowledge
..... -Future of learning
+Intuition
..... -Experiential Knowledge
......... *tacit knowledge
......... *build intuition
......... *rilke/aristotle/bauhaus
..... -Mechanical Design
..... -Structural Design
..... -A feel for materials
+Different approach for a different type of learner
..... -Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance
..... -Gender imbalance in high levels of mechanical design
......... *due to way it's taught?
......... *due to lack of confidence in a traditionally "masculine" field
..... -Build confidence in working with materials
......... *Costa Rican workshop -- some teachers not used to working with hands
..... -Infuse design community with new thoughts/people (eventually)

How?
+Workshops
..... -One vs. repeated
......... *build up experience/intuition
......... *increased mechanical complexity
......... *Dewey (deep/structured thought. Reflection)
..... -Age range?
..... -Kit to start with
......... *materials in kit
......... *directions in kit?
..... -Start with overall idea for a project or simply one mechanism?
......... *(gut feeling: focus on one mechanism to start)
......... *limitations to enable a clear direction to start
..... -Projects as "hard fun"
......... *kids don't think of as learning?
......... *art as play


maybe that's a lot to bite off. but that's maybe a start of a direction. it's always easier to prune than to expand? this is somewhat of an outline :

Intro: What? and a bit of Why?
Background: Why?
Experiment: How?

costa rica

I keep meaning to write up my experiences in Costa Rica, from when I was there with David at the Foundacion Omar Dengo (FOD), but somehow, with all the registration stuff and the moving stuff and the life stuff, I keep losing days. So I might as well just do it now while I'm thinking about it, because, really, the hardest part is just getting started. Here goes.

Ready?

So I was in Costa Rica for five days a week ago, but only two days of really doing stuff at FOD. Otherwise, I slept, and I caught up with David about my thesis and this term and stuff. The idea was that I'd be there for a two day workshop, but somehow the workshop ended up on the wrong two days, so I was only able to be there for one day of the workshop.

The first day with the FOD was mostly just talks for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) and the FOD's work with this. I listened to David's talk. Had lunch with the FOD's robotics dept. In some ways, it was really nice to hear about OLPC, because i'm not really up to date on all the latest things. I tried to prepare a bit for the next day (when I wasn't at the talks). As a result, I ended up making a butterfly that flapped its wings when you pulled a string attached to its body... kind of like the butterfly at the top right there. Except out of wire. And I used some Costa Rican change as the counterweights for it. I really just intended it as a small physical example of something that can move that's made quite simply out of wire.

The second day was the workshop. I had maybe 20 or so teachers in the room. The goal was to help them creatively explore the use of wire in construction as well as structure and mechanisms. First we introduced the ideas. Then we had them go walk around the FOD and find examples of structure, mechanisms, and nature. Then we had them discuss a bit, brainstorm a bit, and start building. After lunch, I explained about about circular to linear motion, tried to talk about mechanisms, tried to talk a bit about cranks... etc. Jorge was a great translator. And then they kept on working. I was amazed at what they came up with.

So here are some thoughts on the process.

1.) when asked to give examples of structure and mechanisms that they found around the FOD, pretty much all of them drew some sort of picture. when talking about the pictures they had drawn, they gestured quite a bit about the motion it makes. really.... just a lot of gesture. This idea of gesture ties in quite strongly with the idea that there's a lot of information that cannot be transmitted via 2-d, and I think helped to illustrate the point that hands-on experience is really necessary.

2.) It was interesting to see/hear about the difference in experiences (past and present) of the groups. One guy knew about chassis, and as a result, when his group was trying to make a walking wire ant, he tried to build a wire chassis for the ant's body. Another group that used a plastic coke bottle for the body of a bird had a woman who commented that she used her knowledge of working with fabric to help her understand how to use wire. She seemed to kind of weave it around into the shapes she wanted. So I was really fascinated by the influx of past experience into the workshop.

3.) Many commented that this is time consuming. Yes. It is. But it's cheap. And when you're done with it, it's yours. You know it at the end. You know every last bit of it in a very physical way. And I think that the flexibility it allows for creatively is something that's unquantifiable. Wire can be quite expressive. There's something nice about the minimalism of it. I think the time commitment is worth it to certain people. If you don't have the money for other materials, but you do have the time, then what does it hurt? Even if you do have the money for some other materials, wire is just better in certain situations. And a very hands-on experience with it just helps you to intuitively understand when this material would be a good choice.

4.) a single two day workshop is not ideal. I think that to get at deep and structured... as Dewey puts it, disciplined... thought, repetition is necessary. Maybe a small project to start out with. And once the experiences accumulate, you start reflecting more and more. Your past experiences start affecting your future projects. And you gain an intuition for the design. So maybe a better way to go about this is to have one group that does several different sets of projects over time.... a cumulative effect.

5.) having people explore their environments in the light of an engineering project is good. there's a lot of knowledge that can be observed in physical objects. And it's good to get people started discussing why things are made the way they are, in the shape they are, and with the materials that they're made. (ok... that was a confusing sentence, maybe). In addition to just getting people actually actively observing their surroundings, maybe it also encourages imitation -- of nature, of existing design, etc. Imitation is the first step towards understanding. If you can observe something and then recreate it, you really must understand it. In Costa Rica, one of the groups made a to-scale version of an umbrella arm. After talking to one of the group members, it was clear that he really understood how the 4-bar linkage worked in a very physical way. And even if he didn't have the technical words for it, the understanding was there. I feel it's critical to have this understanding before abstracting it to technical words and equations.

hmm. yeah. that's about it for now.