Junior Seminar/Rouvelle/Spring '06
Wednesday 4pm-10pm. (Dinner break from 6-7)
Brown Center 215
Contact:jrouvelle@mica.edu
Office: Brown Center, room 211, phone (in office).
Office hours: by appointment
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Course work in summary:
We will spend the first four weeks of the term building a Magnetometer - the rational behind this decision can be found below. I will then meet with you individually during week five to discuss your interests and plans. Week six we will meet with Norm White - I will ask you to read something about Norm, and come up with two questions for him - in addition I will ask you to show him some of your work.
In addition to the Visiting artists who will visit with you, we have an opportunity to participate in this year's Maryland Robot Festival that will occur on Saturday, April 29, at the Historical Electronics Museum in Linthicum. The Directors of the Maryland Robot Society - both engineers - and both very interested in your artworks - will be visiting our class either week two or week three. They would like you to show some of your work at the Festival. In advance of their visit, I will ask you to prepare a brief presentation on your work.
We will spend time talking about content, and it's place in your own work, and in the work of artists whom you admire. During our meetings I will go into more detail about this topic. I will ask each of you to write a brief (3-5 page) paper as a final project that covers the content of your work. I repeat, we will discuss this in detail after we have finished the Magnetometer.
I will also present information (Guidelines for Admission, Faculty, Student Work, etc...) on a few Graduate Schools that have programs related to Interactive Media. The intention of these presentations is to familiarize you with what is going on in your media at other schools, and to introduce the protocols necessary to get into Grad School.
Evaluation:
Grades in this course will be based on regular class attendance, the quality
of your work, class participation, and progress. Tardiness and excessive absences
will adversely affect your grade. Participation in discussions and critiques
is mandatory.
Projects & Grading:
Students will be graded by letter, A-F, on all evaluated work. Work must be
completed on time and in full satisfaction of each project goal. Late work (assignments
handed in or posted after the start of in-class critique sessions) will be automatically
downgraded by one letter grade.
A Well above the expectations of the course. Outstanding participation,
attendance, and exceptional progress.
B Above average assignments and participation. No more than
one absence.
C Average execution of assignments, participation, and no more
than two absences.
D Well below average: work, attendance (two absences), projects,
and participation.
F Unsatisfactory: work, attendance (more than two absences),
projects, and participation
Attendance:
Two or more unexcused absences from class may result in failure. Two unexcused
late arrivals, or early departures (eg, not returning from dinner, or other
unexplained disappearance) will be marked as the equivalent of one absence.
Absence from a class is not an excuse for skipping a tutorial, reading assignment,
or posting an assignment. You are fully responsible for completing work.
Readings:
Readings and tutorials will often be delivered through the web - via links (URLs).
Critiques will frequently be initiated from various topics covered in the readings
- in other words, please use the concepts you read about in discussion of fellow
students' work.
Supplies:
Please bring to each class: 1-2 CD-R(s) - Recordable Compact Discs (700 MB).
You'll probably go through many of them, for both this and other digital classes.
You might also want to bring in a sharpie to label your CD's.
It is essential that all work done in class be saved to CD-R at the conclusion
of class. There will be many, many other students using these computers and
anything saved on them will be permanently removed shortly after the conclusion
of class.
Software Consultant:
If you are having trouble becoming acquainted with the software we will be using
please see the software consultant.
Food and Drink in the Computer Labs:
No.
ADA COMPLIANCE:
In order to provide the highest quality educational experience for every student,
MICA is committed to compliance with the ADA and Section 504. Any student who
has (or suspects he or she may have) a physical, cognitive, or psychological
disability and who wants to request accommodations must immediately schedule
an appointment to meet with the Director of the Learning Resource Center, Dr.
Kathryn Smith, by calling the LRC Administrative Assistant, Mary Walsh, at (410)669-3177.
The LRC is MICA’s designated department for determining reasonable accommodations
based on legal requirements and will provide the eligible student with an official
Accommodation Verification letter to the instructor. Each semester the student
must formally request accommodations from the LRC each semester, and format
of the Verification letters change each semester to ensure currency.
NOTE: Students with disabilities who want assistance during emergency evacuations
must register with the LRC within the first week of each semester.
HEALTH AND SAFETY:
MICA has developed policies and practices to ensure a healthful environment
and safe approaches to the use of equipment, materials, and processes. It is
the mutual responsibility of faculty and students to review health and
safety standards relevant to each class at the beginning of each semester.
Students should be aware of general fire, health, and safety regulations
posted in each area and course specific polices, practices, and cautions.
Students who have concerns related to health and safety should contact
Quentin Moseley, Environment Health and Safety Coordinator at 410 225 0220
or email at qmoseley@mica.edu
There is no Final Exam during exam week. Our final class is the last week of classes.
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Weekly Schedule
Week 1 (below)
Week 2 - 3- Torsion Magnetometer Construction
Week 4 - 5 - the laser, the Coil, expressPCB, and the ADS7825
Week 10 (where did the time go?...)
Week
15
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Week 1
Course Introduction:
Torsion Magnetometer Project
One-on-One Meetings
Visiting Artists
Norm White - Week 6
Bob Bielecki - Week 12
Short-Term (internships)/Long-Term (Grad School, etc...) plans.
In Brief:
We will spend the first four weeks of the term building three Torsion Magnetometers - the rational behind this decision can be found below. I will then meet with you individually during week five to discuss your interests and plans. Week six we will meet with Norm White - I will ask you to read something about Norm, and come up with two questions for him - in addition I will ask you to show him some of your work. The following weeks will involve one-on-one meetings to discuss your work and plans, visits from Bob Bielecki and the directors of the Maryland Robotics Society, and two field trips.
In addition to the Visiting artists who will visit with you, we have an opportunity to participate in this year's Maryland Robot Festival that will occur on Saturday, April 29, at the Historical Electronics Museum in Linthicum. The Directors of the Maryland Robot Society - both engineers - and both very interested in your artworks - will be visiting our class either week two or week three. They would like you to show some of your work at the Festival. In advance of their visit, I will ask you to prepare a brief presentation on your work.
We will spend time talking about content, and it's place in your own work, and in the work of artists whom you admire. During our meetings I will go into more detail about this topic. I will ask each of you to write a brief (3-5 page) paper as a final project that explores the issue of content in your work. To repeat, we will discuss this in detail after we have finished the Magnetometer.
I will also present information (Guidelines for Admission, Faculty, Student Work, etc...) on a few Graduate Schools that have programs related to ours. The intention of these presentations is to familiarize you with what is going on in your media at other schools, and to introduce the protocols necessary to get into Grad School.
Questions???
>>Here we go
Over the next four weeks we will construct a Baker-Diverdi Torsion Magnetometer as a group project. “What?” is a reasonable question... This device was invented by Roger Baker and written about by Shawn Carlson in 1998, and improved by Joseph A. Diverdi in 2001 (links to source articles below). There are many special elements of this invention that are related to much of your own works, and well worth learning about. The goal of the project is to provide me the opportunity to work with you on a project that involves many of the skills you have developed over the past two years – skills that are important for your future works and plans. In addition to the hardware, I will show you how to digitize and import the resulting data into a terminal program such as Processing, Max, or Python. The output of the Magnetometer is a laser that moves either around on the wall, or around two Cds cells (Photo resistors). If we digitize the laser we can get readings of fluctuations in the electromagnetic activities from as far away as the Ionosphere and as close as you are to the sensor. If we have the laser project onto a solar panel we can amplify the signal and create a sound piece. There are, of course, other options that I will ask you to explore. The project will involve planning, purchasing, building and installing, as well as provide an opportunity for each of you to discuss uses of the magnetometer in personal projects – this will spring board us into the middle of the semester when our focus will be content and form, along with your personal goals over the short and long term.
Today I will go over the Torsion Magnetometer Schematics and we will break the project up into parts – a parts and tool list is actually what we will work on today. I will arrange for the parts to be here by class #3 at the latest – we will start construction on the wooden/glass enclosures next week. Let’s use whatever tools MICA has to put the device together. Realize that the device can benefit from a concept of design.
As mentioned above, we will build three of these devices, so that we can measure Geomagnetic 3-Dimensional Vectors.
"Why?"
Here is an excerpt from a paper by Edmond Chouinard describing his experimental work “Web of Love” (Chouinard I, “Mind-Matter Entanglement with Geomagnetic Fields”).
Excerpt Heading "Geomagnetic 3-Dimensional Vectors"
Thus far, the graphs shown are the result of a single 30" diameter coil sensor, which is measuring the geomagnetic field in the North-South direction, within 5-degrees of compass heading. This is a single dimensional measurement of a 4-dimensional phenomena, which though often useful is incomplete. Two other 30" diameter coil sensors are located orthogonal to this first referenced sensor, in the East-West and Up-Down directions. The purpose of the triad arrangement is to establish 3-dimensional triangulation to find the actually existing spatial reality of energy flowings in time, i.e., to generate vector representation. This is important. For those unfamiliar with vectors, consider the following simple example. Put a stone or marker at the starting point at one's feet and walk 7-steps forward, 3-steps to the left, and the equivalent of 4-steps upwards, say to the height of one's head. The line from the initial stone marker point to the present head location constitutes a 3-dimensional vector, a vector defined by the number triad (7,3,4). Later in time this vector may have evolved into triad (9,5,17). Whatever. A different triad set of numbers will result in vectors pointing in different directions, and in general, having different lengths. The length of a vector represents magnitude, which might be specifying energy in a dynamically moving space-time. Similarly, the geomagnetic field components generated by the triad set of three orthogonal 1-dimensional coil sensors will generate a vector, which represents the actual 3-dimensional direction and magnitude of the fluctuating geomagnetic fields at any instant of time. The physical reality is thus represented by sets of dynamic vectors that have direction, magnitude, and move in time: they can vibrate, oscillate, spin, rotate, and translate in directional orientation… They constitute a large area reference datum and standard by which other geomagnetic activities in the laboratory environment may be compared.
- Edmond Chouinard ‘04
Edmond Chouinard’s writings on the “Web
of Love”
Vectors (e.g., Triads of information allow us observe,
log, use, and visualize data along x,y, and z axes - this is VERY
USEFUL) – here is an example of 3-D plotting in Python -
we can also do similar work with Processing and Max, among other languages.
Let's Begin
Brief:
I suggest we open a spread-sheet in Excel and list all the parts we need. Then I think we should separate the Chips from the glass and wood, then discuss where we can locate this stuff. Rather than drive anywhere, let’s just order whatever we need online. For the semi-conductors, let’s get everything for free by requesting samples – if each of you requests samples we should have enough parts for several Magnetometers.
We will also design our own PCB’s via ExpressPCB. In order to do this we must download the free design software.
We can sometimes get custom boards from SparkFun - but they are currently upgrading their system and are not taking orders. Sparkfun is cheaper but takes significantly longer to process your order!
Here’s what we should do:
1. Read the articles associated with the Torsion Magnetometer:
Original Writing by Roger Baker
First Article in Scientific American on Baker's Magnetometer
Second Scientific American article describing Joseph Diverdi's improvements – THIS IS WHAT WE WILL BUILD
Diverdi-Baker Version – THIS IS WHAT WE WILL BUILD
2. Create a Parts List in Excel from the Diverdi-Baker articles.
We should be able to get all of the chips we need for free via the generous Sample program that all major manufacturers have. To accomplish this:
a. Find out who makes the chips you need by either typing in the part number to Google, or going to Digi-key and typing in the part number.
b. Go to the manufacturers site and navigate to the pages for the specific part you need - MAKE CERTAIN THAT THE PART IS IN A PACKAGE (e.g., DIP) THAT YOU ARE PREPARED TO WORK WITH.
c. See if they offer free samples.
d. fill in the proper forms and wait a few days...
We will need wood, glass, screws, etc... We should be able to scrounge most of what we need from MICA.
We will also need to determine if we can fabricate everything on Campus.
*** I suggest we use Fine Quartz Fiber instead of Nylon, here is a place where I think we can get what we need: Fine Quartz Fiber - but we should call first.
There are opportunities for you to design the Magnetometer along your own lines, here is a Nice Design!
** Reminder: The Maryland Robot Fest will occur at the Electronics Museum on
April 29th. The Directors of the Festival would like to extend an invitation
to YOU to participate. If you would like to create a work and present it at
the Festival let me know. If you would like to CURATE/ORGANIZE MICA’s
presentation at the Fest please let me know. There are other students who have
already expressed interest. This is a good opportunity to do something interesting
with the world beyond MICA, be an experience that will be valuable for many
reasons, and look very good on your resume.
Assignment: Prepare to begin construction on the Magnetometer next class. I would like to cut and apoxy all necessary glass and wood next time. We will work on the circuitry starting week 3.
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Week 2
One-on-one Meetings
Assignment: During our meeting we will discuss your interests and plans, over
the course of the semester we will meet periodically to discuss how you are
taking steps to meet your goals.
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Week 3-7
Torsion Magnetometer Workshop (see above for details)
Hand-out re: Norm White pre week 7
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Week 7
Norm White will visit class today and, among other topics, we will show him
our magnetometer and each of you will present uses of the magnetometer in a
project/context.
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Week 8
One-on-One meetings – to discuss plans for the near and long future- e.g.,
summer internships, Thesis ideas and Grad School, etc…
For the rest of each class that meets at MICA I will make a presentation on a different Grad School. We will look at the curricula (in general), entry requirements and student/faculty works. This is to give you perspective on what is required for admission into graduate programs that relate to your work in IM – it is not an endorsement of any specific grad school, or even and endorsement of going to grad school immediately after MICA, it is a way to gain perspective on other people in your field. The schools I talk about will come from my own experience as well as input from you that I will gain during our meetings.
P.E.A.R. handout
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Week 9
Field Trip to PEAR
Assignment: write up a two-page response to the center; what are they doing there? What is the relationship between art and science? What is the intention of the center?
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Week 10
Visiting Artist Chad Eby.
Chad is a grad student at UMBC – his background is similar to many of yours – he spent time in the private sector for ten years after he received his Bachelor’s degree – his work is very interesting and the decisions he has made that led him to UMBC are also very interesting.
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Week 11
One-on-one meetings
Re: plans and actions you have taken to realize your plans… We will also
discuss artists whom you may consider writing about for your final paper…
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Week 12
Visiting artist Bob Beilecki
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Week 13
Smithsonian Field Trip
We will meet with a curator at the Smithsonian who will talk with you about how she organizes exhibits – how she finds people to create interactive displays, and the relationship between art and tech at the museum.
Week 14
One on one meetings. We will discuss plans and paper.
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Week 15
Final Paper Due. 3-5 pages on content and interactivity, form and function
within the work of an artist of your choice.