Wednesday, January 20, 2016
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
01.17.15 | Reading Response: Electric Body Manipulation as Performance Art
I'll tell you right now, I totally thought this passage was going to be focused on some type of contemporary performance piece involving borderline electrocution as a means of pseudo-choreography (I was conflating "manipulation" and "convulsion"). But, I digress: the conclusion of the article isn't actually that far off from that, albeit in a fashion with a much stronger form of intent. Elsenaar and Scha really delve more into the mechanics of electrical manipulation, which - in contrast to some of the nitty-gritty educational passages as the course demands - is oddly refreshing.
Starting off with older ventures into experimentation with electricity from its nominal Greek roots to Einstein and Tesla's squabbles in business over alternating and direct current the article does a good job of getting readers up to speed on not just what electricity was at the time, but what it meant - and in many cases, it was simply a medium that hadn't been fully explored, and by proxy of that was prone to the same follies of any foreign element, such as fearmongering, in the case of the aforementioned AC-DC debacle with Einstein and Tesla.
That being said, the potential for an artistic medium was always there, as evidenced by later experimental "performances" such as the Stephen Gray static electricity demonstration. However, electricity serves as more of a performance-based art, with humans serving as the medium in many cases; the ability for the human body to serve as a conductor for electrical charge paved the way for multiple exercises in performance art where electricity quite literally served as the spark of the performance, rather than inherently being the medium itself. This could be as subtle as Gray's lighthearted parody / social commentary through running a current through two boys connected via metal or hand-holding, or as powerful as the employed lethality of Leyden jar discharges.
Ultimately, modern-day electrical performance art focuses more on the direct (now often controlled) manipulation of the human body through electrical current, given the science behind neurology is more or less electrical and biochemical in nature in the first place. Thematic subtleties are now generally foregone in favor of illustration of precision and control capable through electrode choreography, with a specific example in the text mentioning MIDI electric guitars accompanying facial movements in perfect sync. Electricity, in this sense, has an interesting leg up on other similar art forms in that digital manipulation of tangible analog forms represents a level of control across both aforementioned mediums, wherein the human body could be strung along to an accompanying digital performance just as easily. While the manuscript is from 2002, it obviously still retains significance today, and as the field expands and advances, the evolution of performance art will continue to accompany it in lockstep.
Starting off with older ventures into experimentation with electricity from its nominal Greek roots to Einstein and Tesla's squabbles in business over alternating and direct current the article does a good job of getting readers up to speed on not just what electricity was at the time, but what it meant - and in many cases, it was simply a medium that hadn't been fully explored, and by proxy of that was prone to the same follies of any foreign element, such as fearmongering, in the case of the aforementioned AC-DC debacle with Einstein and Tesla.
That being said, the potential for an artistic medium was always there, as evidenced by later experimental "performances" such as the Stephen Gray static electricity demonstration. However, electricity serves as more of a performance-based art, with humans serving as the medium in many cases; the ability for the human body to serve as a conductor for electrical charge paved the way for multiple exercises in performance art where electricity quite literally served as the spark of the performance, rather than inherently being the medium itself. This could be as subtle as Gray's lighthearted parody / social commentary through running a current through two boys connected via metal or hand-holding, or as powerful as the employed lethality of Leyden jar discharges.
Ultimately, modern-day electrical performance art focuses more on the direct (now often controlled) manipulation of the human body through electrical current, given the science behind neurology is more or less electrical and biochemical in nature in the first place. Thematic subtleties are now generally foregone in favor of illustration of precision and control capable through electrode choreography, with a specific example in the text mentioning MIDI electric guitars accompanying facial movements in perfect sync. Electricity, in this sense, has an interesting leg up on other similar art forms in that digital manipulation of tangible analog forms represents a level of control across both aforementioned mediums, wherein the human body could be strung along to an accompanying digital performance just as easily. While the manuscript is from 2002, it obviously still retains significance today, and as the field expands and advances, the evolution of performance art will continue to accompany it in lockstep.
01.17.16 | Blog Debrief: Breadboard Lab
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| Breadboard configuration. |
I mainly relied on the cheat sheet to assemble the breadboard and thankfully got it properly running in just three or four tries; ultimately, I had everything properly wired and set up, I just had a wire or two off by a cell or "port" (not really sure what to call them). That being said, the cheat sheet served a way more practical purpose than just a means of effectively mapping the circuitry: Cole was sitting next to me at the time and did his nearly from scratch without much regard for the cheat sheet's layout, and in truth probably wound up with a more efficient setup than I did - but from what I saw it was still a bit of a struggle getting there, and the cheat sheet ultimately taught me more after having wired everything up than trying to go by the instructions did.
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| Side view. |
Going off of the central chip's counterclockwise distribution or "progression" of power, I found myself explaining everything to Cole in a way that I wasn't even aware I knew, namely that all of the circuitry ran in parallel along its grid, e.g. a wire in cell A-15 would receive information from one of the chip's endings in cell C-15. In addition to having to "start" the positive and negative charges on either boundary of the breadboard, they had to likewise "connect" via parallel spacing to the first and last endings of the central chip. While I couldn't explicitly lay out what part or wire served what function in making the lighting alternate, I still had a pretty decent grasp on all of it. Regarding the use of additional capacitors:
4.7 microfarads at 50 volts was the "default," with the lights blinking at an average pace. Experimenting further:
At 47 microfarads and 16 volts, the lights blinked more slowly.
At 1 microfarad and 160 volts, the lights blinked much more quickly.
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| Applying power... |
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| and getting light! |
While I wasn't fully aware of it in class, it makes more sense now that I understand that farads are a "unit of capacity," so to speak - meaning a higher voltage pared with a lower capacity results in a faster speed of electrical transfer, and vice-versa.
01.17.16 | Blog Debrief: Physical Computing / Throwie Lab
I kept this one relatively brief because I wasn't entirely sure what we should actually be making notes of here - personal observations versus recounted lecture elements and whatnot, mainly - but decided to consolidate the Throwie Lab and reading on electricity into a single Blog Debrief, considering the two made up two parts of a larger lecture / work day, anyway.
I read the Introduction and Chapter 1 to Physical Computing (Igoe, O'Sullivan) prior to the workday, but even then I was still fairly lost until we actually started laying things out in a more kinesthetic fashion during the lecture; I've always been more software-oriented than hardware, and thus I don't have a whole lot of background knowledge regarding the actual elements behind physical computing. The most hands-on electrical work I've done was custom-building a PC and assembling it with my dad, and even then with how many tutorials you can find online the line between actual synthesis of the inner workings and just going through the instructions is pretty blurry. That being said, the lecture did actually make things click for me a lot more easily.
For some prior projects and assignments I had done some research skirting the line of the actual mechanics behind electricity, though ironically I had a better understanding of even more microscopic forces (esp. fundamental / elementary forces) than electricity before the lecture. That being said, it was all pretty straightforward when we actually got some examples / analogies as to why electrical components operate the way they do rather than just explicit, 1:1 definitions the way the book primarily laid things out. Positive charges naturally attempting to occupy negative charges makes complete sense - I don't know why I hadn't actually thought about it before - but the entire lecture kind of blew my mind, honestly. It lines up with the laws of thermodynamics, and thinking about it pretty much all of the fundamental interactions work in a similar fashion transferring positive energy into negative energy.
In terms of hands-on material (the Throwie lab), I think it was a good transition into actual "electrical work," if you can even call it that. The Throwies were exemplary of the concept(s) of electrical charge, positive and negative interactions, etc. with a little bit of of the to-be-expected Asmuth post-anarchist ideology thrown in.
I neglected to take any pictures for this Blog Debriefing, but I'll be sure to get some for the next one.
I read the Introduction and Chapter 1 to Physical Computing (Igoe, O'Sullivan) prior to the workday, but even then I was still fairly lost until we actually started laying things out in a more kinesthetic fashion during the lecture; I've always been more software-oriented than hardware, and thus I don't have a whole lot of background knowledge regarding the actual elements behind physical computing. The most hands-on electrical work I've done was custom-building a PC and assembling it with my dad, and even then with how many tutorials you can find online the line between actual synthesis of the inner workings and just going through the instructions is pretty blurry. That being said, the lecture did actually make things click for me a lot more easily.
For some prior projects and assignments I had done some research skirting the line of the actual mechanics behind electricity, though ironically I had a better understanding of even more microscopic forces (esp. fundamental / elementary forces) than electricity before the lecture. That being said, it was all pretty straightforward when we actually got some examples / analogies as to why electrical components operate the way they do rather than just explicit, 1:1 definitions the way the book primarily laid things out. Positive charges naturally attempting to occupy negative charges makes complete sense - I don't know why I hadn't actually thought about it before - but the entire lecture kind of blew my mind, honestly. It lines up with the laws of thermodynamics, and thinking about it pretty much all of the fundamental interactions work in a similar fashion transferring positive energy into negative energy.
In terms of hands-on material (the Throwie lab), I think it was a good transition into actual "electrical work," if you can even call it that. The Throwies were exemplary of the concept(s) of electrical charge, positive and negative interactions, etc. with a little bit of of the to-be-expected Asmuth post-anarchist ideology thrown in.
I neglected to take any pictures for this Blog Debriefing, but I'll be sure to get some for the next one.
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