Hi all -

In the hazy lazy spirit of summer, this is the first update in a long while...

Being the third Tuesday of the month, the Web Grrls are at InterAccess so this week's SpaceProbe meeting will be held at Graham Smith's studio, 317 Adelaide St. W. at Peter St., Suite 202, 585-9434. Rob Cruickshank will present the second installment of the basic "Flintstones" electronics lecture, and we'll try out some "hands-on" stuff. This is also "shop day", so bring in anything you'd like to work on, and, as always, stuff for show & tell. I also want to talk about setting up some focus groups; see below.

Remember that the XXX Show is opening on September 19th! I'm going to collect the names of people who will be in the show, so if you can't make it Tuesday, please e-mail me with a short description of your work-in-progress piece. Can anyone make a poster/flyer?

I'd like to suggest that we start a few smaller research groups that would explore a certain topic in-depth and report back to the group. I'd like to set up areas on the web site for each one (any ideas for format?), including links to resources on the net. This could include:
- Survey: what are other artists around the world doing with electronics for sculpture, installation, and performance? Who's who? What opportunities for exhibitions, residencies, etc. are there?
- Critique: what issues, problematic or promising, are involved with this kind of work? What are people saying about it? What do we say about it?
- Sensors: where to get them, how to wire them up, how to interface them to microcontrollers & PC's using analog-to-digital converters etc.
- Brains: various algorithms for processing signals, eg. neural nets, histograms, etc., and practical methods for using them in PC's or microcontrollers; also a survey of programming environments such as Visual Basic, HyperCard, etc.
- Actuators and Mechanics: motors, servos, solenoids, pneumatics; how to build mechanical things and how to interface to them.
- Video & Audio: interfacing to VCR's, digital video and audio systems.
- Microcontrollers & Electronics: various options for using PIC's, Stamps, 68HC11's, etc., including programming and development systems and parts/code sources.
- Sense Bus: further development of a common serial interface and protocol
- Hunting & Gathering: general sources for parts & information
- Toolbox - taking an overview of the above groups and assembling "kits" or creating our own modular systems, etc. Also, design and improvement of our electronics production facility at InterAccess.

Any others? How will this fit into our meetings? I'd like to make it a requirement to join one (or more?) of these groups, but I also expect that people could contribute whatever knowledge they have to any and all of the groups. We've developed a good deal of this stuff already; and I've been doing a lot of new research lately and have lots of notes and links to contribute; summarizing is necessary... this will take some homework.

I'd also like to see people working on:
- making art!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- a "travelling show" that could be easily presented at various events, festivals, schools, artists' organizations, etc.
- video documentation - we have some footage but need more thought about what to shoot, and someone to produce & edit a finished piece; also for above.
- finding sponsors and donations - equipment, cash, etc.
- ideas for future presentations & topics at meetings, especially hands-on stuff, and proposals for visiting artists and paid intensive workshops.

Previous meetings: my notes are a bit sketchy... please remind me of anything I've left out. Anyone want to volunteer as minute-taker?

Derek Robinson presented a talk on "building robot brains", using algorithms such as best-matching and averaged shifted histograms. He handed out a reference paper which I will scan in and put on-line, since I don't think I can effectively summarize it here...

Tom Leonhardt presented his idea for a piece which involved a spider-like creature that is suspended from the ceiling with wires. Motors reel the wires in and out to allow it to move around the space. It has a video camera on board, and is designed to move around and pick out "interesting" objects or activities which will be displayed on a monitor.

Mitch Kirsch et al, from "Dogs in Space", presented their work on the "Lake Flo" dance project, which included a stage backdrop of woven grass and computer-controlled lights by group members Veronica Verkley and Jim Ruxton, and an interactive sound environment built by Jeff Mann using David Rokeby's VNS and Opcode's MAX, and co-composed with Timothy Sullivan. A video camera analyses the movements of the dancers, and this is used to trigger ambient and environmental sounds of a natural lake soundscape.

Mike Steventon spoke about his experiences with getting a BASIC Stamp to work; in particular, the need to have a common ground connection between his two power supplies. A discussion of voltage, circuits, etc., followed, and Bob Bernecky gave an outline of the various symbols used in electronics schematics. We also talked about the "sense bus" network idea. Jean Trivett asked "why?"

At Graham Smith's "shop night" we glued a lot of things together and tried to break them. Gluing a looney to the road was fun... Jeff Mann showed his low-power television transmitter and built an antenna for it which was used in the Screen group's project to send the transmitter up on a helium balloon.

Doug Back talked about his idea for connecting work in Peterborough to Toronto over the Internet, possibly using the "sense bus" protocol we have been working on.

There was a walking-tour of Active Surplus, and people bought cool stuff like metal-detector wands from the airport, and strips of copper "finger stock". Later we discussed some ideas for what could be done with them.

Plans for the upcoming "XXX" show of work-in-progress were discussed, and several people talked about what they would like to work on. I can't find my notes for that night, so it would be great if people could post a short description in the discussion forum.

Rob Cruickshank presented the first of a series of lectures on basic "Flintstones" electronics. Notes for this will be posted separately.

Last week we began with a discussion of various kinds of movement. Relatively simple vibrating objects can give complex, "chaotic" movement, such as "levitating" on a floor and moving in interesting ways. What other methods can be used to create movement which doesn't seem "robotic"? 3-D animation systems usually use spline-curves to simulate motion, but these still often appear unreal. Newer systems use a software simulation of gravity and kinetics. What are the elements of motion that cause something to appear real vs. unreal? Another technique becoming very popular is motion-capture, where the actual movements of people or animals are captured by the computer. We talked about walking robots, and systems such as neural networks used to control them; usually having sensors such as accellerometers and force-sensors for feedback. It was noted that much emotion can be expressed in the way someone walks or moves, and this would not be taken into account in a system designed simply to "solve the problem" of walking. Someone mentioned that Pat (? - wasn't present) is working on a walking dinosaur, using pneumatic air-muscles built from inner-tubes covered with mesh (the mesh is available at Active Surplus??). There was also some discussion about spines and snakes, and how one might simulate them using solenoids "damped" with springs as muscles, as well as using strings running up the side of a long spring - Veronica Verkley (not present) is working on a bird's neck with this method.

Jim Ruxton then presented a talk on using DC motors. He explained how changing magnetic fields produce rotation, and that the direction of rotation can be reversed by reversing the direction or polarity of the power supply using a Double-Pole, Double-Throw switch or electrically-operated DPDT relay:

    _______________
    |             |____
    |  DC MOTOR   |___|
    |_____________|
        |     |
        |     |  -to motor
        0_   _0
          \/
(+)-----0 /\  0-----(-)  from power supply to two centre pins
         /  \
        0     0     - DPDT switch has six pins; a DPDT relay 
                      has six plus two for powering the switch.

--
Jeff Mann