Assignment 2 for Giant Stories, Tiny Screens
Restrictions: three shots, fixed camera, two edits.
Making Things Move / Taking Things Apart
March 22nd, 2011 -
Yesterday in Mechanisms & Things That Move we disassembled electronics. Consumer electronics often come with a warning that Sony will break into your house and steal your children (and… void your warranty) if you so much as think about opening up that digital camera, even though you’re getting another “lens error”. More often then not, these electronics cost just as much to repair as they do to replace, and I finally understand why. Consumer electronics were NOT MADE TO BE DISASSEMBLED. They were made to put together once and never opened again. The sheer amount of components crammed inside everyday electronics is mind-boggling.
I took apart (and will never, ever reassemble) a Panasonic AG-DV2500 digital video tape deck that used to play DVCAM and MiniDV Tapes.
In its heyday, these things went for $2,000.
This thing was like a crazy miniature jigsaw puzzle on the inside. Remarkable.
GSTS / Extra Viewing…
March 22nd, 2011 -
Extra Viewing: The FIve Obstructions
After watching a teaser of The Five Obstructions in class, I was intrigued to see the rest and see what these two directors are actually about. Building on what we learned about the Lumiere brothers in 1895, and the resulting emergence of The Lumiere Manifesto in modern times, The Five Obstructions sees two Danish film directors dealing with filmmaking in a very interesting light. Lars Von Trier regards Jørgen Leth’s The Perfect Human as a work of art, as a defining influence in his own work. Lars challenges Leth to remake his 1967 classic five more times, each with a different set of rules, or obstructions.
The film sees Leth from Denmark to Cuba and India, filming with some pretty bizarre limitations. Von Trier gets a bit frustrated with (but admires) Leth’s ability to find inspiration with every set of obstructions that Von Trier doles out.
I just got copies of the original The Perfect Human, as well as a notable movies from each director. I enjoyed The Five Obstructions, but felt I lacked a bit of context watching it because I am not familiar with either director. They seem to each have enough money and support to spend two years making this documentary, and I’d like to see why.
I’ve chosen the following to view next:
The Idiots (1998) – Lars Von Trier
Dancer in the Dark (2000) – Lars Von Trier
Dogville (2003) – Lars Von Trier
The Perfect Human (1967) – Jørgen Leth
A Sunday in Hell (1976) – Jørgen Leth
The Erotic Man (2010) – Jørgen Leth (Produced by Von Trier)
GSTS / Mid-Term
March 9th, 2011 -
My first attempt at a Korsakow video. This piece is called “EYE LEVEL”
Please click the picture to watch the video(s).
Alternatively, it is presented here in a linear fashion, as I couldn’t get the K-Film settings just right
Midterm Project / Propeller Launcher
March 7th, 2011 -
Amidst my searching for inspiration for a Mechanisms project, I came across a few interesting things.
1. The Drinking Bird… very cool indeed.
2. The Whirligig – Now this, I will have to make. I can see myself 30 years from now, tooling around in the garage, making ridiculous wind-driven “animations”, so to speak. But not today. Perhaps later in the semester.
3. The plastic propeller toy, a throwback to childhood. Such an easy concept, but proves much more difficult to replicate. Here’s a basic plastic one -
So – the goal was to make a properller-toy launcher, and a propeller toy from scratch.
I attempted a few with a shish kabob skewer base and some poster board as the prop, bound together with hot glue. These failed, as the skewer was not stiff enough. Pictures below.
I rigged a female sex bolt into a vice, and used it as a base to rest the dowel in. Wrapping thread around the dowel, I hoped the props would sail into the sky. Instead, the skewers just snapped.
Looking for a stiffer construction, I emptied out the insides of a pen and fastened the prop on with a sheet metal screw. Sturdy indeed! However, my aerodynamics are still not up to snuff. Looking for a base to rest the new, thicker dowel in, I drilled a hole in a film canister. Once at rest, I wrapped thread around and pulled…. I can not get the propeller to take flight.
If I could get it to actually lift off, I had an interesting idea for the launching mechanism. I was going to retrofit a tape measure to the film canister and use the force of the tape retracting back into the casing to launch the propeller. Alas, it isn’t quite working.
In conclusion, it’s time to get started on that whirligig. I couldn’t track down toy propeller toys that already had proven aerodynamics in time, which would have allowed me more time to spend on the launching apparatus.
Mouse Trap Car
February 28th, 2011 -
I’m going to chalk this one up to a learning experience. Our results told us that we needed to do the following to have a true speed racer on our hands:
- Lighter weight materials
- Better way to wind the string onto the axel in a tighter, more uniform fashion
- Larger rear wheels and axel
And now enjoy a video of the pink-taped speed demon…
Materials Used
- One Mouse Trap
- A second mouse trap to scavenge parts off of
- Four tonka wheels
- One sharpie
- Two wooden blocks
- A partridge in a pear tree
- Some string
- Pink tape
Some Photos
GSTS / Lumiere #1
February 23rd, 2011 -
First attempt at a Lumiere video for Giant Stories, Tiny Screens.
Restrictions:
-60 seconds
-no camera movement, zoom, pan, etc..
-no sound
-no edits of any sort
GSTS – Assn 1 – Lumiere Video
Sound Intervention Proposal
February 22nd, 2011 -
PROJECT NAME : BARK BARK BARK
ADDRESS: 231 Norman Ave at Russel St, Greenpoint, Brooklyn NY 11222
SITE: Northeast corner
According to Curbed.com, this intersection falls at the south end of G-WWIZ, or the “Greenpoint Waste Water Influence zone,” which borderson the Polish Strong Hold. Not far off, NewYorkShitty.com describes this area as “Garbagetown.” At closer inspection, the four points of this intersection give us a bustling commercial building full of music, photo, and art studios to the northeast, an endless line of vinyl-siding three-plexes to the south east, a Polish-owned but desperately-trying-not-to-be-Polish restaurant to the south west, and a very Polish glass warehouse to the northwest.
In order for the artsy types to get to this building, they must walk through the Polish Strong Hold, often times getting very cold looks from the locals who’ve lived here much, much longer. Greenpoint has stayed considerably less gentrified then its surrounding neighborhoods, and this building threatens that. On my daily walk between the Bedford L and 231, I can’t buy a smile from the people walking the opposite way, not even with my adorably cute pomeranian puppy (see below). So, I’ve decided to fight back a little bit.
Google Map of 231 Norman.
Panoramic shot from the southwest corner. (click for full size)
PROJECT:
BARK BARK BARK is meant to break up people’s daily monotony of doing the same walk down this block. As they now approach the northeast corner, there’s small (24″ long x 12″ high) plastic dog that will light up and start barking at them. As they get closer, the dog barks more and more, and lights up brighter and brighter. It will likely startle, confuse, then annoy people, before it is presumably stolen at some point. I want to invoke an emotion, any emotion, from passersby who’ve walked this corner a million times before. I’d be satisfied with a light chuckle, or even a smirk.
HOW:
The dog contraption will be arduino-based and battery powered. I only intend to run it for short amounts of time in the afternoon and evening, when there’s less industrial road traffic. The area is very quite once the business day has come to a close. I will sample recordings of my dog barking and install a speaker or two into the plastic dog-light, loud enough to startle.
WHY:
Everyday is the same. The friendliest part of the day is my Polish Contractor yelling “Hallo” at me. I want to create BARK BARK BARK because I’m sick of walking to the same place with everyone avoiding eye contact and nothing ever changing.
VIDEO MOCKUP OF INTERACTION
Sound Walk / Sound and the City
February 22nd, 2011 -
SOUND WALK PROJECT
231 Norman Ave at Russel st, slowly meandering a 20 ‘ distance.
This is meant to illustrate the serenity of this part-residential, part-industrial corner that can so easily be interrupted by a giant speeding mega truck with no regard for four-way stop signs.
Yes, those are birds chirping.
Soundwalk – Sound and the City – ITP Spring 2011 by erik braund
MECH & THINGS THAT MOVE / Ikea Design
February 18th, 2011 -
I have assembled perhaps 100 ikea items in the last six months (an entire kitchen and quite a few apartment furnishings). I am sort of an IKEA wizard now, which isn’t saying much because there’s only about three ways that 1,000 different items are built. Most items are held in place with wooden dowels, and secured with cam screws and locks. The cam screws are often plastic, which makes me feel funny.
I recently put together an Ikea KIVIK sofa and chaise, which I must say is the most well-built IKEA furnishing I have come across. There was some actual plywood in there, as opposed to the usual melamine that everything else is made of. Beyond the plywood, the screws for fastening the back of the sofa to the base, and also the ends of the sofa to the body, were quite nifty.
The screws were threaded on each end. One end went into a pre-threaded hole in the sofa, hand-tightening as much as possible. The other end went through a pre-drilled hole in piece of the sofa I was attaching, then secured with a washer and nut. As I tightened the nut, it tightened the entire bolt, effectively tightening two things with one turn. So efficient! See the pictures below for a bit more illustration.
Side note – while looking up exactly what melamine is, a snarky IKEA fan on the internet had this to say – “it’s a strange compound that was found in a meteor that crashed into the Sweden in the 60s. No one quite understands its makeup or its mission on earth.”