Beating Art

I found this interesting art piece on you-tube, it states the work is by Salvador Dali. However the information i have found in the art is very limited and i have never seen this piece before. I am still going to try and research on how it was made as it is completely relevant to what i hope to achieve.

Toy Store

I first went to Maplins electronic store to find something ready made that i could pull apart and experiment with, however i was very disappointed with the store. So i went to Hamley’s toy store and found a motorized cog and pulley system which i am currently experimenting with. It doesn’t look as raw as when i experiment with the Ardunio as the set also includes a wooden box to hide all of the wires and things. Even if the mechanics doesn’t fit in with what i am trying to achieve i still have a nice wooden box at the end of it. As i will need to make sure my piece is of a high quality and standard visually.

Recreating A Beating Heart

As i explained my idea to Richard he suggested to use a combination of motors and a binary to inflate a balloon type object inside my synthetic heart the recreate the movements. Initially i thought that the idea would be a good starting point, however on reviewing the videos of the real beating heart i realized that the movements wouldn’t be as realistic as i would like to achieve. This could be solved by having two balloon inflating and deflating in the top area and the bottom area. However the heart doesn’t just breath in and out, it changes shaped also. I beleive that this can be achieved by pulleys inside attached to specific parts of the heart, moving the shape in  a beating motion. At this stage i am unsure if the Arduino board is the correct path to take. I feel i would probably favor battery operated, physical machinery inside the heart at this stage. That is where my prototyping research will begin.

Human Heart Beating

My ultimate goal is to recreate the functions and form of a real beating heart. I found a clip on you tube that shows this is all of its glory……

Cells send signals to the heart to cause contraction. The first contraction happens in the upper chambers of the heart then the second contraction happens at the bottom of the heart. In the video the second contraction is more visible. However if the organ was upright both contractions would be clear. Below is a basis animation of how the heart works, this will help me to break down the most important elements of how the heart moves. I will then be able to start to recreate the unique movements that the heart makes. The heart that i build will be split up into different sections, which will have seperate motions.

Stelarc

Looking into Art that features bodies or body parts i came across a piece by Stelarc. He grew a 1/4 ear on his arm, this represents a recognizable human body part. He explains that it is dealing with ethical and perceptual issues regarding societies realization that tissue can survive detached from the human body. Some links have been added to explain in more detail. http://www.tca.uwa.edu.au/

Knight Rider Patch

The Knight Rider patch was uploaded onto the Arduino to make the light and led’s flash

 

/* Knight Rider 1

* ————–

*

* Knight Rider is an AI car that showed up in the TV series from

* the 80′s with David Hasselhoff. The car had plenty of LED effects.

*

* Basically this is an extension of Blink_LED. This program handles

* 6 LEDs connected to pins 2 to 7. This is the first of a series of

* three examples useful to understand the for(;;) loop

*

* Picture at:

* http://arduino.berlios.de/index.php/Tutorial/KnightRider

*

* (cleft) 2005 K3, Malmo University

* @author: David Cuartielles

* @hardware: David Cuartielles, Aaron Hallborg

*/

int inPin = 1;

int pin2 = 12;

int pin3 = 10;

int timer = 100;

int val=0;

 

void setup(){

pinMode(pin2, OUTPUT);

pinMode(pin3, OUTPUT);

pinMode(inPin, INPUT);

}

 

 

void loop() {

val= analogRead (inPin);

if (val<=1){

digitalWrite(pin2, HIGH);

delay(timer);

digitalWrite(pin2, LOW);

delay(timer);

 

digitalWrite(pin3, HIGH);

delay(timer);

digitalWrite(pin3, LOW);

delay(timer);

 

}

 

}

Art Trip

After the end of the Fourth lesson Richard told us about an Exhibition in East London called, “the new contemporaries.” It featured work from students who recently graduated; they entered their work in a completion and were the successful few chosen. There were many pieces of work, which I could relate to, and some I couldn’t. The work by Sarah Bowker-jones in particular made me feel slightly disturbed. It featured a range of differently coloured soft toys with a convicted Paedophiles face cut out from paper and suck on the front. Initially I felt disgust, then I felt the piece was sophisticated in the fact they the artist has done so little but has provoked all of these emotions inside of me by just altering a meaningless abject into sometime more sinister. Also a piece of work by artist Maria-Brigita Karantzi was intriguing. To explain her work she wrote, “This is an escape-machine which transforms a room into an automobile, only a few minutes after it has been installed. At this stage there are only two problems yet to be resolved.

a) It is not really working properly
b) You have to carry around with you the space you wish to escape from.”

Fifth Meeting

The fifth meeting happened on the Monday before the project was due to be presented. However not all of the member shown up to this. The more complex bit f the work was mostly done by myself and Sandrine who took charge of the Eyesweb part of the chain. Razor, Sandrine and Kesis did the electronics and Ardunio part of the chain. It was disappointing to think that the others didn’t care enough about the project not to turn in and finalize everything we were working towards. We all agreed to meet the next day also to make sure everything was working as it should be.

Fourth Meeting

During the lesson Richard hadn’t seen any physical progress from us and wanted to know what we had been doing for the past few weeks. We had been thinking and researching the work; however there wasn’t anything to show from this except a working patch in Eyesweb, which we explained to him. Richard decided to take matters into his own hands, he left the room and came back with pieces of wood and tape and other materials. He asked us what our plans were for the project, and then asked us if there was maybe something else, which we could create in the time of the lesson. I voiced my idea about a pair scales. A ball would roll down a ramp into a one end of the scales, tipping the other end up and releasing something. Richard agreed with this and asked us to start making it. So we all set to work and by the end of the lesson we had a ramp attached to the ceiling that lead to a pair of scaled made from wood and plastic funnels. Everyone was pleased with the progress. This made the next meeting easier to know what needed to be achieved by the time we had left. We all agreed to meet up on Monday to continue the rest of the work.

Third Meeting

This third meeting just brought about more conflict. Abbie decided to re-join the group and told us about some research she had found on the Internet regarding Eyesweb. Abbie and I decided to work on creating the patch in the eyesweb application. There was a lot of debate about how this would fit into the work we already discussed, but no one else had started working on the project so at leased we were ding something. Other members of the group complained and didn’t have a constructive criticism. While members most of the members left, Abbie, Sandrine and Myself stayed behind to work on the patch and eventually got it to work.