Nomadic Adaptations started as a performance were I could tell my story and experience of my journey from Ecuador to New York and my adaptation in this big city. The performance also has a reflective installation, that when is lighted generates a mellow atmosphere in the room.
This performances was shown at:
Consulate of Ecuador in New York
The New Latin Wave Festival (Greenpoint, NY)
IMPACT 2017 – NYU Steindhardt
Vietnam Diaries
Diary digital reproduction created for the Intrepid Museum – New York City
Software used: Illustrator, Processing
Ports of Call
Booklets digital reproduction created for the Intrepid Museum – New York City
Software used: Illustrator, Intuiface
SANTUARIO is an installation that allows the visitor to experience mindfulness and relaxation through a series of steps, sound and light. It responds to the amount of movement in the room.
It was created as my thesis project (thesis presentation) to culminate my masters studies at ITP-NYU 2016.
Software used: Arduino, Eagle, Logic X, Vectorworks, Illustrator.
Fabrication, analog circuits.
Panning the sound, coded visuals and traditional dances allowed the spectator to experience what “A Day in the Andes” is like.
The performance was shown at the faculty showcase for IMPACT 2016 at Loewe Theater NYU Steinhardt.
Software used: Processing, Adobe Premier, Logic X
After working in Andean Reflections I knew I wanted to continue working with light reflection in a kinetic installation. The unique shape and form obtain with the reflection of the paper used, make me calm, and that is how I started thinking in building a meditative installation. The key factor of this piece is that it will detect movement in the room where its located, and will turn off if there is disturbance around it.
MECHANICS
First thing was to design how I’ll give movement to the paper. Here is a more detail link for the wheel chassis.
In order to get a nicer and dynamic reflection I needed a mechanism to play with the distance of the light source lighting the wheel where the reflective paper will be. Here is the process of making this mechanism for the lights.
CODE
The interaction of the piece was planned to only work whenever surrounded with calm. If movement detected the piece will shut down. It isn’t an ON/OFF piece, what I wanted is every 5 seconds, one state of the piece will shut down, and every 3 seconds will pass to turn each one ON. The states are:
Before Arduino, I used Processing to emulate all the states from the piece. Here you can get the code. And here is a video of the simulation.
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ELECTRONICS
The next step was the electronic part of the circuit. First finding the components to use. The motors I picked, specially for its size and its power, where this micro motors. For the lights I wanted an led similar to the one in my I-phone, because it gives more detail in the reflection. After searching and also experimenting with different types, I picked this LEDs. PIR sensors were in charge to control if movement was presence near the installation, I bought this ones. One of the key characteristic of this sensor is being able to set the jumper set repeating the trigger, that way was easier for the code to read when it was active.
I used an external power supply to be able to power all the components, including the Arduino that would be the one that control the states of the piece.
Here are some pictures of the circuit design and the acid edged circuit.
After trying the circuit, it was only time to adjust the PWM for the motors and the lights, in order to have the wanted speed and brightness.
Here pictures of the piece.
The piece was presented as part of an immersive experience, where one of the class was transformed in a maze.
For the audio, I used sound from freesound.org, trying to have a balance within nature and meditation sounds. Some of the tracks I used where burning woods, river, wind, raga, gregorian chants, etc. To this I added pieces of a guided meditation by Zach Coble.
For this assignment we needed to create a wheel that realize something. I was inspire in the picture of Cycloid made by Beranice Abbott.
I started looking into the JunkShelf, and luckily i found a plastic baseball money box. That would be the core of my wheel.
After prototyping in cardboard and reaching the diameter needed it, I mill the pieces in the CNC.
Structure done!!…. now the electrical part. In order to have more intensity, I used brighter LEDs. The more suitable power source for this was a 9V battery. After soldering pins and trying the circuit in a breadboard, I attached the LED around the baseball.
Finally, I painted the CNC parts,
and took some nice long exposure pictures.
For this project I worked together with Andy Sahlstrom. We use the omni wheels showed in class to create a moving robot.
The base for the body consist in to pieces of 0.75″acrylic, in where, we accommodate precisely 3 micro motors from servo city in a some milled paths that already had it.
The control for the DC motors was made with Arduino and H-bridges for each one. After understanding the way to three wheels interact in between them to go forward the wanted direction, we program the robot to go in circle with small pauses.
Here is the video, and some drawings of “it”.
After trying this project idea, and being one motor short for GYROMAN, I felt I wanted to use the movement of the CD to draw something.
First of all laser cut different size of wood until I got one that fit precise in the center hole of the CD.
After that we use a scrap wood to test the motor and added a pencil on the opposite side.
Once the first prototype worked, a better case for the motor and the pencil was design (5 pieces of wood paste together). First consideration was to be able to keep the motor in the case so the motor hole from the bottom pieces was smaller than the others.
Here is a video of the Machine.
For this project I decided to do an elephant that included a mechanism that moves its trunk and tail when is being moved.
First thing was to prototype the illustrator design in cardboard to probe everything works and improve the final model if necessary.
Some adjustment where made to the model, after the feedback from classmates. For example making the wheels bigger (this help me to have more weight on the toy and more traction), making the trunk bigger, and some colors ideas.
The final piece was cut in the CNC, painted with acrylic paint and finish cutting board finish wax.
Here is the final video where you can see the making off the toy.
Toy elephants made of wood, with a mechanism that make the trunk and the tail move when is moving.
Software used: Illustrator, masteCam
Fabrication, CNC.
Assignment:
“make an image using non traditional “pixels”, preferably physical or “analog” try to avoid using the compute“
I use rice as my pixels, inspired in pointillism. First I paste it of a board,
Then I divided the word in 6 x 12 grids, representing “bigger pixels”, and designed a stencil only painting selected spaces of the grid
At last after seeing some of the work of Chuck Close, where he paint on top of what it seems big pixels, I painted with yellow and red paint on the open spaces of the grid
So finally, here is the final work.
For this project I picked this mechanism as an example.
I started doing with a diameter of 5″ in order to get a bigger movement distance. So first prototyping in cardboard. I saw that I needed some guides to keep the movement edges in in order to have the horizontal movement I was looking for.
After I change cardboard to 1/8 wood, so I can have a more robust material for my second prototype.
Resize it at least to half, to much friction and how to guide the moving parts were some of the feedback from class.
With the new scale we prototype again using cardboard
I try different distance where the rod should be located on the yolk. Also build the moving part in two parts, to avoid the some friction.
Once I had the right measures, I went to mill the part in delrin using the otherMill. Here I recommend to use the bitBreak mode so you can choose where to cut in your piece your files, either outside or inside the stroke.
Finally after testing the delrin parts on a cardboard surface and calculating the right measures for the base.
I had the base built in a thick piece of wood, that i chopped from a table that was tossed it to the street close to school. Here is the final video.
