Dave's Werld

Don’t forget, this Saturday, March 13th from 6-9PM  is the opening at Art Produce. I’ll be showing Rattle and Hum for the first time. I also have another piece that I haven’t mentioned too much, but it’s also interactive.  You can find out about Art Produce here, www.artproducegallery.com but I will say it’s been my pleasure to work with Lynn in her space and it’s really an amazing space.

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I said a long time ago, I would post the Zodiac video. Well.. thanks to David for once again exceeding all my expectations and my son Christopher for writing amazing music to support my habit, here’s the video for Zodiac.

Updates are coming soon with nicer photos. R&H has been a bit of a logistical effort. The frames are complete and Saturday morning the mechanics will also be complete. Here’s the frame before finishing.

Front view of Rattle & Hum

Provocation is at the powder coating tonight. Here’s a picture of it without all the welding done and with out all the interior parts installed.  Stay tuned, tomorrow it will look like one of my completed pieces.

Provocation

Now that Circle has been completed or at least isn’t haunting me at home, it’s time to get the piece for ArtProduce together. This is another large piece. Here’s the model for scale.

Rattle and Hum Model

Those cages hold a steel panel that vibrates based on your relative position to each cage. They are independent of each other and somewhat random. The scale is that these should be about 8 feet tall and about 3 feet wide.

The basic electronics is done and works with a salvaged drill motor. Sometimes you have to improvise. I am hopeful that a drill motor has enough torque to rattle the panel. Here’s the electronics. Yes the drill is spinning.

Rattle and Hum Electronics

Thanks to everyone who came out. For those of you who weren’t able to make it, here’s a video of the Circle of Complication in motion. Click on the link to open the video   Circle of Complication Video

And an image of the piece

Circle in work

And one last view of the whole installation at Sushi.

Circle installation at Sushi

Ok, most of you know this already, but.. the next show is at Sushi Performance Gallery in downtown San Diego.  I’m very happy to be showing there, it’s a great venue and some excellent artists have been there and will be there in the future. It’s hard for me to imagine being in the same venue as some of the people, but suffice it to say, I’m really honored and happy about it. The piece I am showing is the Circle of Complication piece. This is the first time it will be shown and I’m really happy with how it works. I’m also happy with how much I can play with it over the coming months. My good friend Brian came over last night to photo the piece and as usual, his photography is perfect. Here’s what he shot.

Circle of Complication in work

And he also did a nifty little detail that he sent.

Circle pen holders.

And one of it moving along…

Circle in motion

So.. please consider this as an invite to Sushi next Friday, from 6 to 9 PM and the circle will be spinning and drawing.

http://sushiart.org/

Circle has taught me so much. I still like the piece and what it does, but I am honestly looking forward to looking back. This piece had every unknown issue come up and require attention. Today was a few of them, from the level translators on the microcontroller board causing me an issue to the needing a separate battery circuit for the stepper. 

Basic operation is good. It is doing what it’s supposed to. Mostly. Here’s a video of the main trolley swinging back and forth.Circle trolley video

It’s a maze of wires and things right now, but here’s a picture of the control arm so you can see most of what’s happening.

Circle Armature

Sometimes it seems like nothing is happening and then everything does. Circle has been a constant source of learning, design and testing. Finally I am at a point where the frame, base and arm all could be put together. My friend Jorge has done an amazing job with the metal work. He has taught me so much about working with metal and really made this whole project a nice time. We have spent a lot of time working on it and had a lot of fun.  These photos don’t even tell the story of all the design work that occurred on this project. The bracket for the two servo motors is still in work, but that will bolt on this weekend and I will be testing software all weekend.

Circle main view

Detail of colors

Well.. It’s certainly living up to the name… circle of complications has been a design challenge. We started working last week and felt that we were on a good path of completion and thought today would be about a four hour day. Here’s our day start..

Circle of Complication frame

At the end of a long day, with various design pitfalls along the way and usually a lot of discussion, head scratching and then laughing , we have something that looks a lot like what it should look like.

Circle mostly done

There’s a some detail left to the imagination here. Imagine all the things on the table, not there and instead the nice birch wooden drawing surface in place. The arm is basically complete, all that’s left is to weld the tray on that holds the electronics, battery and the pens. Then to powder coating and then final assembly. The software will still need some work, but mostly to refine and such. There also may be some limit switches mounted on the arm assembly.

Detail of arm assembly

Well… Circle of Complication is in full design/debug. Turns out it was named correctly. I’m learning things about motors I would rather have had not. The final design of this piece has one stepper motor, one DC motor and two servo motors. The stepper motor has turned out to be quite a little riddle to solve. I’ll spare everyone the details on that one, but I had some issues that really took work to solve.

Main board and stepper driver

DC drive motor and two servos

Stepper motor on mount

Main arm with actuator and DC drive motor in layout

That last photo is the linear actuator on a board that I drew a 1″x1″ grid on for layout. The blue wheel on the top left is the main drive wheel. The stepper motor mounts on this linear actuator to slide the pens back and forth on the arm. As the drive wheel turns the whole arm, the actuator goes in and out, changing the effective drawing radius. I can also control the servo motors which are what hold the pens and actually make the drawing.  The overall arm swing is about 30″ so the base will be 60″x60″ wide. This is a big piece.

Fabrication of the mechanical portion starts this Tuesday.  Will post pictures soon.