about me¶
Hi I’m Jonah Marrs, a designer interested in electronics and computation based in Paris. I have a background in liberal arts, design and technology.
Here’s my personal website: marrs.io
exploding files in time¶
By manipulating the objects in a file to reflect the order in which the file’s elements are found in the internal index, we can create reifications of a file’s index. This process can be applied to 3D files to create “index models”. The file components can be stretched upwards like a scroll in virtual space to reveal the sequence in which the elements are stored in a file.
These index or time-lapse representations reveal different patterns which can be easily distinguished from one another. An analysis of files output from eight different software modeling programs (above) reveals a variety of strategies in the sequencing of the elements of a triangulated hemisphere. Some programs (Type A) construct a hemisphere as a spiraling surface (like an orange peel) while others (Type B) sequence this object as series of slices (like quarters of an orange). Programs of Type C appear to have no logical order in their triangle indices. Each index drawing represents a kind of fingerprint, or DNA code, stored in a file which identifies a particular sequencing priority (whether human or computer-derived).
“Index model” of triangles (first at the bottom, last at the top) describing hemispheres from files output by various 3D modeling programs.
By manipulating the objects in a file to reflect the order in which the file’s elements are found in the index, we can create visualizations, or reifications, of a file’s index. This process can be applied to 2D files, to produce “index drawings”, or to 3D files, to create “index models”. In both cases the file components can be stretched upwards like a scroll in virtual space to reveal the sequence in which the elements are stored in a file. These “index” representations reveal different patterns which can be easily distinguished from one another. An analysis of files output from eight different software modeling programs (above) reveals a variety of strategies in the sequencing of the elements of a triangulated hemisphere. Some programs (Type A) record a hemisphere as a spiraling surface (like an orange peel) while others (Type B) sequence this object as series of slices (like quarters of an orange). Programs of Type C appear to have no logical order in their triangle indices.The “index drawings” below reveal different priorities in the sequencing of drawing components. Each index drawing represents a kind of fingerprint, or DNA code, stored in a file which identifies a particular sequencing priority (whether human or computer-derived).
Read more here: https://www.marrs.io/autodesk-air/
the architecture of sleep¶
Sleep Studio investigates the indeterminate realm of the unconscious to explore new forms of architecture. After reimagining a traditional sleeping unit (bed) as an interface with the unconscious, individual sleep pods were finally agglomerated into protypical collective sleeping spaces.
Prototype #1: The student dormitory consists of a mobile preparation module, equipped with showers, lockers and change rooms, which leads to the pod entry dock. Once ensconced in a sleep pod, students ascend (with the help of an automated winch system and a helium filled region) as they nod off. The altitude of the floating pods is computer-controlled to relate to the level of consciousness of the user inside (the higher up the less brain activity). To passers by, the sleeping pods taken as a whole produce a kind of map of the collective consciousness of the student body at any given time.
Read more here: https://www.marrs.io/sleep-studio/
CRT vector controller¶
CRT displays are not rendered just once, like plots and meshes, but constantly refreshed at least 30 times a second, creating cyclical patterns when recorded over time. Sean Cubitt writes that in video display on modern TVs “time becomes material”. The same is true with earlier display technologies like the CRT. As a space to explore the temporality of computer representation in real time with physical circuits, the CRT display is ideal.
The CRTC1 allows for variation of several display parameters:
-By turning on and off switches in the two Dual In-Line (DIP) switch sets, bits can be removed from the bytes being sent from the microchip to the ADCs where they are converted into voltage levels.
-Two flip switches allow for the X or Y channels to be individually turned ‘on’ or ‘off.’
-Two potentiometers allow for varying of the low-pass filter’s time-constant (RC), the factor which slows the movement of the beam between points to produce lines on our CRT screen.
-Finally, a potentiometer which is polled by the microchip is used to vary the delay time between the sending of bytes to the ADC to be converted into voltages. This knob functions as the refresh rate control, changing the overall speed at which the CRT screen is redrawing over the same image.
Full description in my thesis document here: http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/118575?show=full
CNC machines¶
This is a SCARA robot I designed first to be 3D printed and then to be milled from HDPE. The most complex part is the bearing assembly at the base.
See the project development here: https://www.marrs.io/robot-arm/
This is a CNC foam cutter using both pullies and a threaded bearing system:
See the project development here: https://www.marrs.io/medium-sized-cnc-foam-cutter-with-leon-reboul/
mini CNC machines from e-waste¶
A small plotter made from recycled E-Waste and controlled with GRBL.
Here is my instructable : https://www.instructables.com/DIY-Mini-Plotter/
A mini CNC foam cutter made from a compact photo printer, a computer DVD drive and a hair drier.
Read more here: https://www.instructables.com/Mini-CNC-Foam-Cutter/
mini robotic platforms¶
The goal of this project is to develop a miniature chassis to experiment with very basic swarm robots. The prime inspiration is James McLurkin’s fantastic MIT project from the early 1990’s http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/ants/.
Features:
-Approximately under 2″ cubed and designed to be compact.
-All electronics powered by single Lithium Ion Battery (3.7V).
-All electronics relatively inexpensive (sensors all under or around 7$ each),- though the chain drive is a bit costly.
The second platform is stationary and allows a solar panel to move to better face the sun. It uses stepper motors instead of DC gearmotors.
electronics kits¶
A series of PCBs and graphic aids to learn about electronics. The main idea here is that each kit teaching some basic principle of electronics, and that it makes the theory portion of electronics more hands on and fun. The kits themselves should be beautiful, so that the students want to keep them, and therefore continue to have access to the learning they represent. The packaging should be minimal and the idea is to make everything in house. Because we won’t have massive numbers of students we can do small production runs to prepare the kits on a just in time basis using the lasercutter and printer. We can also get the students to help prepare their own kits, by finding the parts and even preparing the boards and packaging.
Read mode here: https://www.marrs.io/electronics-101/
BEAM solar robots¶
Robots build around solar engine circuits by Mark W. Tilden in the 1990s which make small critters spin, hop, vibrate or seek the sun.
3D display + controller¶
As a summer intern at Midnight Commercial in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, I was tasked with developing a prototype for a 3D monitor. The process began with research into existing means of representing three-dimensional forms in various ways. With the guidance of the M.C. team, I settled on using a material with electronically-controlled opacity called Smart Film. This material was laser-cut into triangles and inserted into a form derived from the Marching Cubes algorithm.
Marching Cubes is an algorithm used to create meshes invented in the late 1980’s. It works by first dividing a model into an array of cubes, and then categorizing each cube as one of fourteen types of surface-cube intersections.
I designed and prototyped a custom smart film triangle controller that could vary the opacity of different triangles in the Marching Cube-inspired infrastructure. The controller can represent any 3D form in space, albeit with relatively low resolution. The process involved designing PCBs in Eagle, assembling and testing them in the electronics lab, lasercutting smart film into triangles, and printing the Marching Cube infrastructure out of clear resin on a Formlabs printer.
Read more here: https://www.marrs.io/marching-cubes-display/
robot arm light painting¶
Architects typically a robot arm to move tools along paths, and the arm uses its inverse kinematic solver to achieve the necessary angles over time. However, if we were to move joints themselves, by so-called joint interpolation, we would discover resultant end-effector paths which relate to the way the robot arm is physically embodied. What kinds of forms could result from exploring the way a robot arm “wants” to move?
Using a Kinematic model of a master robot (a configutation file which specifies arm-lengths, offsets and joint attitudes of the robot), an Inverse Kinematic Solver calculates the possible positions of the arm components that satisfy the user-defined tool path along its length.
To visualize Inverse Kinematic solutions, the movements of the robotic arm’s elbow and shoulder can be traced while following a given end-effector tool path in a virtual simulator. Since more than one way of satisfying the end-effector constraints is usually possible, there exists a series of possible joint paths which could be visualized to represent a kind of “solution space” for the given tool path.
Read more here https://www.marrs.io/robot-light-painting/
architectural design¶
An exposition hall consisting of a series of volumes which appear to lift off the ground moving from one end of the building to the other longitudinally. The volumes begin as low-walled rooms, creating a series of smaller spaces, and end as sky lights, hanging dramatically above a larger open gathering space.
Read mode here: https://www.marrs.io/exposition-space-no-1/
