01 — Final Project Research

List item summary: Below is the first step I took to narrow down what it is I wanted to create.

Techniques/ Physical Medias

Broadly below are a few concepts I am interested in playing with:

• Plasma — creating some kind of plasma field for objects to pass through i.e. lighting a match or controlled arcing of conductive material. Plasma Channel Youtube

• Microfluidics/ Fluid transfer — I have wanted to create piece that allows me to automously create and reset paint mixing in water. Inspiration for this was the Fab Academy alum Montse Ciges.

• Fountains in general — Really like the work of Lily Clark and Moonsepeo. I think there is a lot to expand on here.

• Lights Lasers and Diachroic— Astro the Baptist and Lachlan Turchzan come to mind.

• Working With Rock / Stone — Freind and fellow burner Benjamin Langholz comes to mind.

• Shou Sugi Ban — Japanese wood charring / preserving technique.

Themes

• Cyclical to induce meditative / contemplative engagement — I like kinetic work that focuses on a simple cylce that repeats over time. This is instead of it being a performance with a clear beggining middle and end. The work develops as a result of the time you choose to spend with it thus the beggining middle and end of the experience are distinguished through the span of time you choose to engage with the work.

• A sense of real stakes or actual risk— Benjamin’s project Beam for Burning Man 2024 is a good example of this. This invites the particepant into an experience or narrative that has distinct point of tension and release.

• Humorous — Something that playfully prods the viewer or messes with their expectations. Similiar to risk it has a component of tension and release.

02 — My Final Project Working Plan: Three / Basin

List item summary: This is the project ;) or at least the final project will be some variation of these themes/ ideas.

How I can make people notice it

When I create art my biggest worry is that the work will be ignored or the response of it will be one of apathy. I have poured many hours into work or events only to have it fall completely flat. I feel like that leaves me two options either create something really offensive.

Most art is ignored or forgotten wether it is technically good or even great. So how do I create something that is memorable? I think there a few ways to approach this. One approach is to make something really crass, gross, violent etc. like those T-Shirts that souvinear shops sell in El Born that say like “Fuck Me” or something. This is basically how thumbnails work on social media websites often playing off of our impulse of disgust. This is a kind of High jack of our senses that pisses me off… Anyways more to say here, but moving on…

What I am personally drawn to

As an artist I keep on coming back to the idea that I want to prompt the kind of feeling and experience that is what I am often searching for. This is a feeling that what I am doing is meaningful, and my attention is pointed singularly in a specific direction and not back at myself (rumination). We do live in attention economy and the downside of this is a feeling of constantly feeling destablized as our focus is pulled in one direction than another. For this I want to create a meditative experience.

Philosophically

I am drawn to creating work and have a preference for work that prompts a phenomnological experience of something rather than being about something. That is the particpant does not need to ‘get’ the work as a prerequisite to the experiencing the work.

So what the is it?

Scenography of Basin / Three—

As you enter an empty room you notice a ploom of water vapor coming from the center of a polished disc illuminated with a warm white spotlight. Around this disc you see two people on opposite sides cross legged sitting on meditation cushions (zafu). You go to the last available cushion and sit. There is a small plinth underneath the disc that keeps it elevated so you can see the water droplets that gently fall into the bowl. On the floor where you are sitting their is a wristband that you were told that can track your heartrate. You put the wristband on. After sitting for 10 min and relaxing a bit you notice that a water drop starts dropping directly in front of you into the basin. You start smelling an aroma of eucalyptous grow stronger the longer you sit as the ploom of steam comes from the center of the basin.

Basic description—

• A polished elevated water pan with three meditation cushions placed around it. Two spotlights shine on the pan from above to project a caustic effect on the ceiling. Below the water pan and in front of each seat is a wristband that samples pulserate. Three pumps are elevated and adjacent to each meditation chair. Each pump will drop one drop of water at a rate defined by the particepants pulse.

Inital Thoughts on Code Behaviors—

• Feeds a clean input to be interpreted from the wired heart sensors. Software needs a boot up sequence that lasts for 30 second to get a stable pulse before it starts interpreting it. This is also so the particepant collects themself and there is some anticepation.

• All heartbeat sensors feed a whole number numeral of beats into the controller on their own channel.

• Each peristaltic pump drive has its own control channel which is in turn linked to the global value [chair position 1,2,3]

• An acessable potentiometer controls the ratio of drop / per pulse and a pot to tweak pulse volume.

• If a thermal sensor is present on the wristband this can be used as an initial pushbutton togle that is “held on” and queries every 30 second if a wristband is active before it turns the nebulizer off.

Technical Project Planning

Random Fire Experiments—

• Put some Petroleum jelly in a metal dish and drop a match in it

• Set up an induction heater that heat up bits of metal held with tongs and drop metal inget through the induction heater into a pool of water to quench it.

• Light butane soaked cotton ball on fire, drop into water.

  [cotton ball igniter / dropper]

Draft: Spiral Development Path—

1. Start with a dish and a single pump setup with rate control and cycle duration control through two serperate pots. Create a software and hardware setup that allows you to accurately dose the liquid and characterize the height the dropper can be at.

2. Integrate Pulse sensor and try to get it to trigger pump cycle every fourth beat.

3. Integrate all 3 pump and pulse capturing systems.

4. Move from demo setup to final polished piece including simple pully system to refill overhead water dropper.

Specialty Component Working BOM

• Xiao MCU x2

• Pulse /Pulse Ox
  • Sparkfun
  • Adafruit
  • DFR Robot
  • Seed Wireless MM wave sensor

• Lora Transmiter (for wireless version)

• Realiable / Percise Peristaltic Pump

• Relay for controlling nebulizing diffuser

Hardware / Details and Sourcing

• Steel bowl
  • Fire pit
  • Paella Pan
  • Parabolic Mirror

• Adjustable Spotlight

• Plinth
  • Make out charred wood
  • Make out of glass bricks

• 3D Print filament for dropper assembly
  • ABS / PETG / PETG CF

• 3D print filament (sculptural)
  • Muted white polyterra PLA

Other Stuff

• Carrier oil
  • Jojoba Oil

• Essential oil blend
  • Muji
  • Check out the scent profiles at Aesop?