language of praise

/*final documentation to follow*/

this project evolved organically as it became clear that my original idea of recreating the city’s light grid on a garment would not only be an electrical and financial disaster, but not necessarily that interesting either. the final dress is, i think, much more interesting as a garment, as well as a soft sculpture, than was my original idea. although at press time i haven’t fixed all of the electronic issues, i think that in the end, what is most interesting will be actually wearing the dress out places– whether such excursions are site-specific performances that have to do with a location, or whether the excursion itself could suffice as a performance, will be, i think, contingent on getting the system working better and maybe adding another arduino so that i can increase the granularity of places represented on the dress.

on june 8th, i told eunsu that i wanted to get the electronics actually working as soon as possible, for fear that if i “faked it” (ie, didn’t use the GPS), that i would never come back to the project. she told me that while that was a noble thought, to keep in mind what originally drew me to the project, and that maybe doing some performances, even if the electronics aren’t in their ideal state, might help accomplish that. judging by how this week has gone and the amount of academic work i’ve been able to sustain after the end of the quarter, i think she is right.

regardless of whether i continue with this specific project after a few last tweaks, or become immersed in wearable-new-media-art-garments, i am glad that i finally got to investigate electronic textiles in this project, and i know that i will continue to be fascinated by corporal inscriptions and the intersections of new media and the body.

the real issue

ultimately, the real issue is how long it takes to sew each trace. i wanted to do a wearable for the final because i knew that sewing would be a much more appealing way for me to work with electronics and coding, but i didn’t realize just how finicky the traces would be, or how time-consuming it is to hand sew each trace and making sure that they are large enough to conduct a decent amount of current.

and, because the prototype worked great and the second version worked decently just with machine sewing, i didn’t hit this speed bump until way late in the game. i may have had a blow out.

deadline = dead LED

project due for 202 today, no sleep last night, not really the night before, or before that…

but, good news is the body of the dress is done, so next step is sewing on some traces and getting this stuff to work… but, with time running out i cheated a little for 202 and didn’t end up even hooking up the GPS to get information to turn on the LEDs– i only sewed on seven lights, and i just coded the LED that represented Raitt hall to always be one when the battery was on; next step would be improvising a performance as a means to present the dress to my classmates.

since the dress is visualizing my current location, i decided to underscore the  “you are here” idea, since i always use maps and reorient them such that they are facing the way i am currently facing– and i decided to reorient my body so that my dress was oriented to how i felt i was oriented within the city, and to provide a juxtaposition with a campus map showing the viewer their current locaiton within the quad.

i was inverted and trying to hold a position for map 15-20 minutes during the passing period and for the first few minutes of class time (while eunsu tried to find me; i thought i was being kind of obnoxius but she thought i camoflaged well). i hadn’t really checked the resistance of the traces though, and the light started fading pretty quickly; also, it was super bright out so even before i fried the LED it was a little hard to see in the sun. also, i gave myself a nasty scrape on the nape of my neck from trying to do a headstand.

but really, the worst part would be that the feedback came as a trickle, and most of it was directed at the construction and object of the dress (beautiful, pretty, etc) instead of at the idea, the performance, or the different iterations i could do with the dress. eunsu says there’s another step to go still. i don’t know how i’ll get there.

(re)visions

since the the code for the prototype worked, the main issue after that stage seems to be how to revise the dress so that it is more interesting as an object, and as a prop in a performance.

roxie lent me a book called “you are here” about personal maps created by different artists for various purposes, and i started thinking about how i orient myself within the city. i tried drawing several maps based on how the distances and directions feel to me when i am moving through the city– which roads i take, how long, curvy, hilly, etc, they are; whether i get there on foot, bike, or driving– and came out with a bunch of nonsensical scribbles because everything overlapped and had little to do with an actual cartesian map. i tried again and was able to consolidate it into one, but when i tried to transcribe that into a dress, it of course changed how i perceived location and distance.

i also decided that the materials needed to change a little; while i was drawn to how the toule looked like the designs for water current on topographic maps, it was scratchy and not as aesthetically pleasing as i’d imagined. spending some time thinking about how dimensional and architectural i wanted the final garment to be led me to chose a much heavier and grey fabric, which references the color of the city as well as how its geometry remains a “grey area” for me; i also invested in rigilene and interfacing to start giving some support and shape to the dress. my geometry is definitely a little rusty, and i ended up cutting a base that was way too bu to fit the seams of the dress i’d constructed, but it ended up working better i think, because it gave me the flexibility to create the boundaries of the city as projections around the hem, with the places that feel furthest away getting an added dimensionality. while i was constructing them i started to think of the dress as less of a garment and more of a wearable soft sculpture.

a quick meeting with eunsu and annabel with the new dress led me to cut several large sections for the city’s bodies of water– i wish i had designed the dress with that in mind, because it was hard to go back and cut away material that was unplanned for (with the projections already attached and insets of fragile silk, no less)

over the course of the year, when everyone is spending way too much money on their projects and is up all night in the studio trying to create something to present, i’ve had this romantic idea that it’s kind of like project runway. but now, having seen several sunrises just trying to get the dress constructed, not even having started on the final electronics, the idea is less rose-tinted. this thing is, like, impossible.

i will never be on project runway

where my pres(entations) @?

plan: to use same blog title eventually, with a different post, to tell you where the performances will be.

currently, though, this post is to tell you that i am freaking out. why did i go to portland for memorial day? i don’t know. i’m an idiot. not that i have been doing less work here, probably more than i would at home (catching up on some reading i’ve been feigning in my spanish class). but it has hit me that the deadline is rapidly approaching and i am not sure what i will have to show for it.

options, along with cons (there are no pros at this point):

dress itself, on me, or on mannequin (boring)

performance @ site (scary)

documentation of performance- video (would have to edit, also, performances might suck)

documentation of performance- photo (i can’t be behind the camera, so i have to relinquish some artistic control; then there is the issue of presenting photos– on a computer? in print? hung up in the observatory?)

maybe some kind of seemingly unrelated self mutilation would be suffcient….

Prototypical

prototypes were due today… cool it works, but…

+we already know you’re here, so why do we need that data visualized?

+cartesian map is the best bet, or …?

+scavenger hunt? somewhere inappropriate to wear dress? to be at all? or covered in blinking lights?

+how is this communicating an experience, or making us see city in different way?

+why do we care?

Coding Issues

really, the issue was getting the GPS working– it was really finicky to solder and wire up– but once it started talking to arduino, I altered some code I found on ladyada’s site and was able to define neighborhoods such that certain areas turn on certain leds…. so that all works great…. but now its performance/sewing/why is it art crunch time.

equipment/circuit diagram

equipment

+lilypad arduino

+lilypad power source, AAA battery

+ GPS module

+LED sequins (up to 36)

+conductive thread

+fabric, thread, interfacing for dress construction

+more patience, geometry skills, and sewing talent than i currently have

states diagram

Mechanics/Fabrication Issues

Number one issue as far as fabrication goes: getting my supplies!

I ordered LED sequins, a GPS module, Lilypad Arduino Main Board and power supply, 2-ply and 4-ply conductive thread… and only received half the order (ie, the LEDs, power supply, and the GPS), but I think that as far as prototyping and experimenting go, I really need the conductive thread!

In the meantime, I made some of my own LED sequins following one of Leah’s early tutorials from Colorado State, when she was first experimenting with how to create an E-textile Kit, by twisting the anode and cathode leads to make the LEDs sewable. However, without the conductive thread I ran into some issues when creating my matrix; namely, 30-gauge wire is too flimsy to sew with or to attach to LEDs to make connections when the sheathing is removed. Before I realized this, I definitely spent several hours making a matrix with enamel coated wire (read: can’t remove sheathing)– it shows what the matrix will look like, but it doesn’t conduct electricity.

As far as coding goes, I’ve been looking at how to parse out data from the GPS, and have created a basic 2×2 LED matrix that gives me individual control of 4 LEDs:

The code running those four needs to be refined to use arrays more effectively; right now I am digitally writing the pin arrays HIGH and LOW, but I think that a byte array sending 1’s and 0’s to each pin would probably be easier to manage once I get 36 LEDs on the grid.

Supposedly, the rest of my supplies should be coming this week, so until then I’m going to keep working with a breadboard prototype of the matrix (probably need a bigger board…), then I’m going to experiment with the conductive thread in creating a matrix.