Saturday, December 19, 2009

that's all

Overall, I enjoyed the course. I loved the first half especially. Learning to program was one of my favorite academic experiences. I sat in the kitchen of my coop- ALL the engineers in the house super jealous that I got to play with an Arduino board- trying to figure out how to wire the thing up. After the wiring, I began to program. THIS is the kind of learning I can get into. Immediate feedback of whether it works or not. Literally telling the computer what I wanted the Arduino board to do, then watching it either do it or not do it, and problem solving from there. I worked on this for hours, all night, it was satisfying and I could not pull myself away. Nor could the engineers in the house pull themselves away from watching the art student attempt to write code for this apparently really fun little device. They watched me on and off all night, just hoping my face would look panicked and upset so they could run over and sit down next to me to help. Unfortunate for them, me and the Arduino board got a long great, and the first time programming and making a lamp went really well, I was so sad the next day to unwire it!

I really enjoyed some of the conversations we had. The last day, although we were all completely sleep deprived, held great conversation. It was nice to have people from outside of the class involved, and hear their input and suggestions. I really gained a lot from that. The workshops we had in class were very beneficial as well, and again, I thought having other people come in and talk to us about their careers and then about our projects was very helpful.

With my final project, I was very pleased. A few things were disappointing, and I really would love to see it work moving all the panels. I would love to see a larger version of this and see the shadows created below. I think it has a lot of potential ecspecially with the idea that the entire panel could be the solar surface, and even the reduction of snow accumulation- although questioned in class- i think has potential, and is something that could be improved upon. I would love to have this even more refined, all the details are important, and we are missing some neatness with the materials. I am extremely happy, however, that it functioned and moved the way we had wanted. We have the interaction with the sun as well as a human (in the gallery setting) stimulus.

I hope this class continues and would love to see projects from other groups of students. That is what has been so interesting throughout the semester. Watching different groups present extremely different approaches to one problem/prompt. The personalities, habits, and skills of the different group members is what produces the final project, and I would love to stay involved/see what future classes and groups produce.

time crunch

I find it extremely interesting that all four groups were in the gallery the two nights before constructing and installing their work in the most efficient manners of work I had seen for this entire project. The time crunch truly creates efficiency and time management, and if there were a way to create that sort of response without the looming deadline, than people would be incredibly successful (or maybe that is the trick of those who are). This is something we have dealt with all semester, and something most people have dealt with much of their lives. The feelings that you can work on it later, procrastination. Where does it come from and why is it so powerful?

This is not to say people did no work on the project all semester, but the number of prototypes each group had were a fraction of what they should have been. I just wonder how to get rid of this habit we all have of putting things off until there is a fearful deadline that must be met, and I think of the amazing things we could do should we use all of our time and use it wisely...

Thursday, December 17, 2009

interdisciplinary work

The interdisciplinary aspect of this class was great. I think that these three fields and teach and learn a lot from each other, and that working together is critical in any one of their success. That was the major reason I signed up for the class, and even through frustration and seeming disaster, I still look view that as the most important part of the class.

It only makes sense that people learn to work with other people, for it working only with other art students for the rest of my life is not something i want, nor plan on happening. I think this is true for all disciplines. Whether or not any of us got better at working with other people can be up to speculation, however, I suppose it was quite the test, and we got a lot of practice!

It was great to get a better understanding of what other students are learning. Watching what other students excelled in or wanted to learn about was interesting.

I worked a lot with johanna and making decisions about the project as well as with the posters and pictures. When her and I sat down we made a ton of progress. It was much easier to work the two of us on the details than with the whole group, because decisions just needed to be made. We drew out pictures and talked about how everything would fit together and be structured. This was a huge step, for we were able to all be on board and have a greater understanding of the functioning of the project.

We then spent a lot of time taking pictures of the progress, editing, creating a template for the posters, and picking graphics and pictures that we wanted on the posters. We met a lot throughout the last three weeks to discuss various options and kept each other updated with newer versions. I was able to learn inDesign and incorporate work from everyone involved in the project. I spent a lot of time going back through our older brainstormings and inspirations. I wrote up all the text discussing goals and inspirations as well as the process we took to accomplish the project.

I also worked on the entire progress section of the paper. I went back and looked at our progress and how we got there. I discussed inspirations and goals (like in the poster), and our work process.

When it came down to construction, I was very excited, because that was something I really like to be a part of. I learned a lot about soldering and about solar panels. We did a ton of gluing, soldering, drilling, testing, and finger crossing that nothing would go incredibly wrong!

The begining of the class started off much more promising in terms of learning from the interdisciplinary aspect of the group. We were learning about alternative energy and each doing our own programming. People were brainstorming together, using different machines, constructing together, and really keeping each other updated. I would get emails daily from my group about what people were working on, and architects would be programming while engineers would be constructing, and art students would be creating files in digital project. THIS is what the class was meant to be.

For the final project I saw a lot less of this in my group (however I know it was still prevalent in others). Art and Architecture students were using digital project, constructing, etc, while engineers were programming. There were many weeks where group meetings existed only between the engineers or the architects. People were working on what they knew how to do instead of really stepping outside of the box. Overall, I feel this is true, although I do acknowledge that I have taken away a number of skills I DEFINITELY did not have before the class. I learned to solder and a lot about construction and such. I would love to have done a lot more programming and arduino work, for that was really interesting and fun.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

final construction

To see our smart surface in action, click here for videos by Chris.

Day two of actual we-have-to-build-everything-NOW began early and continued onto the morning of December 11, 2009. Everyone's moods were dramatically different, and there was a bit of tension building up, which all had to be ignored so we could get this thing working!

We had people working on different things. We cleaned off all our panels, and drilled the servos into our structure. We made significant progress, and were getting very excited. There were issues, however, with regards to how we wanted it mounted, drilled into the wall, standing on the ground, or on a table? We worked all night and finally when we were ready to leave, we double checked the servos, and none of them worked. Nothing turned.
We had no idea what went wrong, but thanks to our motivated, incredible, genius of an engineer (jason!), movement returned.

snow covered solar panels

Living in Michigan we are vulnerable to a wide array of weather conditions ranging from sunny days, to dreary rainstorms, to freezing temperatures and massive snowfall. This is a setback for eco-friendly residents yearning to power their homes with energy produced by the sun. Our solar array protects itself from the elements of the not-always-ideal Michigan outdoors,
while taking a new direction from standard solar fields by adopting an animated surface.
Looking at other solutions that have already been discovered, I found the roof rake. This allows for one to "easily" reach his or her roof in attempts to scrape off the accumulation of snow. Although a viable option, it appears as just another chore added to the list. And this one involves cold weather, and falling snow... snow being pulled off the roof, and potentially right on top of you... this either meant I wasn't looking hard enough, or that maybe there WAS potential for our snow removing solar panels...?

We thought about a heating device, although were uninspired, and unprepared for creating such a surface. We really wanted the animation of the surface and were turned off by the heating device which already exists in many surfaces to prevent ice/snow accumulation.

As if shoveling the sidewalks isn't enough.

I began to wonder whether our solar panels, even when facing the snow covered grounds of Michigan, would be collecting sunlight due to the reflections from the piles of snow...
I assume they would be less efficient due to light that is lost via reflection, but it is definitely something I want to look into.

happy accident?

Although not our original goal, we soon discovered (with the help of our professors) that the shape of our panels, could be significant with regards to the surface are of the solar cells as well as shading that occurs with solar cells that track the sun. With this leaf type shape, when the panels would rotate, they would not shade the adjacent panels- so we were led to believe. This could be a very happy accident-and we wanted to test it.

Mat took our shapes and did a quick study.

We found that this actually would be the case, and therefore increased efficiency would result. This was very exciting, and when we looked more closely at the actual methods of producing solar cells, we discovered that it is unlikely that making the entire panel (and getting rid of the plastic, formica, and small solar cells) a solar cell, would significantly increase efficiency, and decrease other materials we needed for this project (plastic and formica). Because the process of making solar cells involves using a mold to aquire the desired shape (usually squares or rectangles), a mold of one of our panels could be used instead. This would significantly increase surface space, and efficiency.

division of labor

We were having difficulties dividing up work before we actually cut out the plastic and had materials ready. Because only one person was working on these files, the other people would be working on other things such as diagrams, posters, designing the structure, programming, etc.

I began work on the posters that we would want to hang behind the posters. I got a lot of help from Johanna, who had a very clear sense of what she liked, didnt like, what worked, and what didnt. This was very helpful, because I can spend many hours just moving things around, playing with how things look, etc. The two of us completed the template for our posters, and decided what kind of images and information we would want to display. I wrote up the text, gathered images and renderings, and made sure that everything between the white paper and the poster were on track.

I also worked with Michelle on the white paper. I studied our process, found images, and wrote up a few pages that could be used.

Michelle worked on writing the white paper, updating it to our current project aspirations. Jason, although in Boston, worked HARD on the programming, and really kept us all up to date with what was going on with his work. Mat, Chris, and Johanna did a lot of renderings and designing. They created the files for the router, as well.

These were a few tasks that were done on our own, when not meeting together.