Outside Event 3 - Maker Faire

I'm not sure if I am a bit jaded by the cool stuff we do every day at Mind 2 Matter, or if the Maker Faire was less impressive than the first time around.

I went for the first time last spring and was just in awe of EVERYTHING. This year didn't really have taht same appeal. I felt sort of like "been there, done that" or really "been there, saw that" as a lot of the exhibitors were the same as last year.

There were some changes and they weren't necessarily for the best. The SF Bazaar was moved to the back of the event and in its place was the Start Up Tent. The Start Up Tent was a fraction of the size that the bazaar was last year and this year's bazaar was a fraction of the size as well. There were the usual giant mouse trap, battle pond, etc., and the jr maker's area.

It seems as though the prices for space were jacked way up, as there were fewer exhibitors and a LOT of shared booths.

I did a lot of walking on Saturday (I walked almost 6 miles according to my fitbit) but didn't catch any of the presentations (last year there were some really great talks about sustainability and food sourcing). In all honesty, I felt like I had seen everything after only a few hours and just wandered about re-examining things. I did approach a few of the newer 3D printing companies and asked them to pitch me as I am part of a print on demand company. None of them could really give me any reason to purchase their machines aside from look at the print quality. In looking at the print quality, we get the same quality off our "Fakerbots" so that didn't really sell me. Also, the bulk of the companies there were selling a fairly small build area (usually less than 6'x6'x6') and a high price tag ($2k +). Sure they looked nice sitting on your desktop, but 6" cubed isn't really much to work with.

Ultimaker. A nice looking printer, but not really worth the price tag. 

There was one company that was selling a paste extruder kit that you can add to your existing 3D printer (I am pretty sure we've got one on it's way). They were actually printing with silicone caulking onsite, which makes for a far more flexible print than the current flexible filaments out there.

Of course I checked out some of the subtractive manufacturing companies out there and this desktop CNC mill from Carbide3D was pretty impressive. It was amazingly quiet and did some really detailed and intricate milling work. 

I always check out the laser cutter booths, and the pricing still hasn't come down quite enough for me to purchase one. It's on my list, but at this point our focus is 3D printing and casting, so I can't justify it as a business purchase :) 

The second day I was tasked with getting scanned by every company that offered scanning and get .stl files sent to us to check out the scan quality. I don't have any of the files yet (and some of the companies would not provide access to the file), but I will be completing a review of the scanning for other purposes once I get access to the files. 

Half Dome Honeymoons

Souvenir

Here is a screen capture of the souvenir I designed for the Tourism package. 

It was designed in Adobe Illustrator and TinkerCAD

It will be printed on our new SLA printer and cast in Aluminium before the presentation. 

Outside Event - Jonn Herschend

I stuck around for Jonn Herschend's presentation at SFSU. I can't say that I entirely "get" his work. Especially having seen stills for his work prior to actually seeing his video work. He's got a dry sense of humor. And video isn't necessarily something I have appreciated as an art before.

I had initially seen images of his installation of The Book You Said I Never Returned, which you really need to know the story to have the images make sense. My initial impression was "what the eff is this sh...."

It's a bit more meta than I'm used to. I guess part of me questions what the art actually is. Is it the explanation or is the the work? And if it's the explanation, perhaps you should be a writer. But that's just me.

Jonn is a pretty funny guy and there were a few technical difficulties during the talk.

He's being featured in the Whitney Museum of American Art's Biennial. The piece being featured is called Discussion Questions.

Unfortunately it isn't available in it's entirety to share with you, but I loved it. It was text based (so obviously that made me happy) with a driving dance beat. You are reading the storyline as each PowerPoint slide transitions as the music gains in volume and beats per minute. I seriously loved this piece far more than the rest of his video or installment work. The story was pretty great and the orignal music was pretty good as well.

I'm still not entirely certain how I feel about video as an artistic medium. I still think of it as a part of cinema, which is an art form itself, but to me it seems distinctly different than fine art. Perhaps that's part of the problem with how I am approaching art in general. Not really sure, but it's something to question.

Tourism Package - Change of Plans

After thinking about the amount of work that would go into creating assets for my Silo tour package, I've decided to do something a bit more personal.

I'm going to do a detailed tour of Yosemite, in particular the Panorama Hike. My husband and I did that hike on our honeymoon last year and got some great photos. I was shooting with my panasonic t3 most of the trip, so I have detailed location information embedded in the metadata of the images.

I am still working on the main illustration for my poster (which will be a line drawing illustration) but have been playing with text ideas. I'm using clipping masks in Illustrator to fill my text with photos that I have taken. This is nowhere near the final version, but this is what I have been working on so far.

Just a tip, if you are going to do the Panorama hike, might I suggest the alternate route of the John Muir trail to the valley. The Mist Trail is panic inducing, even if you aren't afraid of heights. Imagine a stairway with a rickety handrail that is wide enough for one person to be on at a time. Now image dozens of people trying to go both up and down the stairway at the same time. All while on wet, slippery rocks.

Poster ideas

My tourist package ideas have been largely centered around one of my favorite series, The Silo Series (WOOL, SHIFT & DUST) by Hugh Howey. Taking place in the future, humanity has been relegated to living in underground silos. The world is closely controlled, with "cleanings" looming over the society as punishment for dissent and any thoughts of (or initiation of) uprising or questioning authority. "Cleanings" are a death sentence where the accused is sent out into the inhospitable world (or so they have been told for generations).

If you haven't read these, I suggest you do so immediately (or at least as soon as school is out because I couldn't stop reading when each volume came out!). I downloaded his new series, SAND, as soon as it came out but I haven't had a chance to sit down and read since I have so much shitty reading to do for school).

My ideas are as follows:

1. A tour package from the lowers (where the mechanics and workers keep the silos running) to the mids (the middle class - farmers, couriers, etc.). Perhaps it's what we would consider an eco-tourist package where people pay to go have the "farming" experience (check out WWOOF - It's a thing). Though now that I type this idea out, it seems more like something that folks from the uppers would do (uppers are the upper class - IT, government, etc).

2. A tour package based on the stories of old (the people of the silos have never been outside, nor were they aware of the existence of anyone outside of their world). A level of the silo has been developed to have a viewing station that presents images of the old world. People can save their chits (currency) to take virtual tours of a world that no longer exists.

3. Tourism between silos. The silo world began with 50 silos (for 50 states). Over the years, some have been eradicated (gassed by leadership due to insurgency and dissent) or through human nature. Eventually some silos began to communicate and create tunnels underground to move between silos. Each silo may have retailed details of the culture of the state they sprung from.

4. The outside world has recovered enough to venture outside. The silo dwellers can tour the dilapidated, vegetation covered ruins of what used to be the United States (eventually they may be able to venture "international travel" but knowledge of vehicles and mechanized travel has largely been lost over hundreds of years of no travel aside from up and down endless flights of stairs).

The Art of Tourism

Our final project is actually one of the more exciting (though it will be time consuming) of the semester. I can't wait to design and print my souvenir! But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I did a bit of research on artists that utilize tourism or some aspect of tourism in their work.

The first thing I came across was a blog post from 2008 about an exhibit in Frankfurt at schirn-kunsthalle called All Inclusive:A Tourist World. The post had me intrigued.

Ho-Yeol Ryu, Airport, 2005

Ho-Yeol Ryu's Flughafen is a great digital compilation of images supposedly taken at Hannover airport. I did find an interesting "debunking" of the image components from an aviation expert but the image is pretty cool nonetheless.

Another image featured was Crowd by Eva Grubinger.

Eva Grubinger Crowd 2007

This installation separated portions of the exhibit hall and people were forced to walk through the queue as though they were moving through a crowded area. 

NL Architects  caught my attention because their work is playful and fun. I normally can't stand architects (they are so smug - a lot like graphic designers, but that is for another post another time). Their actual architectural work isn't super awesome, but they have a series of "virtual realities" that are pretty cool. 

NL Architects Flower Power: Power Plant 2006