This is the first attempt with my drawing machine. I am happy with the drawings and the functionality. The next step is to work on aesthetic and accuracy. I will have more on this soon.

Time Lapse Video

This is how to make The Ultimate Throwie Throwie and get out of jail for as cheap as possible. First you will need the following:

1. About 10 -12 LED Throwies
2. A fan - We found one on the street.
3. A power supply outside.
4. A crowded place for people to watch.

First You will need to find a fan. We found one on the side of the street. Remove the front cover of the fan. This is so that you can put the Throwies on the blades of the fan.

Attach the LED’s so that one is on one side and one on the other. They will hold eachother onto the blades.

You know need to find a place that has power and is crowded. Union Square was the perfect place to release the LED Throwie Throwie. Open the cover of a street lamp. You will just need to unscrew the bolt (usually just hand tight) and open the lid. You will find a plug conveniently for your fan.

You are now ready to let the fan rip. Start the fan on low let it start up and then turn it on high. Stand back and watch the Throwies Throw.

There are some setbacks with the Ultimate Throwie Throwie. Due to the times that we live in the general public may have concerns of the appearances of an LED. If you just so happen to find yourself in trouble with the authorities for such an act. Blame it on art school. I running into such a situation found it a safe and cheap way out of jail.

In all seriousness LED Throwies are a blast but not to be taken lightly. They are an interesting take on public space and graffiti art. Granted they can harm the environment, but they are removable. If you choose to explore the public realm or graffiti art with LED’s don’t take it out on the authorities. See where the stand on the topic, put yourself in their shoes. They have no choice but to take the appropriate actions. The real fight should be against the people that clutter the public space with junk; the crude and intrusive advertisements. Find those targets and “Throwie” them.

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Photos

My tilling program made it into the Parsons does the SIMS show. Although it does not have much to do with the game, I made it work. The program grabs the most popular photos of the sims from Flickr and tiles them out. Go check out the show there are some amazing pieces.

Chelsea Art Museum
556 West 22nd St., NYC

Tues-Sat 12-6, Thurs, 12-8

So the Apple video went live the other day, for the most part it was ok. Of course Apple some how managed to make me sound like a complete and utter nerd with my amazing comment: “Our homework is awesome!”. I may never live that one down, oh well. Any publicity is good publicity. Check out the video here and the site here. I guess that they will make a formal launch later. They are redesigning their education site.

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Site

Well our next task in HomeX was to taxidermy a mouse. This without doubt was the oddest thing I have ever done in school. I added some red LED eyes to make my mouse a little more possessed.

Photos

Update:
The Taxidermy Mouse makes it to Make Blog.

In my HomeX class we built a Arduino board from scratch. I posted step by step photos on how to build your own Arduino.

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Schematic
Board

Well I guess I need to tell the full story since everyone is asking. I was out in South Boston with my friend Ryan. We went to ironically a Graffiti art show that night. After the show we left and were walking around looking for a bar. We walked down the stairs of a bridge near Lucky’s Lounge. When we got under the bridge at street level we looked up and saw the glowing LED Adult Swim Ad. Right off the bat we thought that it was LED Throwies developed by the Graffiti Research Lab. I had to go up there and take a look.

I am currently enrolled at Parsons School of Design in NYC. I took a class called Geek Graffiti a couple of semester ago. In this class we worked in conjunction with the GRL to create technologies for urban communication. I was very familiar with the technology and LED art, so I had an idea what this was. By no means was I scared or thought was a bomb.

A couple of people outside the bar saw me climb the bridge and grab the LED Ad. People around said that they liked the Ad. “It has been up for a couple of weeks, its nice. It turns on at night.” They even mentioned some artist that they thought it was. By no means were these people scared or threatened by the LED Ad.

The Ad was far out on the bridge so I had a hard time getting to it. It was attached with magnets and hard to get off. I told Ryan to catch it but he missed and it broke. We brought it back to his place and started to dissecting it, I wanted to see how the circuit worked. After some testing I found out the construction of it.

The LEDS are attached to a circuit that takes an average level of the light using a photo resistor. Based on the level of light the LEDs will fade on or off. It is powered by 4 D batteries. The Ad life is about 2 - 3 weeks.

Ryan and I documenting the constriction of the piece and posted it to Make Blog and Flickr. This was about two weeks ago. The response was good. A little after this the creator contacted me and said:

“I am glad you got one of the adult swim signs, there are other’s out there as well so keep looking up. We were hoping that people would take them.” After this the story was over, well until the other day in Boston.

After speaking to many reporters I have to say the whole situation is getting out of hand. I respect the police and authorities for acting on the bomb scare. The bomb squad needed to sit back and realize what the Ad was. The word terrorist or bomb should never have been released to the public unless they were certain.

Take a look at this photo and this photo, The bomb squad should have been able to figure this out, before it got out of hand.

Here is a project that I have been working on. The interface is light and water that outputs altered sound. When you break the water streams the sampled sound plays back at different rates. The more you play with one stream the more elaborate the sound becomes.

View Project

Las Pwnistas are featured in Electronic Gaming Monthly. It is in the september issue go out and take a look. Yea!

Geek Graffiti in the New York times. Great article about technology and graffiti. I wanted to be there for the interview but summer classes wouldn’t let me. link