on the bus on the way in to derby yesterday i spotted #motivatedmonday in a tweet. it lit me up as i was feeling really motivated and full of energy. i arrived at the mill and immediately set up a makerspace for me to work in.
my making focus were the load sensors and creating a load cell from them. this is one of the parts that will go towards creating the re-imagined snee snaw for the figment festival in august.
my plan with the load cell is to firstly set up this research rig to test it and make it work. once i’ve cracked that i can set to designing the object in which the load cell will be cited. the re-imagined snee snaw will have two load cells connected via bluetooth to the main programme. on saturday i mastered the process of renaming the bluetooth modules and set up a test broadcast to isadora. isadora will form the main engine of the work.
the epidiscope
i’ve spent time with the epidiascope within the museum space. i had the great pleasure of cleaning the object before switching it on to see what it does.
this particular model was donated to the museum in 1974 by queens medical college. from the accompanying manual i learnt that it would have been used to project pages of books, microscope slides and even 3d objects. this was further backed up by a couple of conversations with museum staff who had personal experiences of using an epidiascope.
when we turned the unit on i was quite surprised at how little light was projected. i think i need to investigate this further. the unit remains in the hub for me to play with further.
analogue powerpoint
on monday i presented my responses to two briefs set within the residency. the maker bar and steam tots. part of the team assembled around the table to view the presentation.
steam tots is the working title for a session launching in september in the silk mill space. drawing on my forest school training and additional research i presented about a session based on loose parts play. i covered some of the schemas that children demonstrate and i have to say the idea was well received and i now get to consider what i’ll make to go into the containers of loose parts. for this i hope to be inducted onto using the cnc cutter so i can mass produced lots of circles, squares and triangles.
the other analogue powerpoint presentation was about my ideas for communicating about the maker bar.
again it was well received and we are going to have a look at implimenting something this thursday. once again i see the benefit of placing something on the table as a starting point of discussion.
a foot note to the week.
while making the analogue powerpoint i realised that it was something i could place into the epidiascope to project. from playing with the epidiascope i imagined a small group of us huddled around the object to see what the image looked like. the feeling of being huddled around a light source triggered a thought about how this evokes a feeling like the painting by joseph wright entitled A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery. this painting is on permanent display in the derby museum and art gallery.
