More Helmet Cam Footage

And here's scrimmage footage from the helmet cam:



I can't wait to turn some of this footage into the video that will run through one of the hand-cranked projectors!

Cannibalizing a Scrolling Mouse

So, I'm taking this scrolling mouse (see that red round button - it's important)

and its USB connection and connect it to a laptop running MaxMSPJitter.  A digital Pico projector will also be connected to the laptop.

I took the board out of the mouse and now will need to decide how to connect it to or conceal it in one of the antique hand-crank projectors.

The red scroll button normally connects to the potentiometer on the board. My next task is to create a connection between the crank mechanism of the hand-crank projectors to the potentiometer.  The potentiometer signal will deliver the speed and direction of the cranking to a Jitter patch. The Jitter patch will spit out the rate and direction of the video according to the cranking. The video will play through the digital projector that will eventually be placed somewhere inside the hand-crank projector. This is some fun stuff!!!!

Snippet of Helmet Cam Footage

A little example of the footage from the helmet cam.  It's not edited yet; it's just raw footage:

Antique Projectors - Digital Projectors

I'm turning these antique projectors into interactive digital projectors. First thing to do - find some mice and take them apart to see what I can do with them. More to come!

Alterations

"Each telling of a history, speech, situation, proclamation, translation, or revelation had to be altered, at least a little, to fit its times or the customs of its hearer. And so convincingly did he have to sell his words, throwing himself into them with the passion of a true believer, that it became increasingly worrisome for him to remember for whom he had invented which chronicle, revealed what secrets, claimed which kinship, or inserted which omissions..."

This is a quote from "The Book of Portraiture," specifically the first chapter. The authentic, transparent depiction of the women I interview for my project is of the utmost concern of mine. I cannot deny that I have biases. All I can do is be honest with them. This is resting heavily on my mind these days.

Oh, and why did I post these particular pictures? Appearances and functionality of objects can change and so can the stories we tell to describe them. My guess is that the way I retell the stories about my curly hair or my blistered feet could also change over time. Memory also changes. The point is to make the effort to use the best pictures to tell the stories so at least they stay close to original intention of the stories they represent.

Portraiture - Photography

Aside from reading critical essays, reviews, and theory, I found an interesting book conveniently aligned with my project, "The Book of Portraiture" by Steve Tomasula. Each chapter has a different narrator. Each narrator searches for a way to represent themselves, either through stories, paintings, photography, or genetic code. I'm charting a similar exercise for myself. Today are self-portraits I snapped over the course of sixteen years.

Summer 2011

Besides working at the Wexner Center this summer, I've concentrated most of my effort at understanding how I fit into the Ohio Roller Girls. What better way to understand the difficulty of the questions I ask the interviewees of other women's organization then to turn the questions on myself. Asking myself what role I fill or how I want my fellow skaters to perceive me is harder to answer than, say asking myself what role I fill as a dancer in OSU's Department of Dance. I already have a feeling for what kind of dancer I am. After all, I've been dancing for more than twenty years now. In roller derby, however, I'm still trying to figure out the sport. The newness of my involvement leads me naturally to more questions, and after one year of skating, falling down, booty-blocking, getting hit by other skaters, etc. - I'm continually finding more questions to ask. My involvement in this sport spurs my inquisitive nature and that's just what I need as I travel to Washington state and Texas to interview other organizations as part of my Master's thesis project. Now that my commitment to the Wexner Center is completed, I have renewed energy and more time to devote to processing all this wonderful information swirling around in my head. I'm back to blogging and will be back tomorrow!