Rather random video...

http://www.ocad.ca/programs/art/intm.htm

Not sure how long that video will be up for but seeing as I didn't have a copy I grabbed the FLV file right away!

 The College I graduated from (OCAD) has that video of me on the page for the program I was in. I guess as an example of what you can do in the program. That interview was taken during graduation when I'd just won the program medal.

Back in my skinny black hair emo-ish days before a real job, hair cut and a gym membership... 

The only prize/scholarship I wanted to win, and I did, so how excited was I?! Very. Very, very excited to have the studio space I need to do bigger sculpture. (a $9000 studio, all to myself, who wouldn’t smile? I’m honoured the judges felt my piece worthy of winning).

I now have a personal 500sq ft studio in the heart of Toronto’s art scene at 401 Richmond, just a hop skip away from where I live. I’ll be finishing up the two small pieces I’m doing now, and then when I get the studio july 1st, I’ll be starting some large works.

Thank you OCAD, donors, and 401. Adam’s gonna make some crazy shit now. I won some other scholarships as well (listed under the CV) and those will go towards material cost. Mmmmm silicon skin. I’m going to make Genpets look like child’s play.

Yup, so I got the graduating Medal for my department at OCAD this year (Integrated media)

Stuff, shin dig, people…

Denise from the faculty of art office was absolutely wicked, she was there to be like, it’s fine don’t worry, everythings good. I don’t like shin digs, I’m not a small talk person, and so I especially got nervous for the Bravo TV interview thing but she made everything good. Thanks Denise!

Oh and also David Macintosh invited me to participate in a discussion on the mobile digital commons network in Montreal for 4 days. Free trp is good, having people value what goes on inside my head, even better.

Genepts at grad show
Amazing how people always assume the plastic and display etc are all manufactured or something, the idea that I actually created everything from scratch causes disbelief. Though I guess it's a compliment to the quality of the work.
I don’t like to stand and talk, I answered the occasional question but mostly just hung over the railing above to watch and listen from time to time like a ghost.

For those that missed, and want to see the Genpets moving and breathing and bleeping, ocad is having an Open house for graduate work from Friday, May 6 to Sunday, may 8, 2005, and my Genpets will be in room 358 on the 3rd floor.

As part of the juried selection, my “Genpets series 01” will be on display at this years “go west” show. For those of you that have never experienced it, it’s an annual student event, when Queen west goes crazy with gallery shows.

If you can make it out, and want to see why I’ve spent the year ignoring just about everyone, I’ll be at gallery 61, at 61 Ossington (directions later) April 22nd – 24th . opening night only till 9pm as then the after party happens.

And my thesis defence, for any that want to watch, is Friday April 15th 4:20pm.

So who’d of guessed? Plastic part #2 went smooth without a hitch! No shattered moulds this time (learning I am) and the plastics lab has a new gauge so I can actually measure the tank pressure, which made a huge difference.

Process. Clay sculpture-> silicon mould -> hydrocal plaster casting (positive) then loads of sanding (loads. The clear plastic pics up even DUST! So it better be a flawless sculpture, which is was, people were touching it and smiling) then vacuum forming x19.
P.S. Sweat. Hot room. Drenched head in water, but the plastic fumes still killed me. ( 6 hours to make 19).

March 26
-Because when a can of compressed air leaks, covering the insanely cold liquid spraying out with your hands might be the first reaction, however, it’s also the wrong one.
My hand hurts. I think the skin is dead.

-Cast and airbrushed prosthetic for Angela’s thesis.

March 25
Programming
-Got the heart monitor programmed. Some problems with the reset to the sequencer, but that’s all cleared up now. Evened out the power, and used a different pin from the microchip.

-Sculpted and moulded the slit neck prosthetic for Angela’s thesis. It also hides a tube, so that blood will pump out of the neck.

March 22 -24
-Finished sculpting / moulding /casting the second mould for the second piece of plastic.
-2 days of sanding it down ahead to get it smooth, then I’ll vacuum form clear plastic over it. Fell behind schedual…
-Registered genpets.com

March 20
Finished text and layout for thesis paper. It’s a product catalogue for the genpets. I’ll have it up on this site for download as a PDF later; it still needs photos and misc graphics.

For the genpets project I printed 36 circuits, fully etched copper, all from my apartment.

March 15 -Circuit drilling
Drilled holes for all 36 circuits. Which was insane. The main overkill circuit had 96 holes (x19) =1824 /// The heart rate circuit had 32 (x19) =608

For a grand total of 2432 holes drilled. Glad I have a drill press.
(also modified my drill press so it has a light on it now)

March 10
Too busy to write in journal. Work work work work thesis. What I’ve done in the last 10 days
-Made 4 part silicon/plaster genpet creature mould
-Bought/received supplies: Servos, 300 ultra bright Led’s, Circuit Etching tank, Digital scale
-Printed circuits/ ironed/etched/ cut/drilled holes.
-Completed rough draft of thesis paper.

March 9 -Circuit etching
I needed a plank of wood or something similar to do my ironing for circuit boards. The iron on pattern
Melted my Macintosh ironing board. Apparently it just couldn’t take the heat.

Oh well. I have 2 more.

Done. I have 20 white pieces of styrene.

Laura and manaf came for the final one so I could show them the process. It’s pretty cool to see the plastic get sucked down into the shape.

The vacuum form machine had far too much compression and completely obliterated my hydrocal mould! I had 2 casts, and after 3 hours of sanding, hearing it shatter as the plastic came down on it with insane force, wasn’t the happiest moment in my day.

There were a few options at this point, most very expensive alternatives to plaster, but to make a long story short it was a few hours and rob was there with me helping and keeping my spirits up and I couldn’t have made it through this process without him, so thanks!! (now die).

Eventually after long frustrating-ness (?) I said “Fuck it”. (I said a lot more than that actually) and like always I just did it my way (rob and phil had already suggested a clay or wax backing, so I put that in) and I simply put all the shattered bits back together, and vacuum formed.
Is it perfect? Hell no, you can see where it cracked. With each cast it got progressively worse and chipped a little more. (it shattered on the very first cast remember) but I just treated it as nicely as I could and with a little patience, and some clay in-between cracks, got 20 done. By the end of the night I was getting pretty fast and doing 1 every 15-20minutes.

The heater is massive tho and by 9pm I was sweating, and stumbling everywhere, I just couldn’t take the heat anymore, even with drink breaks between every cast. I was glad to go home.

It was interesting to see how wasteful the process is. I’d forgotten. To make a piece approx 9.5x12 I needed a 20x20 piece of styrene. More than half of the plastic I paid for and used, will simply go into the trash, not cool at all. Styrene can be recycled and printed back into new sheets, I can only hope they send the scraps back to the company…

Well everything's just upside down now!

I was all set to save money on PIC's by using 555 timers for the majority of my thesis circuits. (previous entry)

Background: Pic's are programmable microchips, they cost $8 and have cpu's, ram, rom I/o pins. You’ve seen other PDIP style packages (black rectangle shapes) around..(first picture). PIC’s generally use Oscillators to acquire their timing and clock cycles (second picture).

So what’s new?

The custom 555 circuit I mentioned last entry was gonna total $4 after capacitors etc which was half cost of my 16f84a chips, but yesterday I was reading about PIC’s for most of the day, and found the 16F628 !!! Rob mentioned it but hadn’t really gone into learning it yet. So I did.

Wowies!
It’s about $5 ($3 less than the 16F84a) and it has DOUBLE the code space 2k instead of 1k, as well as other features, but the kicker is it has a built in OSCILLATOR! That’s the clock that tells the chip how fast to run and what to do, it’s like the chips pulse. The clocks aren’t a big deal, but it eats up 2 pins as well as costing an extra $1 (multiply by 18 for thesis)

So do I build a multi-piece circuit with difficult to design timings with 555's and hardware programming just to save $1?

BUT WAIT! There’s more! If you order now, we'll throw the PIC in for FREE! Operators are standing by!

Yes, Microchip.com is sending me FREE samples! About $50 worth! So the cost of using a PIC is… 5cents for the socket!
So do I wrestle with capacitors and resistors to get the right delay? Or do I simply program "pause 8000" for my 8 second delay I want… hmmm tough choice.

What else did I do? Well I played with my motor shipment yesterday of course! It’s what I need that circuit to control.
And my Gear motors are AMAZING! Everything I could have EVER hoped for!!
Not only are they geared, but they have a built in circuit. When you send them a short + signal, they spin 1 full rotation exactly and then stop! And they do it in about 1-2 seconds (slow and nice) (in comparison to a normal motor that simply spins insanely fast non stop).

These will be the basis for the chest breathing mechanism of the animatronics in each.