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361 Articles

TOTO Forever Widescreen

Somewhere Down In Africa Toto Is Playing On Loop

January 19, 2019 by 26 Comments

Amidst the vast expanse of sand dunes in the Namib desert, there now exists a sound installation dedicated to pouring out the 1982 soft rock classic “Africa” by Toto. Six speakers connected to an MP3 player all powered by a few solar powered USB battery packs, and it is literally located somewhere down in Africa (see lyrics). The whole project, known as TOTO FOREVER, was the creation of film director [Max Siedentopf] who himself grew up in Namibia.

“I set up a sound installation which pays tribute to probably the most popular song of the last four decades…and the installation runs on solar batteries to keep Toto going for all eternity.”

– Max Siedentopf, Creator of TOTO FOREVER

[Siedentopf] certainly chose a song that resonates with people on a number of levels. Toto’s “Africa” was one of the most streamed songs on YouTube in 2017 with over 369 million plays. The song continues to reach a new generation of fans as it has also been the subject of a number of internet memes. Though those local to the sound installation have had some less than positive things to say. [Siedentopf] told BBC, “Some [Namibians] say it’s probably the worst sound installation ever. I think that’s a great compliment.”

The idea of the installation “lasting for all eternity” will certainly be difficult to achieve since the components most certainly lack any serious IP rating. The audio player itself appears to be a RHDTShop mp3 player that according to its Amazon listing page, has three to four hours of battery life per charge. Considering the size of those solar cells the whole thing will probably be dead in a week or two (it is in a desert after all), but no one can deny the statement TOTO FOREVER makes. Below is some footage of the art piece in action taken by the artist himself.
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Full Color Dot Matrix Is The Art We Need

January 19, 2019 by 25 Comments

Fans of 80s-era computer printing technology are few and far between, but Apple’s ImageWriter II was a beast of a printer. This tractor feed dot-matrix printer is nigh-indestructible. The print quality was actually pretty great. It was loud as hell, which is a mark of quality electromechanical components. It could do color, and color dot-matrix art on tractor feed paper is the aesthetic we need. If you’re not convinced yet, you can also take off the perforations from tractor feed paper and make a cool little paper snake.

[Dandu] isn’t one to let things like serial printers and obsolete color dot matrix ribbons get in his way of creating ImageWriter art. A while ago, he printed off some incredible art using some obsolete equipment, and the results are better than what you would expect.

The process for creating full-color art on a dot-matrix printer was to plug the ImageWriter into an old Mac (an LC III in this case, with 12 MB of RAM). Photoshop (version 3.0!) was used to open a JPEG, and MacPallete II used to send the data to the printer. This isn’t a process that prints all the colors all at once; first the yellow is printed, and the tractor feed paper is brought back to the beginning. Then the magenta is printed, then the cyan, then the black. The single page of art took 20 minutes to print, and you can see a sped-up version of this process below.

Yes, the ImageWriter II can print in full color, but who cares about this now? A few people apparently — a company is now remanufacturing ImageWriter II color ribbons — opening the door to retro art for all. Yes, that ImageWriter in your basement still works, so let’s see what you can do with it.

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The Embroidered Computer

January 16, 2019 by 5 Comments

By now we’ve all seen ways to manufacture your own PCBs. There are board shops who will do small orders for one-off projects, or you can try something like the toner transfer method if you want to get really adventurous. One thing we haven’t seen is a circuit board that’s stitched together, but that’s exactly what a group of people at a Vienna arts exhibition have done.

The circuit is stitched together on a sheet of fabric using traditional gold embroidery methods for the threads, which function as the circuit’s wires. The relays are made out of magnetic beads, and the entire circuit functions as a fully programmable, although relatively rudimentary, computer. Logic operations are possible, and a functional schematic of the circuit is also provided. Visitors to the expo can program the circuit and see it in operation in real-time.

While this circuit gives new meaning to the term “wearables”, it wasn’t intended to be worn although we can’t see why something like this couldn’t be made into a functional piece of clothing. The main goal was to explore some historic techniques of this type of embroidery, and explore the relationship we have with the technology that’s all around us. To that end, there have been plenty of other pieces of functional technology used as art recently as well, but of course this isn’t the first textile computing element to grace these pages.

Thanks to [Thinkerer] for the tip!

 

The Very Slow Movie Player Does It With E-Ink

December 30, 2018 by 18 Comments

Most displays are looking to play things faster. We’ve got movies at 60 frames per second, and gaming displays that run at 144 fps. But what about moving in the other direction? [Bryan Boyer] wanted to try this out, so he built the VSMP, or Very Slow Movie Player. It’s a neat device that plays back a movie at about 24 fph (frames per hour) on an e-ink display to demonstrate something that [Bryan] calls Slow Seeing, which, he says “helps you see yourself against the smear of time.” A traditional epic-length movie is now going to run you greater than 8,000 hours of viewing.

Artistic considerations aside, it’s an interesting device from a technical point of view. [Bryan] built it from a 7.4-inch e-ink display from Pervasive Displays. The controller is connected to a Raspberry Pi Zero, which is running a Python script to convert a frame of the movie file into a dithered file, then send it to the display. Because the Pi Zero isn’t a very fast computer, this takes some time, and thus the slow speed of the VSMP. Originally, [Bryan] had set it up to run as fast as the system could manage, which was about 25 seconds per frame, or about 2 frames per minute. He decided to slow it down a bit further to the more attractive multiple of 24 frames per hour to contrast with the 24 frames per second of the original movie. He did this by using a CRON job that kicks of the conversion script once every 2.5 minutes and increments the frame counter. All of this is topped off with a nice 3D-printed case that has a lovely interference pattern to make a rather neat and intriguing project.

Perhaps the best part of this is see a time-lapse of the VSMP — life moves quickly around it while 2001: A Space Odyssey plays at normal speed.

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See How Paper Maché Sculptor Uses Cloth For Tricky Spots

December 28, 2018 by 3 Comments

When is paper maché not paper maché? When it is cloth, of course. [Dan Reeder] has been putting his own spin on paper maché art since the 70s and demonstrates the technique of using cloth for tricky spots in his outstanding sculpture of an Ice Dragon. Thin strips of cloth are used just as paper would be, but give a much different structure and grant natural-looking folds to spots like eyelids, nostrils, and lips.

[Dan] feels that paper maché is an under-utilized and under-rated medium, and he puts out some stunning work on his blog as well as his YouTube channel. What’s great to see are his frank descriptions and explanations of what does and doesn’t work, and he’s not afraid to try new things and explore different ways to approach problems.

Enterprising hackers may not pick paper maché as their first choice to create creating custom enclosures, but it can be done and the accessibility and ease of use of the medium are certainly undeniable. One never knows when a tool or technique may come in handy.

‘Bit’ Installation Combines Art, Markov Chains

December 17, 2018 by 7 Comments

A Markov chain is a mathematical concept of a sequence of events, in which each future event depends only on the state of the previous events. Like most mathematical concepts, it has wide-ranging applications from gambling to the stock market, but in this case, [Jonghong Park] has applied it to art.

The installation, known simply as ‘bit’, consists of four machines. Each machine has two microswitches, which are moved around two wooden discs by a stepper motor. The microswitches read bumps on the surface of the disc as either a 0 or 1, and the two bits from the microswitches represent the machine’s “state”.

When a machine is called, the stepper motor rotates 1/240th of a revolution, and then the microswitches read the machine’s current state. Based on this state and the Markov Chain algorithm coded into the machines, a machine with the corresponding state is then called, which in turn moves, continuing the chain.

The piece is intended to reflect the idea of a deterministic universe, one in which the current state can be used to predict all future states. As an art piece, it combines its message with a visually attractive presentation of understated black metal and neatly finished wood.

We love a good art installation here at Hackaday – like this amazing snowflake install from a couple years back. Video after the break.

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The Battle Between Robot Harmonica And Machine Finger Rages On

December 13, 2018 by 12 Comments

When asking the question “Do humans dream of machines?”, it’s natural to think of the feverish excitement ahead of an iPhone or Playstation launch, followed by lines around the block of enthusiastic campers, eager to get their hands on the latest hardware as soon as is humanly possible. However, it’s also the title of an art piece by [Jonghong Park], and is deserving of further contemplation. (Video after the break.)

The art piece consists of a series of eight tiny harmonicas, which are in turn, played by eight fans, which appear to have been cribbed from a low-power graphics card design. Each harmonica in turn has a microphone fitted, which, when it picks up a loud enough signal, causes an Arduino Nano to actuate a mechanical finger which slows the fan down until the noise stops. It’s the mechanical equivalent of a stern look from a parent to a noisy child. Then, the cycle begins again.

The build is very much of the type we see in the art world – put together as simply as possible, with eight Arduinos running the eight harmonicas, whereas an engineering approach may focus more on efficiency and cost. Between the squeaks from the toy harmonicas and the noise from the servos entrusted to quiet them, the machine makes quite the mechanical racket. [Jonghong] indicates that the piece speaks to the interaction of machine (robot harmonica) and humanity (the finger which quells the noise).

It’s a tidily executed build which would be at home in any modern art gallery. It recalls memories of another such installation, which combines fans and lasers into a musical machine. Continue reading “The Battle Between Robot Harmonica And Machine Finger Rages On” →