Artistic Collaboration With AI

October 2, 2018 by Lewin Day 10 Comments

Ever since Google’s Deep Dream results were made public several years ago, there has been major interest in the application of AI and neural network technologies to artistic endeavors. [Helena Sarin] has been experimenting in just this field, exploring the possibilities of collaborating with the ghost in the machine.

This image was generated with a landscape model using a dataset containing covers of Japanese poetry books.

The work is centered around the use of Generative Adversarial Networks, or GANs. [Helena] describes using a GAN to create artworks as a sort of game. An apprentice attempts to create new works in the style of their established master, while a critic attempts to determine whether the artworks are created by the master or the apprentice. As the apprentice improves, the critic must become more discerning; as the critic becomes more discerning, the apprentice must improve further. It is through this mechanism that the model improves itself.

[Helena] has spent time experimenting with CycleGAN in the artistic realm after first using it in a work project, and has primarily trained it on her own original artworks to create new pieces with wild and exciting results. She shares several tips on how best to work with the technology, around the necessary computing and storage requirements, as well as ways to step out of the box to create more diverse outputs.

Neural networks are hot lately, with plenty of research going on in the field. There’s plenty of fun projects, too – like this cartoonifying camera we featured recently.

‘SHE BON’ Is An Artful, Wearable, Sensual, Sensing Platform

September 19, 2018 by Donald Papp 16 Comments

SHE BON (that’s the French bon, or “good”) is an ambitious project by [Sarah Petkus] that consists of a series of wearable electronic and mechanical elements which all come together as a system for a single purpose: to sense and indicate female arousal. As a proponent of increased discussion and openness around the topic of sexuality, [Sarah]’s goal is to take something hidden and turn it into something obvious and overt, while giving it a certain artful flair in the process.

The core of the system is a wearable backpack in the shape of a heart, from which all other sensors and feedback elements are connected. A lot of thought has gone into the design of the system, ensuring that the different modules have an artistic angle to their feedback while also being comfortable to actually wear, and [Sarah] seems to have a knack for slick design. Some of the elements are complete and some are still in progress, but the system is well documented with a clear vision for the whole. It’s an unusual and fascinating project, and was one of the finalists selected in the Human Computer Interface portion of the 2018 Hackaday Prize. Speaking of which, the Musical Instrument Challenge is underway, so be sure check it out!

3D Printing A Printing Press

August 26, 2018 by Jenny List 3 Comments

If you move among artists, you may have encountered a few printmakers. They create a drawing by cutting through a wax layer that has been deposited on a sheet of copper, then etching the plate and removing the wax. Ink is then rolled onto the plate and cleaned from the flat surface, remaining in the cracks created by the etching. A print is made by putting inked plate and a sheet of paper through a roller press at significant pressure, squeezing the ink from the cracks onto the paper. The result is a beautiful print, but the press required to do the job is by no means cheap.

[Martin Schneider] has addressed this expense with his Open Press project, by producing a printmaking press that can be 3D-printed for a fraction of the outlay of a traditional press. It’s by no means a large model, but appears no less functional for it.

The form of the press is straightforward enough, with a print bed that is drawn between a pair of rollers by a rack-and-pinion gear, and as you would imagine the construction is quite substantial. It’s all CC licensed, and you can make one for yourself if you would like, by downloading the files from Thingiverse.

It’s fair to say that printmaking hasn’t appeared much here, but we can see this press could have significant use beyond artistic applications. Meanwhile it’s a great example of 3D printing providing the means to reduce the barrier to entry for something that was previously quite an expensive pursuit.

An Artsy And Functional LED Filament Lamp

June 24, 2018 by Dan Maloney 14 Comments

Some projects end up being more objet d’art than objet d’utile, and we’re fine with that — hacks can be beautiful too. Some hacks manage both, though, like this study in silicon and gallium under glass that serves as a bright and beautiful desk lamp.

There’s no accounting for taste, of course, but we really like the way [commanderkull]’s LED filament lamp turned out, and it’s obvious that a fair amount of work went into it. Five COB filament strips were suspended from a lacy frame made of wire, which also supports the custom boost converter needed to raise the 12-volt input to the 60 volts needed by the filaments. The boost converter is based on the venerable 555 timer chip, which sits in the middle of the frame suspended by its splayed-out legs and support components. The wooden base sports a few big electrolytics and some hand-wound toroidal inductors, as well as the pot for adjusting the lamp’s brightness. The whole thing sits under a glass bell jar, which catches the light from the filaments and plays with it in a most appealing way.

There’s just something about that dead bug building technique that we love. We’ve seen it before — this potentially dangerous single-tube Nixie clock comes to mind — but we’d love to see it done more.

[via r/electronics]

Curved Wood LED Lamp Needs No Fancy Tools

March 20, 2018 by Donald Papp 9 Comments

Those of us who aren’t familiar with woodworking might not expect that this curved wood and acrylic LED lamp by [Marija] isn’t the product of fancy carving, just some thoughtful design and assembly work. The base is a few inches of concrete in a plastic bowl, then sanded and given a clear coat. The wood is four layers of beech hardwood cut on an inverted jigsaw with the middle two layers having an extra recess for two LED strips. After the rough-cut layers were glued together, the imperfections were rasped and sanded out. Since the layers of wood give a consistent width to the recess for the LEDs, it was easy to cut a long strip of acrylic that would match. Saw cutting acrylic can be dicey because it can crack or melt, but a table saw with a crosscut blade did the trick. Forming the acrylic to match the curves of the wood was a matter of gentle heating and easing the softened acrylic into place bit by bit.

Giving the clear acrylic a frosted finish was done with a few coats of satin finish clear coat from a spray can, which is a technique we haven’t really seen before. Handy, because it provides a smooth and unbroken coating along the entire length of the acrylic. This worked well and is a clever idea, but [Marija] could still see the LEDs and wires inside the lamp, so she covered them with some white tape. A video of the entire process is embedded below.

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Massive Shift Register Switches Lights

March 16, 2018 by Bryan Cockfield 15 Comments

Sometimes you have to switch a light. Maybe it’s an LED but sometimes it’s mains-powered. That’s not too hard, a transistor and a relay should do it. If you have to switch more lights, that’s not too bad either, as long as your microcontroller has enough free GPIOs. But, if you need to switch a large number of lights, like 256 of them, for example, you’re going to need something else.

[Jan]’s project didn’t switch quite that many lights, but 157 of them is still enough of a chore to need a creative solution so he decided to use a 256-bit shift register to do the legwork. The whole thing is powered by a NodeMCU ESP8266 and was professionally built on DIN rails in a metal enclosure.

The build is interesting, both from a technical point of view and from an artistic one. It looks like it uses more than a mile of wiring, too. The source code is also available on the project page if you happen to have a need for switching a huge number of lightbulbs. Incandescent blulbs aren’t only good for art installations and lamps, though, they can also be used in interesting oscillator circuits too.

RGB Disk Goes Interactive With Bluetooth; Shows Impressive Plastic Work

March 11, 2018 by Donald Papp 5 Comments

[smash_hand] had a clear goal: a big, featureless, white plastic disk with RGB LEDs concealed around its edge. So what is it? A big ornament that could glow any color or trippy mixture of colors one desires. It’s an object whose sole purpose is to be a frame for soft, glowing light patterns to admire. The disk can be controlled with a simple smartphone app that communicates over Bluetooth, allowing anyone (or in theory anything) to play with the display.

The disk is made from 1/4″ clear plastic, which [smash_hand] describes as plexiglass, but might be acrylic or polycarbonate. [smash_hands] describes some trial and error in the process of cutting the circle; it was saw-cut with some 3-in-1 oil as cutting fluid first, then the final shape cut with a bandsaw.

The saw left the edge very rough, so it was polished with glass polishing compound. This restores the optical properties required for the edge-lighting technique. The back of the disc was sanded then painted white, and the RGB LEDs spaced evenly around the edge, pointing inwards.

The physical build is almost always the difficult part in a project like this — achieving good diffusion of LEDs is a topic we talk about often. [smash_hands] did an impressive job and there are never any “hot spots” where an LED sticks out to your eye. With this taken care of, the electronics came together with much less effort. An Arduino with an HC-05 Bluetooth adapter took care of driving the LEDs and wireless communications, respectively. A wooden frame later, and the whole thing is ready to go.

[smash_hands] provides details like a wiring diagram as well as the smartphone app for anyone who is interested. There’s the Arduino program as well, but interestingly it’s only available in assembly or as a raw .hex file. A video of the disk in action is embedded below.

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