First week of Soul Walker residency at the Broadway, Nottingham

Posted on 2012-11-21 by Daniel Belasco Rogers

I arrived in Nottingham on Sunday and was picked up by my friend Dave with whom I’m staying between Derby and Nottingham. Thanks, Dave and Laura, if it wasn’t for you, these trips to Nottingham to hook up with the MRL, or the Nottingham Geospatial Institute, or indeed Broadway itself, wouldn’t be feasible. On Monday, Mat Trivett and I attended the talk organised by Nottingham Trent University’s Future Factory (can’t link to them – they’ve only got a facebook page – go figure) about a commercial material library called Materio. As this was not so relevant for my work, being aimed at commercial product design professionals or students, we snuck back to the Broadway.

The intention is to work on the Soul Walker project but Mat’s programme is brand new, so lots of things are not currently in place, like a programmer to help me design an iPhone and Android app, or a designer to talk to, we decided to switch focus and try out the GPS neighbourhood frequency map idea that we’ve been meaning to so for ages.

The idea is to look at our GPS traces around our home (I’ve decided to use our current home, as we moved this year) and build up a new terrain out of the tracks that build up around where we live, the streets we infrequently go down being represented by a low ridge whereas the frequent streets building up a mountain range out of the topology.

This is something that is produced automatically when we have used a laser to cut into the back of acrylic sheet and we thought it would be simple to synthesize this data to be able to send it to a digital printer or even cnc router but it isn’t.

Talking to Ivan Seal one day, he had the brilliant suggestion of trying it in clay by hand, much as we have done in the past with our redrawing of our traces, using Peter Vasil’s OpenFrameworks application.

So this is the new plan for the rest of the week. After a quick trip to Carrington Pottery where Guy Routledge sold me a 12.5kg bag of red modelling clay – so much better than going to an artists’ or hobby supplies.

Now I’m hacking together a way of projecting the tracks onto a bed of clay and luckily, there was an old overhead projector head in the cupboard here which is fantastic for the job, after a bit of mounting with balsa wood from Gee Dee models next to the Broadway which I used to go to 26 years ago in 1986 when I was first in Nottingham studying Theatre Design at Trent Polytechnic.

Overhead Projector Head hack

Overhead Projector Head hack

Overhead Projector Head hack - detail

Overhead Projector Head hack – detail

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Drawing Machine first trial

Posted on 2012-10-31 by Daniel Belasco Rogers

After a quick ride through Tiergarten today, here are the first results. As a last minute alteration, I’d nailed elastic strips to the swinging drawing platform to hold the paper and attached a bit of metal to the arm to make the pen lighter and less friction on the paper.
Strapping the machine to the bike rack, I was ready for the off:

Mounted on bike, ready for first test

Mounted on bike, ready for first test


Problem number 1:
Disaster strikes early - cables jump out of guides

Disaster strikes early – cables jump out of guides


In the quiet of my living room, I’d never anticipated how much bike racks jump up and down and thought that having the cables guided by the terminal block findings was adequate. Arriving at Tierpark after a moderate amount of kerb-mounting (nothing out of the ordinary), I found that the cables had jumped right out of the guides and fallen right down the armature.
These are the results. In the first drawing, you can see there are two areas of concentration, showing that the cables must have come out of their guides quite early on as the off-centre area is quite full.
First Journey Drawing

First Journey Drawing


In drawing two, you can see a smiling shape emerging as the forces on the bike are mostly lateral rather than accelleration/decelleration and tend towards the middle. There is a flattening at the top of the drawing due to the tray not moving back as the post for the pen holder stops it.
Second Journey Drawing

Second Journey Drawing


I made drawing 1 on the way to the Tiergarten and drawing 2 round the Tiergarten. I loaded the paper again for the way back but then Problem 2 struck: The paper blew away (or fell victim to the magic of the Celtic year change as the cross-quarter day of Samhain falls soon and there should be faeries and spirits about).
This made me think about Solution 1: solder some rings to the underside of the terminal block findings and run the cables through these.
Solution 2: buy a thick-ish piece of steel to replace the wooden drawing platform and use some rare-earth magnets (have lots here and in the studio) to hold the paper in place. This will also help add weight to the drawing platform which I feel needs a bit more.

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Drawing Machine 2

Posted on 2012-10-31 by Daniel Belasco Rogers

After two intensive days building, making the lounge look like a bomb’s hit it while Soph is away, I’ve got a working machine for some aleotory drawings of journeys.

Drawing Machine prototype

Drawing Machine prototype


I might have to add weight to the swinging drawing surface and I have to work out a way of a) attaching it to my bike rack and b) securing the paper. Then I should experiment with pens I think. You can see a hole drilled on the extension of the pen arm. This is to counterweight the pen, reducing friction if necessary.
Hopefully results to follow soon.

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Drawing Machine

Posted on 2012-10-29 by Daniel Belasco Rogers

I think I’m someone that has to have a couple of things on the go. Alongside thoughts about Digital Dowsing and the news that the Broadway in Nottingham is going to produce Soul Walker, I have been thinking about another strand to our GPS trace work ever since seeing this kind of thing in the Science Museum in London, when my Dad and I took Ruby in the summer:

Harmonograph in the Science Museum, London

Harmonograph in the Science Museum, London


Inspired by its combination of wonderful Victorian engineering (turned brass and wood) and makeshift functionality…
Science Museum Harmonograph, pen holder detail

Science Museum Harmonograph, pen holder detail

…I decided to think about Drawing Machines that I could walk with, cycle with or have on my lap on a train journey. They would record, in their own way, the journey in terms of the various lateral forces. This is by no means a novel idea, as anyone who has sat on a train or bus with a notebook open in their lap and a pen or pencil held loosely in their hand would recognise, but I want to investigate it because I am fascinated by the machines themselves as well as their outcomes. A collection of these aleatory drawings could be a nice foil to the GPS drawings.
To this end, I have been making a number of sketches in my sketchbooks, investigating a number of approaches:
Drawing Machine pen holder tray sketch 1

Drawing Machine pen holder tray sketch 1

Drawing Machine pen holder tray sketch 2

Drawing Machine pen holder tray sketch 2

Drawing Machine LED design sketch

Drawing Machine LED design sketch


The first two show the same design which is a freely swinging tray that holds a pen suspended in elastic like a microphone holder sometimes is. This design has the drawback that as the tray swings, it lifts the tray higher and therefore perhaps the pen from the paper at the swing extremities. The design I have decided to work on eliminates this problem and was inspired by an image on the the wikipedia harmonograph page which shows the drawing surface itself moving freely with a pen on an arm.
The last sketch is for an entirely different approach which also addresses the problem of swing raising the pen and works with photographic paper and a swinging LED in a light-proof box. I’m going to concentrate on the mechanical one first and see where it gets me.
Drawing Machine stage 1

Drawing Machine stage 1 showing cut-down nails and terminal block insides used to attach piano wire cross-frame


Here you see my secret weapon: someone once showed me, when I used to make props for a living, how electrical terminal blocks have neat little brass findings inside them with one/two grub screws all nicely finished and precise. You just cut them free with a craft knife.
Drawing Machine bare armature attached

Drawing Machine bare armature attached


Here you see that I’ve bent the piano wire and screwed the ends to the corners of the base plate and made a right-angled joiner at the top crossing of the wire by soldering two terminal block innards together.
Now to work out how to suspend the smaller plywood platform which will hold the paper so that it can move freely and also find a way of making the pen arm.

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Digital Dowsing report 4

Posted on 2012-10-15 by Daniel Belasco Rogers

logitech mouse circuitboard top

logitech mouse circuitboard top


I’m just about to make the cuts I need to make to free the LED/receiver pairs from the mouse circuitboard. then ‘all I need to do’ (famous last words) is attach the black plastic rotary cogs to the dowsing rod and build a grip for them housing the LED/receivers. After consulting Martin, who I’m sure thinks I’m taking much too long and deliberating much too much, I’ve prepared the following diagramme so I know how to attach the LED/receiver pairs back to the circuitboard with cable (I’m going to use the mouse cable itself as it has 6 cores)
logitech mouse circuitboard underside annotated

logitech mouse circuitboard underside annotated


I’ll maybe get round to this before Christmas.

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