My recent exploration in new media art is centered around the concept of creating tangible artifacts from intangible forces. In this case a sculptural data visualization generated from the forces of wind. A physics engine Kangaroo physics by Daniel Piker is used to digitally simulate the effects of wind on a piece of cloth. The resulting cloth is frozen into a solidified triangular surface where information is extracted (surface normals) and transferred as a vector field forming an abstract representation of wind.
The resulting vector field is then converted into a series of cartesian planes within the grasshopper3dprogramming language for Rhino3d by David Rutten. The planes undergo a series of duplications and translations to create a conflict free robot fabrication sequence.
The resulting planes are then fed into HAL (robotic control sweet) where an inverse kinematics solver converts cartesian planes into joint angles which serve as instructions for the robot via ABB’s RAPID programming language. The robot instructions are centered around a sequence for the 6 axis arm to pick 6 inch nails from a dispenser and place them one by one into a piece of high density foam at their corresponding angles.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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