April 2023 : Prototyping for Design¶
Reflection
Robotic Arms:
While I could not attend the robotic arm class I caught up with the help of my classmates. It is fascinating how pervasive robots are in our lives, and even more so at IAAC. It was interesting to think about the basic functioning of a robotic arm and how many axes (6) it has to function. This means a tremendous amount of precision and possibility of movement, and the opportunity to create complex assembly lines that build anything from our assembly lines to our yoghurts.
Basics of Blender:
The Blender class was interesting. While I still have not managed to find deep interest in CAM or truly develop my skills in this area, Victor is a great and passionate teacher and openined our eyes to the Blender ecosystem as well as its values. It is crazy to me how profoundly a tool can be developed with the impetus of a few passionate people and a supportive community. We did try and follow Victor to execute a few operations on Blender, though many of us struggled due to various software issues. Some of my classmate did manage to operate the led strip.
Blender and Interfaces:
This session was a practical application of Blender. We went over basic functions in moving models in space and created an array. The class showed us the different coding commands which are the building block that operate Blender. Blender actually has a myriad of ways to interface with other programs - in this class we focused on Arduino. We learned how Arduino interacts Blender by using using a switch model to control a led strip. The class was a bit glitchy in the sense that not all interfaces of blender were offering the same commands. There was a lot of troubleshooting. But eventually a few classmates managed to operate the led stip and we were able to witness their process. For me this was interesting but stil entirely overwhelming.
Living Coding:
The last class of this seminar involved live coding. This was also fasccinating to me, because although I don’t connect to this practice, I could see the existence of a whole community of practice, gathering common excercices and sharing skills purely for art’s sake. In the classes we learned that coders sometimes invent their own languages and interfaces as is the case with Hydra. it was fun to experiment with the software and be guided through it, though this is not my world and I likely won’t interact with this much further.