It's Show Time

Am I ready yet?

Finally the expected moment when breaking a leg is the least of your worries, it is in fact a welcome omen!

I decided to post a slideshow, given that there are many pictures of different moments, from the preparation before the show to pictures showing the actual marionette, since many people believed that it was a pre-made video agains which the performance took place.

As I had discussed with my mentor Deborah Aschheim, this was going to be an experiment to see if the concept worked. The concept being that The Creator represented, among other things, an omnipresence that we took for granted, whose reality was ignored. The pervasive surveillance and control that is now an accepted state in the life of so many people who fail to question some very basic assumptions.

This presence whose control was embodied by the environment itself could become simply entertainment, a surface to which we have become fully accustomed and to which we in fact give our compliance voluntarily.

So perhaps conceptually the experiment worked, since as a "show" it was considered fascinating by most of the audience I had a chance to speak with. But I think that I would like to eventually construct a full scale marionette as originally planned (5 mts. tall). I am more interested in telling a compelling story that can directly connect with the stored archetypes that we carry in our brains and , because of scale and the amazement associated with seeing something so out of the ordinary, our defenses are suspended, letting the images and sounds seep undetected into our psyche.

Later on, perhaps,we will encounter in our dreams or nightmares, or worse in our waking reality, images,facts and ideas that evoke that inexplicable and uncanny feeling of the loss of our mythical innocence. Optimistically I would hope that this would result in recognizing like Pink Floyd says "the writing on the wall".

The Creator was born in Germany as a concept, or rather as a nightmare that my wife Lorena had. As artists we become attached to the object of our creation, even if it represents something as terrible as to what a post-apocalyptic scenario suggests. We treat the creator and the creature with loving care and feel both awe and compassion for them, or perhaps for what they represent. A loss of our own humanity.

It is fitting, and part of the mystery of our lives that we simply accept things as they happen. The performance took place in Linz, of all places. Linz, the birthplace of Hitler bears everywhere you turn and in spite of the efforts to conceal it, an atmosphere of sadness which even the clowns and street performers and musicians who entertain tourists and passerby s fail to diffuse. At our graduation ceremony, Virgil Wong had invited a pair of these street musicians to perform for us. It was interesting to see how the director of the Institute felt so uncomfortable as they sang beautiful but obviously sorry laden songs filled with nostalgia for what is not, sang in a language which nobody spoke but which everyone understood.

The Small Bang!

Here the Creator is kneeling down since the high-torque spine servo is not powered up.

It has been quite an ordeal to get to this point. In fact a couple of years to be exact. But finally the creature moves, and not only moves but seems to have a life of its own. I will not post video until after the performance but I am very excited by what I see. Philip and I crack up laughing every time it moves because it is so life-like.



But come to think of it, what is happening (philosophy purists will probably disagree) is that life in fact has been transferred and conserved as energy in a different form. This is not something new to me. I consider any work of our hands to partake of this mysterious force that we call life, otherwise how would it inspire us or elevate our spirit?

When I see a painting (in reality, not a reproduction) by say, Vermeer, the emotion I feel is a product not only of the formal beauty, but of being in the presence of time standing still, a few years of someone's life (which just happens to be a master) condensed and trapped like a genius in a bottle. I, the recipient of this gift, am the vehicle necessary for this alchemical process to occur. I release the energy contained in the matter of the painting.

The order of the particles, held by resinous mediums, crystallized by the passage of time which conform the external appearances of the scene resonate and I believe connect me in the most direct form with the creator of the work of art, in the same way that we are in intimate connection with the writer that is sharing her thoughts and life experiences with us.

This is, has to be, an energy transfer that could probably be calculated by an Einstein, but I prefer to simply shed a tear of joy when I find myself in front of the work of art. That is what art means to me.


In case you have not seen a previous post this is what the Creator's creature looks like. Here Lorena is getting some exercise and getting fit to withstand the wild and strenuous performance ahead, after all it is all her fault since she created the Creator. Playing god or goddess does not come cheap. You can see a little animation here

What was I thinking...

Just to finish the pulley rant, I created a template to drill the round wood pieces that I bought (99c/bag) at the local craft store. They seemed perfectly round in the bag...



Much to my surprise (am I new? or what!) they were far from round, I found out when I tried to fit them in my template. To make it short, I sanded them enough to fit, drilled and glued them together. As I was venting my frustration for not finding proper pulleys, my wife who works next to me in the studio, asked why I did not use the spools that she uses for her beading or the ones that I use for stringing (fish line) the marionette.

DUH!

I must be very tired, been sleeping 4 hours max for months now. why didn't I think of the spools which were in front of me? So, here, I have a steady supply of the perfect size/weight spools.


I only needed to create bushings to adapt to the servos, real servos that is, not the modified ones by Vex which of course have a "proprietary" square shaft that only fits their kit stuff, I still cannot get over their lack of foresight and integration with the rest of the world. So much for Open Anything! Dean Kamen, you know much better than that!

I created the bushings with an aluminum rod that happened to have the right diameter.
I drilled the shaft hole to attach the Hi-Tech servos I will probably use, notched them to hold the adhesive better and epoxied them to the spools.

Stage Hands

Assembling the motion section and adjusting the elements so they fit.

I love that time when you have to finally begin working on the stage for a play. It means the performance is imminent (unless the producer pulls out!). It is also time to listen carefully to the director, designer, performers, lighting and sound people and stage hands and riggers to make sure all points of view are represented and taken into consideration. (if only it was like that in real life...)

Since the hole pattern in the VeX system is not really well designed (unless someone proves the contrary) I had to notch and cut lots of pieces so that they overlapped correctly in the configuration I needed. As I said before, I think the engineer/s who designed the system probably did it with a preset number of projects in their mind.

I would go back to the drawing board. It seems strange to me that in this age of CAD and relational tools, they could not test at least a few thousand combinations and optimize the design for that. So anyway, the metal is soft enough that it doesn't take that long to adjust.

The Vex control modules, servos and power supply.

Except for Lorena, who is the human performer, choreographer and costume designer for the project and who makes sure her needs and demands are met:-), the rest of the crew is me with occasional help from my friends, like Philip who is working on a Flash interface to control the microprocessors and sensors. I have my doubts about the speed of the image processing functions in the new Flash, but it is worth a try.

For now I am using VeX to build the stage support and to prototype the motion and control system. Ideally I would like to use a faster microprocessor, perhaps Propeller by Parallax which is a multi processor where each one of the 8 processors can operate simultaneously giving you the ability to respond in real time to performer actions, which is what I need to do.

Easier said than done, since programming is not my forte, but my friend Philip, who is in his final year in Architecture, loves coding and we have done great work together. I need to complete the prototype so that we can start programming and optimizing. Everything simpler, easier, faster. Like Ars Electronica 2006 theme said, SIMPLICITY - the art of complexity.

The Creator's new feet

I am also getting so much more familiar with the marionette I've created, since while you are whittling away at blocks of wood and dealing with joints, balance and many other issues, it is difficult to meet the creature on its own terms. Although it is not awake yet I can already see a bit of its character. This is an experience which every puppeteer, or for that matter any artist goes through as it transitions from production to contemplation or analysis and finally to understanding or appreciation.

This process is not so familiar to the engineering folks, since for them, in the majority of cases, everything must be defined or though in toto in advance and there is usually little room for improvisation