Not a reference to the Nolan film that I can only describe as a fever dream. Odyssey of the Mind (OM) was an incredible program for elementary, middle, and high school students where we competed with students from around the world in improvisational puzzle games and longitudinal combination playwriting and engineering projects.
OM really did prepare me for this diss: a sorta robotics for art kids. We never did the actual robotics workflow per se, but we did code, engineer, build, and compose materially in response to challenges, strict rules, and specifications to functionally address complex philosophical and practical research questions with wit and humor. Interesting that this is where I should end up after spending my after-school time on such projects.
Anyway, I am happy to report that I now have a working PiShock hub and shocker, and a second shocker whizzing its way through the international mail systems as I type. What that means is that I am deep in some code, building out a framework that functions for the purposes of my project. Rather than totally abandoning the (admittedly more self-conscious) He Wants This, I intend to use this app as a part of my critical making discussion and research process, while that app itself will not be a part of the publicly available elements of the project. This is for several reasons, but mainly 1) I’ve put a lot of effort into HWT; it works, and it is an excellent materialization of my chapter argument; and 2) HWT has served as a sandbox/testing ground for puzzling out the necessary workflows to get the PnP version of the project streamlined and functional.
Beyond this coding work, I’ve also been hard at work trying to figure out how the physical structure of PnP will actually be constructed; sketches and measurements are all well and good, but getting your hands on plastic is really where the challenging critical work occurs. I’ve been playing around with PVC pipe, the 3D modelling-to-3D printing pipeline, and whatever I can find at The Scrap Exchange. Sadly, I don’t have any breakthroughs yet. 6-inch PVC pipe and connectors are obviously the best choice of what I’ve found so far to manifest the vision in my head and sketches, but piping of that size is surprisingly expensive!
Rather than spreading my efforts across the various valences of the project, I’m working this week to focus my energies. Now that I have a functional PiShock in hand, working out the internal structure needed to create the effect central to the PnP project and, from there, construct the external aesthetic-rhetorical portions of the interface.