I am making things, well, I say 'making stuff,' but same diff. And then there is MakingThings, the company. 'MakingThings provides modular mechanical, electronic and computational infrastructure for people who make kinetic and interactive systems, devices or machines.' Their Teleo product line looks cool, but sadly, it costs actual cash :-) Another feature in their favor is that their documentation is very very funny.

"If your program does something unexpected, don't proudly attribute it to chaos and emergent phenomena immediately, most often unexpected program behavior stems from bugs not new natural phenomena."

(much more rants and commentary on the topic of 'making') they seem like cool people doing interesting stuff. 'Our customer's projects require familiarity and experience with software, electronics, mechanical engineering, fabrication and other disciplines. Often this diverse set of skills is not present in a single individual or small team'

Aint that the truth! I spent more time than I care to recall on trying to get my simple two transistor circuit to work at switching from the 5 volt TTL voltages of the PC Parallel port, up to 24 volt sprinkler valves. And right now I am held back in my stepper motor control by those pesky 'H Bridges.' Then we get to mechanical engineering, fabrication and those ominous 'other disciplines.'

eek!

I am afraid to read about the things that I am interested in for fear that the 'outside' will corrupt my inner space. Strange fear, that one! Strange and non-productive! So I browsed the Making Things web site and found the Reeds project The 'reeds' quicer when people walk by. Interesting point: "Each reed is fitted with a little motor with an assymetrical weight on it to create the quivering effect."

Which triggers in me the beautiful focus on what we _can_ do, and not what we can not. For right this second I cannot control a stepper motor. But I can most empatically control 'small' DC motors. I can control the hell out of them using my sprinkler valve control circuit. The reeds, with the weight on the motor, make something different happen. Different from what I expected.

I am overwhelmed by my vision of the beauty of the NYU Wooden Mirror. I can hear the little wood blocks rustling like leaves as they adjust their little block faces to the proper angle. I've never seen the piece, never seen a picture, but my image, created from the descriptions of Tom Igoe and Ben Hammersley, is of a zen like calm...

But every single block is controlled, or I've been told, by a stepper motor. And the cheapest ones I have found, and I have two on order, are $8.95, and then require some sort of controller...and that seems overwhelming. But the Reeds...they do a similar thing, react in a positionally responsive way to external stimulus, and they do it with a single bit of information per reed. Just turn this motor on. Turn this motor off.

Stephen Wilson is a profressor in the Art Department a San Francisco State University. He wrote Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology. And he has a list of links to the people doing this work. Intersections of Art, Technology, Science & Culture - Links