DIY phase 3, Joe Pankowski

http://thestoryhat.blogspot.com/

http://www.instructables.com/id/The-Story-Hat/

Final Position Statement

Though the process of creating a DIY project I have stuck pretty close to my original idea of creating plans for people to create a zoetrope hat. The most challenging aspect of this process was making a clear and deceive set of instructions for a person other then myself to follow. Usually when I'm making something I put it though a number of edits and these edits are usually built on one another until it works without putting in any consideration that someone would need or want to reproduce it.

The bases for the hat was to create a portable conversation piece that made the wearer a performer. I was inspired on my daily walk from school to the train station and in seeing the various ways street performers have their very own skill to create their own niche in a very difficult profession. I thought about what I would do to survive in such an environment and thats when this idea of the story hat came to me.

I hope that people will see this project and want to reproduce it, but add their own personal touches. For example, instead of making the hat and gears from paper I hope they use other materials and I hope I can encourage them to share their adaptations. I also hope I can get feed back on how to better the instructions. I really see these DIY kits as a launch pad for others creativity.

Joe Pankowski; Morphogenetic Design

the beginning of the text states that the twenty first century will be about biology like the twentieth century was about physics. In studying forms in biology using morphology you see that this biology is reacting to physics. Many of the subjects covered in the reading including material performance, membranes, and responsive surfaces are related to how biological evolution has adapted the forms and structures in nature to survive in an environment. When these bio structures are reproduced the most successful are using structures that have the same purpose as they do in nature. The twenty first century may be the time of biology but that biology is linked to these other factors and powers in our environment. In the Responsive Architecture reading the information about cell structures and the ability of the cytoskeleton to respond to external ques to survive and adapt including physical pressures is a technology we should be tapping into. The one example in the text that is more about physics rather than biology is the Water Cube in Beijing. This structure uses bubble forms found in foam as inspiration. The molecular structures of such forms are directly related physical pressures on them. I think using these biometric shapes and technologies will be seen more and more but what must be considered is what they were originally used for in nature and that they do relate to other areas of science like physics.

Joe Pankowski; Story Hat Documentation

joe pankowski; Digital Fabrications

Designing objects digitally has lead to the development of diverse shapes and environments that would have been impossible to even think up without the current design technology. This type of design with the use of repetitive geometry takes the power of the module and gives it character and soul. These objects are developed mathematically but with curved volumes and stretched forms they feel more alive and natural then traditional hand built materials that tend to straight and right angled forms. It makes you see how mathematical the structures of nature are. For example when you cut a nautilus shell in half and see its almost perfect spiral forms. One video that comes to mind when I see these geometric digitally fabricated designs is of a wind powered kinetic sculpture designed by Theo Jansen. They make me think that we as a species will eventually get so good at this fabrication that we will be able to produce exact replicas of nature.

joe pankowksi; responsive architecture

This reading reminded me of a class I took last semester; landscape architecture. The class main infuses was on the move from the "natural" environment being separated from the human built environment to a more integrated system that places our society and urban structures back into nature. Many of the speakers that came to the class spoke of the line between what is thought of as nature and man made structures becoming less absolute. Many of the designers were using overlapping grids to push human activities, infrastructure, and natural traits of a location together. When these designers talked about these landscape designs they would go into great depth in to how these different layers of activity would respond to one another and what were the effects on each other. The materials discussed in this reading I think intersect this way of designing because its opening up nature as something we are a part of and that we can alter and reuse in our structures. I think as a culture we need to think of ourselves as more of responsible beavers that are connected to nature rather than something separate that just spoils nature.

Joe Pankowski, Final Project Proposal

Joe Pankowski

March 30, 2010

508 EV Graduate Seminar

Final Project Proposal

For my final project I would like to research and write about the artist Fernando Orellana. He was mentioned to me during the second semester reviews and I have looked though his work. I enjoyed the absurdity he finds in the mechanical and the importance in his work for the combined use of old and new medias. He also seems to have an interest in grotesque and disturbing imagery that can be found in his paintings. I am also interested in this imagery, and it's found mainly in my drawings. I may look at how that sensibility is transfered over to his robotic and interactive work. Some of his work has political concepts behind them but I want to concern myself mainly with the aesthetic of his work. This aesthetic is the reason I would like to use him as a central example in this project to better understand a certain art making that I have been interested in ever since I was introduced to Rube Goldberg illustrations. I will also find other examples of this kind of work to compare and contrast the different variations of this "Goldbergian" aesthetic. I believe there is this beauty being found in the process of an action or communication being filtered through a mechanical process that artists like Orellana are tapping into and thats what I want concentrate on. This research will help me as I progress through this program and can be a part the foundation for my thesis.

Cocoon, Joe Pankowski

When I think of this cocoon piece and project I think of the countless times I have come across people on buses and trains who want to sleep or just get away from the chaotic space around them. They kind of zip up there jacket, tuck their head into the jacket, and flap their jacket hood over their head so they are totally emerged in their jacket. I have even seen people tuck their arms up out of their jacket sleeves placing them in the center of this make shift space. I feel they are looking for regeneration, day takes a lot out of people and if they can just be mentally detached from it for just a half an hour maybe they will feel a little more sane. It's like the quote in the article; "You carry your space of calm and quite in a bag, to be used when you need it." Instead of dealing with the given space alloted to us, the cocoon idea gives us a abstract control over our space. I could see this explaining why most people desire to own a car instead of using mass transit in most cases. The car is a cocoon module that is personalized with seat and steering covers, scents, music, and movie entertainment. It's a space that people think they can control making them feel less stressed about the reality of the real chaotic world.

The Story Hat, Joe Pankowski

Within The Story Hat project, I would like to create a portable conversation starter in the form of a wearable zoetrope. A zeotrope is an old fashion stop motion viewing machine, that I would like to conceal inside of a hat. The wearer could draw out short stories in an animation then play them in this hat at social gatherings, with friends, or strangers out in public. It would give a chance for the viewer to be creative in inventing new animations and ways to interpret a story or idea, while allowing them to start up conversations and meet new people.
I have always liked old technologies like the zeotrope. These technologies have a certain feel of Victorian novelty, so much time was put in to building them to be elegant and decorative just for the sake of entertainment. These things were also built for leisurely time and were experienced by groups of people. There was also manual labor involved to start these machines; a crank here a pedal there. Now a days we have machines that are more complex bringing us an experience right away without any work. In the case of an i-pod these new technologies may also isolate us in our leisure time rather than bring us together. We put on our head phones and bury our face into that little screen leaving the world around us. The Story Hat is the exact opposite of this experience there is work for the wearer to draw the animations and to crank them to view. The wearer is also not cranking the animation for themselves but for others creating an experience for a group and not the individual.
I envision the end product of this kit being a hat (preferably stove top), with a small hand crank coming out of the side to run the animation, and a two inch wide one inch tall rectangular whole in the hat to view the animation. The animation would be drawn on a strip of paper the length of the interior circumference of the hat. The strip would then be placed into a ring inside the hat that could be rotated with a gear attached to the hand crank. The moving animation could be viewed from the viewing whole back lit by a battery powered led light, hung from the top of the interior of the hat.
I think to distribute this kit I believe I would create a instructional video of me building and describing the piece. Then I would show it being used in a storytelling situation. I could also create printable plans and put them on my website.
The builder of the kit after finishing his or her zeotrope hat could go out into the world as a traveling storyteller. They would be able to switch out different animations with each story they told endlessly changing or adapting their animated tales.

Joe Pankowski Reading Response 5

I like the piece of the essay where Navas talks about tourism and how it is driven by peoples need to let other people know where they have visited. They do this by finding that monument that encapsulates a culture, region, or experience in their mind and the collective mind of our society, and then document themselves standing in front of it as proof that they are expert travelers. These monuments or famous scenes come to mind when you think or hear certain locations, for example when I think or hear Paris right away the Eiffel tower comes to mind. Any well known location has this universal image that may or may not be totally factual but they have it and it helps people identify with that place. Where I'm from, Omaha, Nebraska there is this deep desire by the people who are from there and live there for Omaha to be one of these recognized universally known non-places. They desperately want people to recognize the Omaha skyline just as well as the Chicago skyline, for example when ever there is a new building being built in Omaha's downtown it's the first story covered on the local news. Another example is the last mayor in Omaha had a pedestrian  suspension bridge built across the Missouri River basically to add something new to the Omaha post card picture. Also when ever a movie is filmed in Omaha, Omahans will go see the movie just to see their city being used as a hopeful universally known city. I think this is an example of a locality wanting to become global. Communities like Omaha, see how places and experiences are universally reproduced and watered down and they see that as success.

Here is a link to Omaha's website citing the movies filmed in Omaha.

http://www.visitomaha.com/film-office/past-films-in-omaha/

Joe Pankowksi Reading Response 4

People always ask why I don’t eat meat and it’s not really because of animal cruelty, it’s more about were it comes from and how detached I am from it. This slow design idea I believe is in the same frame of thinking. We as a culture of consumers only think about the transfer of a product to the store in to our possession and after that as long as it doesn’t break or go out of style we don’t really think about it. The designed objects talked about in the Slow Design Principles really push the user of the object to think about what the object does for them and where the materials came to make it. I can just hear some of the disgusted responses by some people who might have seen the lamps made from lamb stomachs and then went home to sit on their leather coaches and eat their animal products that no longer look anything like the animal they came from without even cringing. I don’t care if someone eat steak or has a whole furniture set made of leather just realize it came from an animal that ate up and used resources it self to produce you something. I think if people did this more often people would waste less and try to care of what they had instead of replacing blindly.

Joe Pankowksi Reading Response 3

The Bratton and Jeremijenko conversation discusses the information used to solve large problems like global warming and air pollution. The information found by either academics or government organizations is most of the time absorbed by our society without much questioning. What is being offered in this discussion is that there should be some kind of movement to allow the general population to find and take in their own data about the environment so they compare their own personal data and relationship with their localized environment, to the large-scale findings of institutionalized data.

The idea of using the model of a health clinic for environmental purposes is a pretty original idea that I thought made since. Placing environmentalism in the same category as social programming keeps the problem at a level which people can get their heads around. I wonder though how such an unfamiliar idea even though formulated after a health clinic would be taken seriously by the local community unless they knew such action would make them healthier and economically better off. I don’t think that they get into how they will educate the public why such an idea is a good one and why they should use a service like an Environmental Health Clinic. The public is use to listening to those government agencies and academics on why they should be doing and what to worry about.

Joe Pankowski, Assignment1

I chose activity number four, Research and Debate from the Yes Men’s Teaching and Action Guide. The part that struck me the most about this activity was the question; who pays the price for those cheap goods we take for granted? I also wanted to touch upon the ridiculous things people think they need at unrealistic low prices. I decided to change the activity a little, and to make a video piece that would invoke debate about our consumption of absurd products at a high cost to our environment and humanity. The video piece is a mash-up of an old 1950’s propaganda film about capitalism and why it’s so important for our way of life. I inserted in this film what makes our capitalistic system function today, in order to make things such as lower costs for competition purposes possible. I also tried to find the most absurd product I could find that no one would ever need, but some might think they need. The product I chose was an MP-3 playing toilet paper dispenser. I imagine the people making these things for the American market must think we’re the biggest idiots. The tag line for this little number was as follows; “Now you can Enhance your Experience in any room with your favorite music from your iPod.” And the price was even better at only $29.99 with free shipping. Amazing! I hope the video will make people think twice about what they really need to live their lives, while also causing them to think about their impact on others and the world in which live in.

Joe Pankowski Response1

Jon Ippolito, Hacking Copy Right for Fun and Profit

Ippolito comes to the conclusion that creative commons sites are the way to make clear and legal places for people who want to share material online, and have the ability to do so without threatening large corporation's who either want to protect their materials from piracy or are just plain greedy. There are other reasons why he believes these commons are good, including its ability of creating a level playing field between the smaller entrepreneurs and big businesses by giving the smaller entrepreneurs the ability to pool intellectual resources. One thing I thought was interesting is how the sites he used as examples graphed the movement of ideas, where they originally came from, and there progress so a user could tell if the material shared was useful in relation to what they were working on. He also brought up a good point with mapping where the information, audio, or image came from, so that if you were to use an altered image, and then you altered that image it didn't accidentally end up looking like the original image before it was altered the first time. His image example was the Jeff Koons image. He ended his talk on the idea of taking the creative commons farther and calling for a creative sanctuary. A creative sanctuary is this place where stuff is copy right free, but from what I understood could take in stuff from large corporations that was protected but that somehow strayed into the sanctuary and would be up for grabs. I would think this would make these large corporations uneasy once again and put such sites in harms way.

Joe Pankowski Resonse2

Reading Response 2
IAA Engaging Ambivalence

The article reads into what DARPA's impact is on the academic and engineering community. The the article describes what DARPA wants from researchers as 'fantasy into reality.' I can't help but to draw parallels between how they entice the academics with futuristic combat scenarios based on sci-fi and video games to the military advertisements you see at the movie theater in the form of movie trailers. This one is a favorite of mine that I have seen lately, complete with 3D holographic computers imagery from Star Wars . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfAHw1kTpvY
I think this way of getting researches to produce for the military ,with science fiction, is not as effective and dangerous as the normalization of ambivalence that the article later talks about. Taking the desire of an engineer to want to solve complex problems then allowing them to totally excuse the political and social implications has gone on since there has been war. da Vinci for example designed large scale war machines during his life, mainly because he saw it as a engineering challenge to solve, and what harm it would do to people was of no concern to him.
So to break this train of thought would be extremely hard and I wonder how successful the IAA can do at infiltrating it. I say this because IAA is a political art organization trying to disguise itself as a bunch of engineers to be taken seriously by the engineer community, even though the article states there is a long history of engineers ignoring artists. With its agendas I don't think IAA can pull off the Trojan Horse that it implies it is trying to do. I do think its a good way of criticizing the culture of morally unbiased engineers.