Hi everyone,
tonight was the last ‘event’ of the Remedios Terrarium exhibit.  Congrat’s again!  Inspiring is the least I can say about this discussion.

It’s now time to wrap-up, celebrate and get together to share our experience of making RT.

Our exhibition closes tomorrow, Friday, at 7pm (The gallery is not open on Saturday-for sure).
Technically you can start packing your things at 7, but please don’t start before that(unless you have to -JS, Flower -ok)
The gallery has to be completely cleared on Monday night at the latest.  Wall repairs are going to get done by Lynn’s technicians on Tuesday.

After asking around all day today I think that Saturday is the best day to get together and take the biggest things down. It would be nice to do as much as possible in groups.
Sunday and Monday, I will be out of town and I don’t know how much people will be around/available to help out (except for Lenka and Desh taking the Cones down, and Flower taking care of the plants on Monday)

Strike Schedule:
Also available on the TML-Shared Google calendar  (BUT MORE PRECISE HERE)
(visible at
http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=enc0mlbupaurd8qhenaducvd0g%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/Montreal
and
http://topologicalmedialab.com/blogs/calendar)

Friday:
10 am: Tim gets the big Hexagram cart for the weekend.
–  :  JS takes some projectors down.
8.30 pm Nacando Productions launch- cocktail @ NFB-ONF  (the National Film Board of Canada) 1564, rue St. Denis, Montreal.  See RSVP list at the bottom of this email **
Do not hesitate to contact Desh if you want to come but haven’t confirmed “Nacando Productions” <nacando@gmail.com>

Saturday:
(I will take my car in case some people need to take stuff home after)
9 am, Harry and JA taking the cells and the lights down.
11am, Elena and Flower are getting started on the vitrine and their respective things.
Tim is packing the sound gear
Ayesha is taking care of Sebald Theater
Jhave is taking his pedestal and computer home.
–Patrick unavailable

Sunday:
– Patrick, Harry, Tim unavailable
– JA -out of town.

Monday:        
complete strike
Lenka - cones
– JA -out of town.

Tuesday:
10 am someone else than Tim returns the Hexagram cart, because Tim will be out of town. (any voluntary? please let tim <timothyvsutton@gmail.com> and I know.)
4-6     campfire : project debriefing.  We should revisit, things that worked well as well as things that didn’t work so well; and talk about the project documents and events documentation for project archive.

Notes:
Eliot, Doug, please make sure that one of you come either Saturday or Monday to take the sensate tapestry and related gear.
Jae Ok, and other Touch2 folks, I will take care of removing our things from the wall, but if you want to help out, just call me Saturday.
I think that the projectors are going down tomorrow because they are needed for another event in the evening.

If you were not concerned by any of the above, but you have time in your hands, or need help to take your things down, or whatever, please come Saturday 11am.

On Saturday night or Sunday I will send another e-mail with progress report and estimate of the amount of work that’s left to do for Monday.  Hopefully most of it is done.

Thanks to all for being part of RT’  Please join us in celebrating the end of this journey tomorrow night at the NFB and for the project debriefing on Tuesday during campfire (4-6 pm).

**Desh, here is the list of people that have told me they would come.  I might be a bit off, because I’m writing that by memory, but I remember that the number was 14.
1Xin Wei
2Harry
3Many
4Many’s friend
5Kiani
6Kiani’s friend
7Morgan
8Morgan’s friend
9JA
10Pascal
11Manuelle
12Francis
13JC
14Jhave ?

I’ve simplified the event topology to a bare minimum that still has a chance of flow in two dimensions, and has a beginning, muddle, end. Let’s call it the VISIT4 topology, since it’s got only 4 states: NIGHT, DAY(=DAYDREAM=DESERT), GLASS, FIRESTORM.

We media folks met and talked about the experiential aspect of these states last week. Basically, the room leaves its NIGHT activity as the clock shows it’s Gallery business hours (9 - 19h?).

NIGHT is time for the Gallery to dance (danse macabre, sibelius’ valse triste, hiphop, etc. according to the season) as you like. It would be interesting to suggest autonomous life, autonomous intentionality, locked behind glass.

DAY is when the clock shows Gallery is open for business and there’s a minimal activity in the room. (We can set the threshhold just below one-body’s-worth of activity by calibration under the Gallery’s conditions, or we can use the surveillance camera trained on the receptionist desk to see when someone is near the receptionist area.) It could be interesting to characterize DAY state as when no visitor is there in the Gallery, but it’s open, and showing its dreams. What those “dreams” are is up to the creators to interpret. We did speak about playing back processed, previously recorded material.

As visitors infuse the Gallery, the room gets “wetter” (derives more energy from visitors). As it gets wetter, more weather happens: i.e. the state tends away from DAY and toward the mixture between GLASS - FIRESTORM .

GLASS is viscuous, liquid, continuous. In this state, horizon is distinct from sky: the projections on walls are distinct from projection on the ceiling. The visitor may be able to “write” on the surfaces — only one attractor (that associated with the biggest blob?), permits writing, e.g using a scattering of dust.

FIRESTORM is violent; sparky, atoms in void. Maybe nervous in the sense that the dynamics are quite sensitive to perturbations from sensors. Eg. motion from camera input drives the particles very hard, bc the particles’ masses are low, or attractors’ gravitational masses are high.

In terms of physical configuration, what distinguishes GLASS from FIRESTORM could be how people are positioned and / or moving near the sculptural elements in the room: the Cells, the Sensate Tapestry, possibly the Suitcase in the other, hidden room.

I don’t know what activity should tend to correlate with GLASS & FIRESTORM in the most tangible or compelling way. My first cut guess would be to sense whether people (a person) are gathered close to a (any) sculptural element. For example, people “touching” (within threshhod of our sensors) any part of the Cell structure or Tapestry could send the system into FIRESTORM.

This we’ll have to work out in situ, in vivo, of course.

On 7-Mar-08, at 12:54 AM, gregory rubin wrote:

Dear Xin Wei and JC,

I hope this note finds you both well.

Following today’s conversations with both Josee-Anne and JC, and then meeting with the team here in Winnipeg, I am providing you with an overview of our schedule for Montreal, as well as a list of items and requests regarding space and equipment.

Firstly, Xin Wei, thank you for arranging and offering accommodation. I have asked Candace and Evan to contact you directly. And I will get in touch with Tim and Morgan.

Our arrivals and departure itineraries are as follows:

Gregory: Arrive Saturday, March 8, 12:38 pm, Air Canada 8564. Depart Tuesday, March 18, 8:20 pm, Air Canada 8569
mobile: 4 1 6 5 8 7 8 2 4 0

Evan & Candace: Arrive Sunday, March 9, 12:38 pm, Air Canada 8564. Depart Tuesday, March 18, 1:55 pm, Air Canada 8567

Evan mobile: 2 0 4 2 9 6 3 8 2 7

Candace mobile: 2 0 4 5 1 0 1 6 1 0

Also, these past few days we have been making some cell prototypes, experimenting with water in the cells, as well as preparing pieces for the structure & cell templates. We’ll get photos of the work on the blog in the next day for you to see the progress. We’ll be producing some more prototypes in the next couple of days, and bring the work with us to Montreal.

Work Schedule:

Monday 10

Shopping for supplies - tapes, vinyls, fabric, tubes, etc…
Setting-up the work space and cell presses
Making cell prototypes

Tuesday 11

Producing cells in time for campfire.

Wednesday 12

Mass Producing cells

Thursday 13

Producing cells
Work in Gallery: hanging lines (morning)

Friday 14

Work in Gallery: making PVC tube structure, hanging cells (morning and afternoon)
project review (afternoon/evening)

Saturday 15

Cabane a Sucre!

Sunday 16

Refining the cell

(Producing more cells?)

Monday 17

Refining, (Producing more cells, hanging in the gallery?)

Tuesday 18

Refining, (producing more cells, hanging in the gallery?)

We are bringing to Montreal:

-nichrome wire (and related electronic equipment)
-Teflon tape
-some vinyl
-samples of PVC tubes
-samples of materials (meshes, fabrics, screens for the projections)
-sample cell templates

The bulk quantities of materials (inc. vinyl and PVC tubes) will be purchased in Montreal, after we have arrived. We can do this on Monday the 10th in the morning before we get access to the workshop and start setting up the press stations.

Space and Equipment

JC has confirmed that there is space available in the TML.

-We would like there to be an open space about 10 X 12 feet for laying out the cells, testing configurations. The work stations could be set up around this area.
-Can we get a couple more tables into the lab so that there are a total of three work stations?
-Equipment: drill, jigsaw, a few power bars, extension cords.
-If this amount of space is not available in the TML, would there be an alternative space to work in? It’s best if the work stations and laying-out-area are all in one room.
-JC: please go ahead and cut out the materials for building the cell presses. I can come in either Saturday or Sunday and help with the setup in the TML.

Gallery

I understand that hanging equipment will be available both Thursday and Friday mornings.

-Can we get access to the Gallery throughout Friday to hang cells and the cell structures (we won’t need the hanging equipment for this)?

-Can we get access to the gallery before Thursday to check out the space?

That’s it for now. If there is anything I have missed, or you have any questions, please let me know.

Thank you for your attention. I look forward to meeting you all in Montreal!

Gregory

CC: Josee-Anne, Patrick

(JC has general notes)

I’ve asked Louis-Andre to come up with an overall design of the vitrines that makes a more coherent
landscape / timeline, and incorporates and contextualizes the individual contributions.

We need to commit now on the individual elements, so
Louis-Andre can work out a global design for the vitrine.

Here are the potential / actual elements for the vitrine –

Flower — plants clustered, perhaps around pillars, or w/r the gaps in the glass;
Tim — 1 subwoofer, small mics perhaps near the gaps in glass;
JS — a projector on a remote control car (potential).
Ayesha Hameed — a representation of the Sebald table with Mark Sussman. (to be confirmed)
Ayesha, can you describe explicitly what it is?

Louis-Andre is available to meet after hours and on the weekends, so he will call folks together.
Please proactively contact him and give him your phone numbers and emails,
availabilities.

One of LA’s concepts is a long ribbon of paper, a semi-mythical, curly “river of history”
clear across the entire width of the vitrine … cut variably
with perhaps hand-drawn as well as printed images texts from all the TML documentation
(eg salient stills)

Nadia Frantova will help Louis-Andre with the print and physical (sculptural) production,
and associated work (perhaps getting salient stills, making photos of potential
detritus around the lab)

JC & JA will confer with Louis-Andre provide some continuity of design across the cards, TML brochure.

At the campfire, we raised the possibility of a poster that comes out of the same design
(maybe looking like part of the paper river?)

The idea emerged of using the same / similar material (tissue papers, cheescloth, ??) to dress the speakers
and even the atrium (west) wall for Touch2.

Maybe the paper “screen” across the glass of the vitrine could be ripped in a way to lightly suggest unwrapping the Gallery.

If I understand your idea — the irregular running strip could be pasted to the glass at eye height, with some holes to peek through and other places where the image is printed directly on the paper sheet.

The peek-holes would line up with printed images behind the paper screen, but since I imagine the strip is not very wide (12″ to 36″ irregular ?) these are symbolic peek-holes, not really necessary.

We have some ideas from last night that may begin to make more coherent material connections across the show: vitrine — wall treatment — dressing the loudspeakers that will be on the floor of the main Gallery. Even the costume for Touch2, perhaps….

Josee-Anne, can you verify with Lynn when exactly we can work in the vitrine?
- Xin Wei


Dear Elliot, Flower, Elena, + whoever in Winnepeg has the electronics chops and is related to the cell sculpture or the WYSIWYG tapestry,To follow on the tests that Patrick & other Winnepegers have done with the suspended cell sculpture,I’d like to see if any of you can commit to getting data flowing from (some of) the cells to Morgan and me in Max.At this point I see no  compositional  need or plan to incorporate signals from the cell structure in the state-engine.   So it’s really up to those of you who are creating the cell structure to come together,decide what the signals could do that’s interesting and relevant to the cell sculpture relevant to the themes of RT,and to make precise plans on how to build the sensors, the electrical analog- digital interfaces, the data network,and  to program the signal processing.What platforms do you want to use?  Are the Arduino’s “merely” to map data from sensors in the cells to Max/Macwhere you’d code up the processing in Max so you can communicate with the Tim’s MSP or JS’ Jitter instruments directly?But who will write that code for that processing ?   (Not Tim or JS or Morgan, but an applications programmer.)SUGGESTION:  How about if Elliot+Doug talk with the cell sculptors : Patrick, Dirk, Candace, Gregory, Evan, (possibly JC, Flower, JS if they have time headspace, which is doubtful about possibly getting data from the cells to the WYSIWYG sound instruments?This could be engineered independently of the other systems.Xin Wei

here are two videos edited together from Patrick’s cell demo a few weeks ago.
the first video is a 5 min demo with sound; the second is a rapid fly-thru of building a cell circuit (w/o sound)

See Patrick’s drawings of cells now in the TML Galleries / album “cells” –particularly the suspension side image:

jelly + cell

2_cell

musclecells

nervecell

plant cell

shadow-projection cell

shadow-projection cell

sonic cell

structure_side_image

suspension system

I’ve sketched some ideas on the layout of the main gallery, capturing some of the discussions with Patrick, Harry, JA, Tim…. (Also had conversations with Flower, Lenka, Elena for the blackbox, and Louis-Andre, Elena, Tim, … not represented in these sketches.)

Waiting on other folks.

The idea is to cluster the head-height cells near the corridor side of the space, leaving a scattering of them in the central area. Harry suggested bouncing the ceiling projection from a suspended projector (2m from grid), off of a 2m wide mylar, for effective throw of 6m. JS should confirm with Harry & Patrick+JC whether this would yield enough coverage of image-bearing cells on the ceiling.

Perhaps the Weaving (20′ x 4′ Sensate Tapestry) could be suspended from the ceiling near the entrance to the Gallery. (Marguerite and Elliot can confer with Patrick et.

Currently, I’m assuming that JS projections go onto the walls, eg the Atrium, ceiling, and Mackay walls (if we can fit the Sensate Tapestry parallel to the short wall on the corridor side of the Gallery). Need to confirm this.

Spoke with Harry re. Lightfield. Current idea: one good place to mount the moving beam (light) would be near the grid, about 1m out from the center axis of the Atrium wall. Its beam should have a clear play over the floor, over the bench. It may (or may not) scatter through a few carefully placed, transparent, head-height cells that “trickle” into the main air space.

The other lightfield installatio, along the base of the St. Catherine wall, would work best if that wall is left blank, I think. We could project from a projector suspended from the grid flush with wall, beaming down to a 3.7m wide x 5 cm high image-bearing custom-made screen / reflective surface. The point of that projection is to transmit and transmute (perhaps contrapuntally) the activity from the sidewalk. (We can mount a web-camera atop the St Catherine wall, looking out to the sidewalk, and process it through a simple Jitter patch.)

The main atmosphere effects: I’ve been emailing / talking with JS, Tim, Morgan about the states of the room. Now I have some semantics for the VISIT topology; it can be a fusion of season and weather: spring (EXFOLIATION), summer (verdant), fall (FIRESTORM), winter (GLASS stillness).