I'm working.

For the record:
In addition to our blog, we have ongoing emails. The initial email might be about scheduling a meeting, and then grow to include questions and research about, well, anything. Here’s an example, after I told Michael I wanted to meet in the city so I could buy a projector, maybe at B&H.

Wendy,
Here’s about an hours worth of searching.  I stumbled onto pico pocket projectors.  Let me know if you want me to back out to “normal” projectors and see about low cost.  My view is that the small projectors could be a good prototyping tool for you in the same way that the photo frames and the XActi camera are.  You may even be able to connect your XActi to one of these.
Michael

(The email had an attached  PDF)

Interactions:

• Cranking
• Sitting or standing (eg a switch, or weight)
• Proximity
• Motion detection
• Pulling/pushing
• Running (e.g. treadmill)
• Color detection
• Sound (e.g. of you clap, it turns something on)
• Opening/closing (e.g. door, window, drawer)
• Positional sensing
• Hitting keys
• etc…

Static Type:

• Spray paint
• Silk screen
• etching
• Letterpress
• Stencil
• Cut out
• Scratch
• Burn
• Scribble
• Sandblast
• Woodblock
• Magic marker
• Pencil
• Typewriter
• Sewn/needlepoint
• Neon
• LED
• etc…

Materials:

• clay
• Wood
• Cardboard
• Plastic
• Styrofoam
• Cloth
• Paper
• Glass
• Metal
• Rubber
• Screen
• Leather
• Carpet
• Grass
• Sand
• Food
• Concrete
• etc…

Typographic manipulations:

• Letter spacing
• Line spacing
• Bigger/smaller
• Fonts (reg, bold, italic, black, condensed, etc)
• Color
• Focus—in/out
• Rotate
• Distort
• etc…

“Working on a sketch for a setting is probably the happiest and briefest part of the artist’s work in the theater.” — Donald Oenslager (1902- 1975)

Yesterday Michael and I met to get the blog going, for real. All went smoothly until we tried to embed video. No luck. Michael had to leave before he figured out a solution, and he is about to go on vacation. Well, I should have known that he would keep working on it: this morning I got a lengthy email outlining the reason why it didn’t work and the options (with pros and cons) of fixes.

I am writing this to make a note of all the details along the way of making a body of work—the vast effort that is never seen, but is so crucial to development.

“I saw rain in the forecast.” That is what I just heard and for some reason wrote down.

Anyway. Yesterday I met w Frank in the morning at Smooch. Told him re: exhibit. Two single important thots: the first was that the interactive stuff can be integrated with the non interactive, that is, treat the room as a whole. (A Duh, of course, but I had missed it) and TWO, think Multiples. Duh again, that is always visually the best. But I forgot, sort of, well, I forgot to think about it consciously.

So of course I felt bad bc I thought Oh shit there is so much I have not thot about and this is gonna suck bc I am not being ambitious enough — I should be getting big things, a lot of things with tech, all of that… But actually it should be simple, simple… Elegant, it must be elegant. I am a designer and that always comes through and should.

I want to stick to it being about overheard cell conversation. It is pointing out what we see (hear) every day, and to ponder it just a bit more. The whole Cage thing.

Ok I also want to have the words out loud overlapping forming a cacophony. Oh, but what if it becomes melodic! Like the stuff Michael is doing. Melodic.

“What if” plus cacophony could equal melodic. Plus movement. Could equal beauty. Very Merce Cunningham.