Almost done!

Here are some pictures of all four of my portraits! The last two are in progress, but I'm hoping to be done really soon. They're about 9 in. in diameter, and I'm planning on installing them within the embroidery hoops that I used.

Visual Windchime progress

Hello all!

Jason, Kiran, and I have been hard at work making a polished version of our Art Affair piece. To give you some background information you can check this out to see what we built last winter. Since then, we've gotten the go-ahead to rebuild it to install it in the new d.School (Peterson, bldg 550). If you haven't gotten a chance to check out the building, we would highly recommend it. It's quite design-y and meant to foster creativity.

To install it, instead of having a dark box for the environment, it will be free-hanging from the ceiling. Thus we needed to hide the wires in the tubes, make the lights visible indoors, and choose wood that would match the ambiance and decor of the d.School.

We're in the midst of construction, but we think we solved all those problems by frosting all the tubes/lights and then plugging the light part with polyethylene to light pipe the LEDs. So when you run your hand across the hanging tubes/lights, two inches of the each of the tubes light up (rather than just a point like before). The light is much more visible and the wires are hidden. As for the wood, we chose a nicely finish apple-ply (which is another type of Europly). It matches wood seen throughout the d.School.

As for how far we are, the holes in the wood have been cut out by a computer numerically controlled machine (CNC router) and all the lights are complete. It's now a matter of assembly and some more touching up.

Island Story

I just got back from my vacation in Sri Lanka. I've been researching Sri Lankan traditional art and have tried to create a fusion of traditional folk art with western painting styles. Here are the painting's I've done so far:

Blue Water Lilies

Dancer

Monks

Lotus Motif

The Last Stilt Fisherman

Magdalena's Update

http://lublinprojectgateway.blogspot.com/

Prototyping for Brain Noise Machine

Over the last couple months, we did more development with the MindSet EEG headset by NeuroSky. We were able to print out attention, meditation, and blink values with a parser written in C++. But, we wanted an easier platform for mechatronic prototyping so we started using Arduino. Unfortunately with Arduino, there is no MindSet support for returning blink values (myoelectric signals produced when moving the muscles in your forehead).

Anyway, we built a simple program to turn on a light brightly when a user had a high attention level:



Later we went to musical prototypes. We decided to extend on our project from last spring and develop a more complicated robotic band. This system would let two users play the instruments with their mind, and change the rhythms based on their attention and medication levels. A quick video of some ideas including strumming a guitar, playing a thumb piano, adjusting a Thermin, and blowing air through a flute are here.

This is three different minerals. To me, however, it's a tiger eating an ant bear.
And this is two naked bodies.
And this looks like a forest fire.

I have been working on my project all summer, fetching rocks from mines and mountains, to cut them and make them thin, so thin that light can pass through them to see what you see.

summer work

Hello, art blog! Here are some of the pieces I've been working on. I have been exploring the differences between my original pieces and their digital counterparts, that is the same piece after having been photographed/scanned and then edited using photoshop CS3.

Also, some randoms from my sketchbook.

sketchbook randoms

work in progress

photoshopped version

original

original

photoshopped

more to come! hope you're all having a great summer.

My First Post: Rumi Painting

Hey Everyone!

So finally getting my first post in, and I'm going to cut straight to the chase! Just completed my first painting of the series of 5. This is a short description:

The first will convey a desire for spiritual unification. I will create a black-and-white acrylic painting of my palms covered in poetry by Rumi, using a poem about his desire to unite with God. Here my choice of style was inspired by artist Shirin Neshat, who used Persian poetry and photography to portray the struggle of women in the 1979 Iranian revolution (Look her up! She's awesome - she actually came to Stanford in June).

I made a few changes - instead of palms, I have my hands clasped to convey the idea of unification. In the design stage, my drawings had the hands covered in writing while during execution, I decided have no writing on the fingers. I didn't want the text to be overpowering, and I think it helped. Below is pretty much the final product - still needs a little tweeking, but that's basically it.

What do you guys think? Any suggestions for improvements?

Onwards to Piece 2!!

An update

Here are some photographs of the first portrait I'm working on. I've started with the embroidery and I'm going to add in scraps of cloth and more of the fabric pen later. I'm trying to incorporate common Indian textile patterns and the bright, almost extravagant, colors in movies and media. More soon!

My final prints so far!

I've spent a lot of my summer working in the good old photo lab! It's been a pleasure helping out the summer students, especially because so many of them are high schoolers and international students with an unusual level of enthusiasm and commitment. I took some snapshots of my final prints--hope you enjoy! Scans to follow when they're all finished...

Photo book thoughts part 1

July has passed and I am finally back home, in Lomé. I’ve visited tema, Accra, Aburi and Korkrobite (and am hoping to find the time and plan a quick visit to Benin’s cities and villages). I’ve had the time to enjoy the new sights, the people and the influence of football (soccer for the USA) in various aspects of people’s lives.

My project has taken a different turn. I was expecting to find a lot more evidence of the World Cup 2010 in physical forms of art such as sculptures, jewelry and paintings. But that was based on my experience living in Lomé in 2006. I underestimated the impact of modernization and globalization that has taken place here in Africa. Indeed, I soon found out that graphic art is much more present here in Africa. So I've been thinking about how to slightly change the direction of my project.

Stay tuned for Part 2 in a few days...

First post!

Hello blog!
I'm currently in Oxford, en route to India, where I am going to create portraits of my grandparents. My family is very spread out around the world, so I hope that through these pieces, I'll be able to capture the combination of alienation and familiarity that defines these relationships.
I was initially planning on creating these portraits on canvas, and I wanted to incorporate embroidery and ink to make them personal, domestic and real. After shopping for supplies, I fell in love with the idea of making the portraits directly on fabric and framing them in embroidery hoops. This idea feels very right, so I'm very excited to get started. Expect to hear back from me in about a week!
Surabhi

I'm still sketching, still experimenting… here are some examples I've put together on my computer.

It's been fun trying out all sorts of different elements. Different sketches line up differently... and so there'll be more coming soon. Here are examples of the figure sketch as well as a corner design. The corner design will probably be etched into the plane.

I've begun gathering random materials to fuse on to the glass, including some gold finishings, smaller scraps, etc.

As much as I value the "just go" attitude, I need to be thinking about how to make this project presentable. The actual glass panels I will purchase at a costco-foroartists this coming week.

Questions still running around my head (which I've found someone to ask-- himself a freelance artist and a newly minted founder of a design start-up, Paul Gleason is a great contact to have in Berlin):

• How fuse together the panels?
• Will I need to make a frame (wooden/acrylic?) for each individual panel?
• Can I just glue the edges?
• How heavy do I dare make it?

Musings on glass versus acrylic: this will have to come down to testing. I think both are viable options… I imagine the acrylic will be easier to etch, but render not-as-nice effects as on glass. But I might scavenge extra pieces lying around to test these.

Things I'm testing:

• Functionally:How the mix of media looks.
• Design-wise: How busy to make it--> keeping in mind I want to make it purposefully busy.

More Brainstorming

A couple more ideas that we discussed tonight relating to the mind control project:

1.) Grilled-cheese making machine. If you do a bad job concentrating, your grilled cheese sandwich will come out half-made, or worse, it will have the plastic still on the cheese slice!

2.) Rube Goldberg type music machine, in which certain brain activity activates part of the machine, bring cohesive tunes to otherwise chaotic noise.

Other ideas involved intricate light displays or audio effects. Next week we start prototyping mechanisms and soon we'll work with the developer's kit and learn how to measure the brain activity.

Ciao for now.

Brainstorming for the Brain Project

Since our mini-grant project for An Art Affair was so well received, we decided to carry on with an an even bigger interactive mind-control exhibit for Party on the Edge. Last time, we used an EEG set that could measure concentration level, which we basically used as one input. Now, we'll have a more sophisticated pair of headsets which can measure focus/concentration, meditation (which is characteristically composed of different waves than focusing), and blinking (myoelectric activity). We will also be using the developer's kit, so instead of just hacking into a toy, this time we'll have access to a lot of raw brain wave data...which has the potential for all sorts of interesting art!

Soon, we will have narrowed down on a concept. For now, here are some ideas we're throwing around:

- Mindcontrol fireworks. (Perhaps will use an LED display to mimic the pyrotechnics).

- Orbs with changing light intensities (focus), that levitate (meditation), and move in circles (blinking).

- Environmental vibrations based on brain wave patterns.

- Large platforms which move the participants: closer to each other, levitating, around each other.
- Old school TV with static which clears as the users focus (revealing a surprise).
An image from this site relates to the first two ideas (3D LED display): http://www.vimeo.com/1762821

Basically, we want to go for something engaging on a large scale. Here are some sketches of more ideas:

Lublin Project Gateway

http://lublinprojectgateway.blogspot.com