Work in progress for the Extraordinary Effort, Spectacular Failure show at Chicago Artists Coalition, March 6.
Knitted wire, with solder
Felted wool circuit board
Work in progress for the Extraordinary Effort, Spectacular Failure show at Chicago Artists Coalition, March 6.
Knitted wire, with solder
Felted wool circuit board
Last month, I received a phone call from Mary, one of the clever ladies who runs the InterKnit Machine Knitters Club. Someone was getting rid of some Passap Duomatic knitting machines, and would I like one? Heck, yeah! I replied, and could you also grab one for Pumping Station: One?
So, two days later Mary drops off two very heavy knitting machines, and several very heavy boxes of carriages, accessories, tension rods, and books. The machines are ancient, crusted with yellowed oil and blackened lint. Luckily, one of the books is "Be Your Own Passap Paramedic", which gave us a starting point to deep cleaning these machines.
Catching up on my blogging. Images of my works Electronic Damask and Knitted VU Meter at Chicago Art Department in October. We pulled Electronic Damask off of its frame for this show. I think people appreciated being able to see both sides, and it cast an interesting shadow.
These great images were taken by Leo Selvaggio, show curator Chuck Przybyl, and Mike Nourse. The full album is available on Flickr.
New issue of Leonardo Music Journal is out and I'm on page 77, "Engaging the Audience: A Primer for Sound Art in Public Spaces."
The article started out as the inaugural post of this very blog, one year ago.
In the video, it's reacting to music played off my cell phone.
Knitted VU Meter 141120a.mov from Jesse Seay on Vimeo.
In art circles, "PS1" is a center for contemporary art in NYC. Here in the Chi-town maker community, "PS1" is short for Pumping Station: One, Chicago's oldest and largest makerspace. I've been an active member of this "other" PS1 for several years now, and I've been working on ways to both encourage and harness the community spirit that it nurtures. So I'm creating work that draws on the community model of the quilting bee, updated for an electronic age.
My circuit-knit "quilt" project started with a stack of my freshly knit circuit boards and a solder party armed with wire cutters and hot chisel tips. Afterwards, though, there was still much work to be done, and that's when a few PS1 volunteers stepped up for the long haul.
Motivated by an interest in electronics, the community of a group project, a desire to support the arts, or just straight-up generosity, Jay Hopkins, Peter, and Bandit put in some crazy hours soldering and troubleshooting the 896 LEDs, resistors, transistors, capacitors, and jumper wires that drive the piece. (For the tech curious, it's 56 flip flop circuits wired in parallel, aka blinking lights.)
PS1's vice president (and resident photographer), Everett Wilson, captured one of our late-night solder sessions. Was this the night we stayed til 4am? I can't even remember.
The past month has really been a whirlwind! I turned in my application
for tenure, got the semester rolling, and pulled together my show for
Chicago Artist Coalition. I'm showing a circuit-knit work that was made
with the group efforts of members of Pumping Station: One.
I'll post photos of the finished work soon. Here are pictures from the
first step of the soldering process, the solder party I held at PS1 to
get the circuit boards tinned and ready for component assembly.
(photos: Everett C. Wilson)
I've been busy with starting the new semester and finishing my tenure application. Getting back into the studio is a real treat! My current project: making a spherical shape from multiple segments.
With one more of these segments, I can link them all together to create a ball. I did the one on the left last night (there's the start of a repeat, but then I ran out of wire and dropped stitches, and decided to call it a night). The right one I did last week.
Also on this one (visible in the first photo) I "cast off" the wire stitches at the top, once the pattern started getting narrow. No need to knit the whole width when I only need what's inside the borders of the grey yarn.
Here's the back. I'm looking forward to finishing the third segment, getting out the soldering iron, and trimming off all that excess wire!