Bill Graner

My friend's pre-order micro-financed artsy board game requires your attention! :)

2009-11-16T19:40:04Z

I've never seen this done before. My friend Jim made (discovered?) a board game, and he's financing its publication through pre-orders via KickStarter.com. If this works, it'll be a wake up call to all of us who've traditionally assumed we were shut out of professional creativity due to the complications of money. Plus, it's a great Christmas gift. :) Also, the game's KickStarter site itself is full of interesting reading, and a fun video! Nicely done, Jim. Check it out here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1883736289/the-gentlemen-of-the-south-sandwiche-islands As if that weren't enough, Henry Jenkins posted about the game on his blog! http://www.henryjenkins.org/ -Bill

The Museum of Jurassic Technology as Scripted Space

2009-10-22T09:20:27Z

The Museum did not hold up so well upon a second visit. That is, I missed the thrill of confusion that I'd first experienced in that space, and felt a nostalgia for the unhinging of certain categorizations of truth and falsehood which had marked my first encounter with the space. Now I was in on the joke, having had time to reflect upon and research the experience, and I found myself in the role of the tour guide, showing my friend around on her first walk through the wonders of Jurassic Technology. As we navigated the Museum, I could see the falseness around me, felt pity and some envy for my friend, who believed every plaque and label which I innocently pointed out. Even so, the Museum did offer me a surprise or two. I suppose my friend registered the change in my tone when, by studying the fall of the shadows from my fingers over the exhibit, I found the microminiature needle-top sculptures of Hagop Sandaldjian to in fact be legitimate. In a sense, there is no opportunity for resistant navigation of the Museum, since the environment welcomes the visitor as as believer and skeptic. The exhibits are designed to balance precariously between believability and ridiculousness, as if pushing to see just how far they can lead us on. The mission of the Museum seems dual-purpose, and antithetical: to inspire both critical thought and a giddy sense of wonder. Certain loose themes are woven into the Museum's seemingly haphazard "collection." One of these is Noah's ark, which the Museum's Introduction and Background calls the "most complete Museum of Natural History the world has ever seen," and which is referenced with varying degrees of explicitness in many exhibits, even as a metaphor for the first mobile home, itself an ark containing "all such as was necessary to withstand the economic apocalypse of the 1930's." A theme of horns and their strange placement as organs also resurfaces from time to time, from the Horn of Mary Davis of Saughall to Geoffrey Sonnabend's theoretical Cone of Obliscense, which is described as "an organ like the pancreas or spleen" and is "occasionally referred to as a horn." The meaning of such continuities is unclear, and these loose themes may exist only to give the exhibits some vague sense of relation. The Museum's celebrates falsehood and confusion as tools of learning. The Introduction and Background identifies a museum as "a place where man's mind could attain a mood of aloofness above everyday affairs," and favorably references a historical church exhibit in which curiosities "which cause admiration and which are rarely seen, are accustomed to be suspended, that by their means the people may be drawn and have their minds the more affected." The exhibit Tell the Bees describes the worth of superstitious and folk knowledge: "Like the bees from which this exhibition has drawn its name, we are individuals, yet we are, most surely, like the bees, a group, and as a group we have, over the millennia, built ourselves a hive, our home. We would be foolish, to say the least, to turn our backs on this carefully and beautifully constructed home especially now, in these uncertain and unsettling times." Such endorsements reveal the true educational intention of the Museum, as most succinctly described in the section of the Introduction which also provides the establishment's motto: "[T]he learner must be led always from familiar objects toward the unfamiliar– guided along, as it were, a chain of flowers into the mysteries of life."

Shameless Self-Promotion!!!

2009-10-06T09:20:45Z

I now have a quasi-professional website at www.bgraner.com! That is all. -B

Process of Critical Thought

2009-09-10T03:34:30Z

Does this make sense? THE PROCESS OF CRITICAL THOUGHT 1. Define the subject, Dissociate from the subject 2. Consider (fictional?) alternatives 3. Form an opinion 4. Communicate that opinion If you can get someone to do #s 1 and 2, they're pretty well along... -B

Digital Puppet and Physical Controller

2009-04-25T08:14:00Z

I created a glove controller using three bend sensors, and hooked it up to a digital Processing puppet via Arduino. ]]> Glove_Puppet_Arduino.pde Glove_Puppet_Processing.pde

Example Code for Communicating From Arduino to Processing

2009-04-10T21:07:34Z

This is some example code for communicating between Arduino and processing. It just reads a digital input pin, then changes a Processing window background color to match the input. You can use this with a switch, for instance. -Bill ---ARDUINO CODE------- // This is a hyper-simple bit of code that just fires off the digital // input from pin 2, as a serial port output to Processing. void setup() { Serial.begin(9600); } void loop() { Serial.println(digitalRead(2)); // you can add the delay below, if you want it to be more sluggish and less good. //delay(1); } -----PROCESSING SKETCH------ // Digital Input Color Changer by Bill Graner // based on Graph by David A. Mellis (Arduino example app). // Processing gets Arduino's output as if it is a serial port. import processing.serial.*; Serial port; String buff = ""; int NEWLINE = 10; String clicker; void setup() { size(1024 , 768); clicker = "0"; println("Available serial ports:"); println(Serial.list()); // Uses the first port in this list (number 0). Change this to // select the port corresponding to your Arduino board. The last // parameter (e.g. 9600) is the speed of the communication. It // has to correspond to the value passed to Serial.begin() in your // Arduino sketch. port = new Serial(this, Serial.list()[0], 9600); // If you know the name of the port used by the Arduino board, you // can specify it directly like this. //port = new Serial(this, "COM1", 9600); } void draw() { // this code just changes the background color based on the Arduino input. if (clicker.charAt(0) == '1') { background(255,0,0); } else { background(0,255,0); } while (port.available() > 0) serialEvent(port.read()); } // This is called when the sketch reads something from Arduino. void serialEvent(int serial) { // This code is all from the Graph example, and it sometimes doesn't work. // It's usually ok, though, but someone might want to fix it. if (serial != NEWLINE) { // Store all the characters on the line. buff += char(serial); } else { // The end of each line is marked by two characters, a carriage // return and a newline. We're here because we've gotten a newline, // but we still need to strip off the carriage return. if (buff.length() > 0) { buff = buff.substring(0, buff.length()-1); } clicker = buff; buff = ""; } }

Archangel 491 Proposal

2009-04-07T02:30:41Z

Hi everybody! Here's my proposal for Advanced Game Design. We'll be pitching it on April 15! Thoughts? Interest? Thanks, Bill

Processing: Briar Stories

2009-02-21T08:27:34Z

Here is a representation of Robert Coover's Briar Rose, using some artificially intelligent typography. Download this all-inclusive zip to check it out. BriarStories.zip -B

Economy Sketch: It's Raining Men

2009-02-13T05:32:12Z

Here is the Processing source and data for my Economy Sketch. Download It! Bill

Story-o-matic

2009-02-03T06:48:23Z

The rules: create the beginning of a story using 3 random elements (character, place, and event). Mine were: • Robot • Hell • A relative pays a visit Below, you have the result... :) Field Work by Bill Over untold miles of Martian-red crags bobbled along a little gleam of gold under the unholy sun. So brightly did it glint in that oppressive light that to look at it would burn one's eyes– except that no one was alive to see it. For this little robot, this tiny toddling automaton, was picking its way through the very depths of Hell. The damned paid it close attention; it'd been so long since any change in these parts that even their prescribed torments had grown routine: flay this, singe that... The robot turned its brass bucket-head to regard their twisted forms, and whistled to itself in trepidatious concern before hastily and squeakily wheeling away to distance itself from their tortured screams.1 In its momentary distraction, the robot's (admittedly undersized) wheels encountered a perfidious crumble of sloping shale. By the time its looking-glass optics focused ahead once more, it was already too late. The robot tumbled trashcan-like down the Hell-hill. It should be noted at this point that from the shiny explorer's back extended a gleaming plated cable, which billowed and bowed in the sky, stretching into the darkness of the clouds above. As the robot rolled downward, this cable was jerked and tangled, contorting in the heavens of Hell amidst peals of crimson lightning. In a bunker deep within the earth's crust, a handful of rogue scientists turned, alarmed, from their instruments to address two sudden and grave developments: first, a regiment of military police pounded on the oaken door, demanding entry in the name of the queen; second, the plated data cable had ripped free of its mount on their boxlike primary instrument and was snaking its way along the floor, retreating into the sulphurous heat of the hastily bored earth-maw at the other end of the room. One particular scientist, of dark hair and rocky countenance, furrowed his brow at the splintering door and considered for a split-second his options and the whole history of his life, before diving with all his will and might to catch the cable's very end. As he slid along the floor of the ad hoc laboratory, he glimpsed his compatriots, now at the gunpoint of darkly uniformed figures, all turning to witness him reeled along like a great white fishing lure, disappearing finally over the lip of the dark and smokey Hell-mouth. And so it was that Franklin Leroy, PhD. plummeted into Hades, alabaster lab coat blossoming among the hazy atmosphere. From its resting place in the rusted dust, the robot spied the distant descent, the golden cable against the grey sky wilting stemlike beneath mad white petals. Though its penchant for metaphor was strong perhaps among its kind, the robot was at heart a calculating machine, and it quickly disregarded the poetry of the moment for the nuts and bolts of the situation. Given the figure's unique dress and surmisable recent actions, the little automaton immediately recognized the identity of Dr. Leroy, its own inventor. This realization brought an immediate sense of duty, and the robot struggled to regain its footing, whirring and wiggling this way and that, engaging its many parts like a pinball machine that's lost a ball. A minute of this, and its efforts had raised only a cloud of Helldust. The robot emitted a honk of frustration. What to do, when one's programming falls far short of the task at hand? Perhaps, considered the robot in some part of its capacitors, if it only tried hard enough– maybe it could learn. The robot flexed all of its internal mechanisms: circuits humming, tiny hammers clicking, and its head spinning (incidentally), it thought as hard as it could. Then, with a sudden Pop emerged its first original idea! Dr. Leroy would later interject in cocktail party conversations in which his friends remarked wryly on the unpredictability of memory that sometimes, in fact, the mind archived events just as one might think it would, providing as an example the unavoidable lasting vividness of the impact which he was now experiencing onto the stony turf of Hell. Following this unforgettably unpleasant moment, which seemed to comingle many soft and crunchy bits of his person, Dr. Leroy spent a far less memorable span of time lying the dirt, afraid to move, his eye scanning the intimately close horizon, as if expecting some formal confirmation of his sudden death. As nothing of the sort came to view, however, shock gave way to clarity, which in turn led– as all roads seemed to for Dr. Leroy– to curiosity. Slowly he stood, utterly surprised to find himself whole, with no alteration to his condition save for the dust on his hands and the chill in his spine. With the issue of his health more or less settled, Dr. Leroy's attention turned to his macabre new surroundings... ---------- 1. Although their screams were indeed directed at the little robot, the eternally tormented honestly held nothing against it; it was only that over the course of millennia, they had grown accustomed to raising howls of agony as a primary form of expression (and anyways, it was the only way to be heard above the crowd. Hell was not for the soft spoken).

Processing: Library assignment and in-class work

2009-01-30T03:32:57Z

Note that these require an attached video camera and quicktime. (I'm pretty sure that) they'll use the last camera which was used by quicktime. They are in pde format, so you'll have to open them in Processing. Luminator3.pde Life_Live.pde -Bill

Learn about the energy economy by fighting off eye-robot zombies!

2009-01-16T17:03:41Z

What if there were a defensive RTS game whose energy/waste/pollution system was based on EPA data, and whose development was funded by HARC? Super Energy Apocalypse, that's what! It's free and fun, so play it! If you like it, play it more! Bill

Our world may be a giant hologram - New Scientist

2009-01-15T18:31:02Z

One step closer to understanding the technology upon which our universe runs? "According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time," says Hogan." http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html?page=1

Stick entered into Toy Hall of Fame

2008-11-07T20:14:10Z

For my casually timed final post on innovation, I offer this: Stick entered into Toy Hall of Fame - Boing Boing

"It's very open-ended, all-natural, the perfect price -- there aren't any rules or instructions for its use," said Christopher Bensch, the museum's curator of collections.

"This toy is so fantastic that it's not just for humans anymore. You can find otters, chimps and dogs -- especially dogs -- playing with it."

What an evocative knowledge object. -Bill

Relevant History: Reflections on Tinkering

2008-11-04T01:23:51Z

Relevant History: Reflections on tinkering This is an excellent blog post by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, discussing the nature, meaning, and importance of tinkering. In addition to its own great content, the article is bristling with tasty links. Some favorite quotes from the article:

The fact that you're forbidden from opening a box, that some software companies insist that you're just renting their products, and that hardware makers intentionally cripple their devices, is a challenge to hackers and tinkerers.

The fundamental assumption that users can do cool, worthwhile, inspiring, innovative things is a huge driver. Tinkering is partly an answer to the traditional assumption that people who buy things are "consumers"-- passive, thoughtless, and reactive, people whose needs are not only served by companies, but are defined by them as well. When you tinker, you don't just take control of your stuff; you begin to take control of yourself.

Tinkering is a way of investing new meanings in things, or creating objects that mean something: by putting yourself into a device, or customizing it to better suit your needs, you're making that thing more meaningful.

-Bill