Antonio Papania-Davis: 2009

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Belt buckle pinhole camera

Belt buckle pinhole camera for Pipo Nguyen-Duy:

sanded mint tin, black walnut, copper plate and wire, aluminum plate, brass screws, aluminum rivets.

Shutter assembly detail

Buckle detail

Experiments in personal electric transportation

This three wheeled skateboard built at Oberlin came to be known as the Electroped and was constructed using the propulsion system from a broken electric scooter I found and spare parts from other projects. Acceleration and breaking are accomplished through the levers mounted on the control cable, and steering, as in a normal skateboard, is controlled by leaning. While the vehicles rate of acceleration is lack luster due to its low wattage motor, it can never the less reach a respectable top speed of 14mph.

Steering was originally a problem with this vehicle. I attempted to use a large skate board truck to allow the front wheels to turn around the center of the axle, as a result a 90 degree turn could only be accomplished over about a half block. In an effort to improve this uselessly large turning radius I built another truck which functioned much more like a car's: tie rods attached to a plate plate below the board move the wheels in parallel allowing for a much tighter turning radius.

Drive train and battery detail

Saturday, September 12, 2009

micro projectors

Type 3 micro projector:

This is the third iteration of the micro slide projector concept for light graffiti. It uses an led,

two plastic lenses and lith film media to project images. In the first two models, the projector body has been upgraded from a hard to find size cardboard tube to a can based body and

an internal condenser lens has been added to make the image more evenly lit. While this solved the focus and materials problems and allowed the type 2 to be used as the optical guts if the electrotachyscopes, with out the tachyscope's pulsed power supply the type 2s were just too dim to be useful. So I decided to over do it for this 3rd attempt and using a 80 lumens green cree xr-e star led running at 1.5 watts vs. the old 27,000 mcd 5mm led. It is very bright but has some focus problems given it has the led lens and the original condenser lens. My guess is it would project a visible 12ft(≈3.6m) image at about 30 ft (≈9m) in near darkness. The down side of this version other than the correctable focus problem is price, where as the type 1 and 2 cost about $1.50 to make the type 3 is closer to $22.

type 3 projection at about 12ft (≈3.6m) with some direct light from the near by porch light

note the distortion in the edges of the image and the over exposure

type 3 projection at about 12ft(≈3.6m) in near darkness

Type 4 micro projector:

While a good bit dimer than the type 3, it is way cheaper to build about $3 and still brighter than the type 1 and 2 employing a 10mm led at 256,000 mcd vs 27,000 mcd 5 mm leds of the first 2 models. The low price and the maintenance of brightness makes this the first to viably address the original concept, allowing multiple projectors to be deployed in a space while not having the stringent requirement of complete darkness.

type 4 projection at about 12ft (≈3.6m) with some direct light from the near by porch light

type 4 projection at about 12ft(≈3.6m) in near darkness

Friday, September 4, 2009

experiments in sustainable industrial design

type 1 cardboard chair (laminated recycled cardboard)

type 1 cardboard chair top

type 3 cardboard chair (laminated recycled cardboard)

note: the type 2 chair was an attempt at a lawn chair style folding chair that never really panned out

type 3 chair side view,

this design was some what less successful than the type 1, though both chairs will hold a person the type 3 proved a bit wobbly, I'm looking into an x shaped leg configuration for a possible type 4 chair

ipod speakers closed

(soda bottle bottoms, small speakers, cover board, zipper, mini jack cable)

These speakers use soda bottle bottoms as resonators for a pair of small speakers, which boosts their volume and bass response, the bottle bottoms can also be zipped shut to create a protective shell for the speakers. These speakers are not electronically amplified, but give a good output employing their passive amplification and a standard headphone output signal .

ipod speakers open

Type 1 can amp, a powered guitar amp housed in a 8 oz coke can featuring on/off volume and tone controls. In a similar manner to the ipod speakers the can is used as a resonator to amplify the volume and boost bass response, resulting in a surprisingly loud and not tinny sound. I've sold several type 2 can amps which have integrated tone on/off control to friends and have contemplated eventually some on my etsy site when ever I finish it...

type 1 can amp open, access to the battery pulling the spring loaded spkear off the top of the amp

dynamo flashlight,

hand cranked led flashlight uses a large capacitor for energy storage

(LEDs, bottom switch, pvc pipe fitting for the crank, inner component listed below in the guts section)

dynamo flashlight activated,

it may not look that bright but in a dark space it provides usable light for nearly 20ft (6m), and after being fully charged will last a little over 20 minutes.

dynamo flashlight guts

(gear box, dc motor used as a generator, oscillator inverter power conditioner [electrical tape cover thing with wires coming out], and large capacitor [ hidden behind the generator])

keg can computer speakers (beer cans, salvaged speaker parts, bolts)

Thursday, September 3, 2009

transverse: senior studio final show

Electrotachyscopes #1 and 2

Electrotachscopes are an early form of cinema machine invented by Ottomar Anschütz in 1887. Operating by flashing a strobe through chromatically sequenced slides mounted on the rim of a spinning disk, these machines produce a crude flip book like animation which can be viewed directly or in this case projected on a wall. The right electrotachyscope displays an eight second clip from CNN, the left machine rapidly cycles though a series of random but recognizable images at high speed. The purpose of the electotachyscopes is to highlight technological mediation of information. While on a TV or computer screen these images might be interoperated as a window: an objective view of something that exists somewhere else, the tachyscopes make it clear that they are effecting the information presented, as the position and focus shifts from frame to frame.

(MDF, threaded steel shafts, steel bolts, poplar pole, bearings, gear motor, film canisters, lenses, LED, LED strobe timing circuit board, nails & slides)

electrotachyscopes and projected images (with disk motor stopped):

mechanism detail

Scanner

Employing the same themes of technological moderation of information and media bombardment, the Scanner features nine radios which constantly retune themselves, individually sweeping through the various stations and patches of static across the am and fm bands. Each radio speaker is connected to a plastic horn which serves to make the sound the radios produce very directional while amplifying and distorting it.

Scanner (MDF, pocket radios, stadium horns, paper cups, soda bottles, wire, string, gear motor)

horn detail

The Redaction Machine

The Redaction Machine cartridge contains a paper tape with selected censored passages from a companion book. To successfully read the book one must sequentially scroll through all the deleted passages contained in the cartridge. This is meant to slow the process of reading, and obscure the original meaning of the text.