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Cargol – Found nature object temporary art piece – Agosto

by Agosto

Agosto, arguable the most youthful member of the Dinacon crew, began his adventures on the island by drawing in the sand.

The island sand was much softer than the man made beach sand of his homeland, and he pondered these differences. He mused, what was home? He began to consider these questions while placing found coral in upright positions in the sand.

Upon seeing the variety of island creatures, such as hermit crabs and snails, he began to wonder how they viewed ‘home’, as they traveled with their shells on their backs. He sat for a moment, before drawing a large spiral in the sand and stared pensively at this simple view of a home.

He scavenged for his ‘homes’ nearby resources, and found fallen seed pods from trees, washed up pieces of old corals, and smooth sea pebbles.

He began placing the seed pods within the grooves of the spiral. In a nod to his homeland he began putting the coral pieces within the spiral spaces in a gaudi-esque style.

He finished the piece with it’s inhabitant snail, filled with pebbles.

Entitled Cargol, the temporary natural art piece, was meant to consider the transient meaning of ‘home.’

The piece remained beachside, changing colors as the pieces were weathered, wind blown and rained on.

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Bioluminescence Textile – Elizabeth Bigger

by Elizabeth Bigger

An unplanned and rapid experiment resulted from an evening of swimming with the Dinacon group in the bio-luminescent waters. Wondering if it was possible to bring the glow of the dinoflagellates into a textile, I mocked up a sample using fiber optic threads and natural wool roving.

Using .25 mm fiber optic threads I tied knots in various locations of the thread strands to create the points of light, or “dinoflagellates.” Some used 2, 3, 4, or 5 strands and then knotted for size variation, in an attempt to create depth within the look of the textile.

I used 100% natural wool roving, which was torn into small pieces and laid out into the sample rectangle shapes in a criss-cross fashion, alternating directions in the classic style of felt creation. I made two of these wool pieces, each with 5+ layers of roving pieces.

The fiber optic stands were then gathered at one end and bound, and then I placed the bundle of fiber optic “dinoflagellates” on one layer of the wool sample, spreading the fiber optic threads out to cover the full area of the wool. Then I placed the second roving sample on top the fiber optics, sandwiching the fibers between the two wool pieces.

This was then stamped on by my assistant to begin felting and then placed into a undergarment laundry bag to be fully massaged by the sea.

The felting process was completed by the washing in the sea, with non-toxic dish soap and the waves pounding on the wool fibers. I rung out the textile and then hung it over a nearby tree branch to dry in the sun.

We tested the textile that night by plugging it into our LED dongle, and the textile illuminated, making a quick sample of a super soft bio-luminescence textile.

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Sun Set Clock – Prototype

Sun Set Clock

Technology separates us from nature, but does it need to? I used some of my stay at the Digital Naturalism Conference in Thailand to prototype a clock that determines local time of day from sunlight to promote a natural sense of timekeeping.

By using technology to encourage human relationships with nature, I hope to highlight that machines can encourage us to be *more* human and organic rather than slowly making people irrelevant. As a counterpoint to consuming industrialized time we can also obtain time from scratch, regaining control of the very pacing that drives our lives. The Sun Set Clock uses local solar time, therefore noon is when the sun is at apogee at our location. This is how time used to be measured, before telegraphs and transcontinental trains required a move to time zones, where the clock and the sun no longer match. This system isn’t concerned with exactitude–there’s plenty of systems to do that if you need it. Instead this clock can be used to mark the general progress of the day rather than creating anxiety around how every minute is used.

Sun Set Clock in its natural environment

The initial prototype uses light level changes to detect sunrise and sunset, with local noon being the point exactly between these two events. When the clock starts, it makes its best estimate of the time. For example, if it’s dark at startup, the clock assumes that it’s midnight because that’s the best guess you can make without more information. At sunrise, this corrects to 6 am (a higher-quality guess) and then at sunset it will correct to the proper local time (not time zone time but astronomical time at your precise location). All of this works, although it’s still a bit fragile–operating best in full view of the sky on a relatively sunny day. Dark clouds, deep shadows and porch lights can confuse it, so these will need to be addressed in a future version. For now, I’m enjoying what I think of as “some time of my own.” I hope you enjoy it too.

 


Sun Set Clock – Instructions for Use

Continue reading “Sun Set Clock – Prototype”

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DIY Marine Microbes – Kitty Quitmeyer

One of our conference node leaders , Kitty Quitmeyer (wellreadpanda.com), worked on creating DIY knitted and crocheted ocean microbes to raise awareness of the fun invisible creatures filling the seas with life!

Full documentation of all her Yancrafted microbes is on her website and in these instructables:

https://www.instructables.com/id/Make-Your-Own-Cute-Little-Ocean-Bacterium/

https://www.instructables.com/id/Make-Your-Own-Ephyra/

 

https://www.instructables.com/id/Make-Your-Own-Radiolarian/

 

Research reported in this project was supported by the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative of the National Academy of Sciences under award number NAKFI DBS17. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative or the National Academy of Sciences.

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Glowing Dinaflagellate – Kitty Quitmeyer

Inspired by the microscopic creatures making the seas around her glow, Kitty Quitmeyer, created a yarn model. Just like the real creatures that bioluminesce when shaken, this yarn critter has a tiny Arduino and sensor inside that let it light up when perturbed.

Full documentation for how to make your own is available here!

https://www.instructables.com/id/Make-Your-Own-Bioluminescent-Dinoflagellate/

 

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Tree Yabbie – Michael Candy

Michael Candy, the world’s fastest robot tinkerer, created a slew of robots at Dinacon. One of his most sophisticated was the Tree Yabbie. This robot built and iterated upon in just a few quick days at dinacon is able to stick to the sides of trees and climb right up them into the canopy. It accomplishes this using a custom made undulating wire-brush drive and a re-purposed drone propeller.

 

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Nocturnal Garden: Touch Sensor Environmental Art Installation

Relax and listen to Gregory Hanks Green play the Khaen a traditional Lao/Thai mouth organ made of bamboo pipes, as colors reveal the garden forms of the Thai forest. Curate the sound of the Khaen and the colors of the nocturnal garden by touching the tropical plants. Discover each note or song and color the touch triggers. Gregory Hanks Green, the curator of the Echols Collection of Southeast Asian music at the Cornell music library is also a Khaen player. Green can be heard in the Nocturnal Garden playing a song on the Khaen in the Lai Nyai mode or create your own Khaen song as you touch the leafy plants. Khaen is tradition Thai and Laotian free reed instrument that sounds when the player breathes in or out. A touch of the plants provokes a note on the khaen or a complete song played by Green as well as an array of twilight colors.

Collaborators: Artist Joan Marie Kelly and Senior Lecturer at Nanyang Technological University, curated the concept, and design of the touch sensor installation specifically for the natural environment of Koh Lon Thailand and the Digital naturalism conference 2018.  Senior Technical Manager, animation at NTU in Singapore  Nagaraju Thummanapalli coded the music and colored LED light to sensors, Musician Gregory Hanks Green contributed the digital files of himself playing the Khaen, flutist Beth Kelly was music consultant, and Tourism Ethnographer Yuthasak Chatkaewnapanon gave cultural council of the context of the artwork. Below are 2 short videos of the Nocturnal Garden.

IMG_1007              dancing

 IMG_1007 IMG_0992   Joan Kelly testing the Nocturnal Garden IMG_1032 (1)

Nagaraju Thummanapalli teaching Joan Kelly the principals of electricity. Kelly has to do all the connections on site. 

The computer chip, connections to sensors and power bank

Joan Kelly making the connections on site.

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Coral-textured Paneling

Inspired by the modular pattern of corals, the project translates the coral textures into modules of tiles through the casting process.

The tiles are scalable to fit different functions from a facade or fence to a seawall tiles friendly to marine lives.

 

By Eakapob Huangthanapan (Guide)

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Sandcastles by Joreg

Attempts at acquiring a new skill.

Thailand

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlEao2AxUMkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaFRcvvP0JI

Tool: Shovel bought at local hardware store “super cheap”

More photos >> https://www.flickr.com/photos/plusea/sets/72157700729452845/with/42878148424/

Inspired by the god of sandcastles Calvin Seibert. ​

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CRAB LAB

an Amphibological Research Project

Introduction

Here at the ​Department of Amphibological Research​, our primary studies are in the equivocal interpretation of the natural world. While on Ko Lon, we used technologically aided misidentification techniques to discover a host of ambiguous new species on the island. However, we became especially fascinated with one particular animal: the hermit crab (Fig. 1).

Figure 1

Hermit crabs in Ko Lon are not difficult to spot: lay still on the beach for more than a couple of minutes and you will soon notice some shells crawling around you. We immediately fell in love with the little crustaceans. Maybe because, unlike most animals, they are so easy to catch and play with: delightful toy-sized robots of nature. Maybe because their mismatched shells gives each one of them a slightly goofy and unique look. Whatever the reason: we started asking ourselves some amphibological questions: is it possible that the different shells reflect different aesthetic preferences and personalities? Or ​vice versa:​ can the chosen shell affect the crab’s attitudes and behaviors? The field seemed ripe for some crab misunderstanding, but we didn’t know how to tackle these important questions.

Figure 2

Then, early on during one of our explorations – when the sand on the beach was still undisturbed by Dinosaur tracks – we noticed the intricate imprints left behind by the hermit crabs (Fig. 2). Rambling and asymmetric, they came in so many different sizes and shapes, almost as varied as their shells. We therefore speculated that the tracks may provide a window into the personality of the crabs. To test this hypothesis, three experimental protocols were designed and performed between July 8 and July 10.

Methods and Results

1. Sand – The most obvious first step was to attempt to record the crab tracks directly on the original inspirational medium: sand. However, we needed a way to record crabs behaviour in a controlled environment, one crab at the time. We proceeded to dig a more or less rectangular arena (Fig. 3A), high enough to prevent a medium sized crab to escape (which some passersby delightfully misunderstood as a crab-fighting pit). We then proceeded to place in the arena 3 separate crabs, with notably different shells, letting them free to wander around for a couple of minutes each and took pictures of their tracks (see Fig. 3B). However, this first method was not satisfying for two reasons: the most extravagant crabs emerge from their burrow toward dusk, which meant that the lighting conditions on the beach were far from ideal at the time of the experiment. Also, the crabs instead of wandering around were mostly trying to escape, slowly demolishing the walls of our arena. Soon enough we decided to fold up the Crab Lab #1.

Figure 3A
Figure 3B
Crab Lab fail

2. Paint – Although less faithful than sand tracks, paint provides a much more durable and easy medium to record the crabs crawling. We first experimented with some blue acrylic paint, to see if the crabs were comfortable with this medium. Protected by their exoskeleton the crabs didn’t seem to mind having their legs dipped in blue paint and we were extremely pleased with the results (Fig. 4A). We therefore proceeded with more elaborate experiments, completely disregarding our original plan to record each crab individually. The painting in Fig. 4B was produced by letting an indeterminate number of crabs, randomly sampled from our surroundings, wander around as long as we pleased.

 

Figure 4A
Figure 4B

We later got over our excitement and returned to our original goal: we collected 3 crabs (Fig. 5A) with distinctive shells and let each one of them paint for a couple of minutes with a different color on sheets of papers of equal size (NOTE: each crab was arbitrarily moved around at random locations whenever the crab got fixated on a corner – more often than not). Overlapping the separate channels (Fig. 5B) clearly reveals very different levels of craftsmanship and artistic sensibilities.

Crab A (blue) has a bold sensibility with rational, linear strokes. There is a sureness and sophistication to these graphic, directional lines, evoking a flowing river or receding tide.

Crab B (red)’s work takes a more tentative, thoughtful approach – its mark making has an impressionistic quality with a cross-hatched layering effect – describing dimensions of an unknowable form.

Crab C (yellow) took a more playful approach, her work recalls the graffiti like scrawls of a young Cy Twombly. The claws here have a freshness and immediacy that show great promise.

Figure 5A (legend)
Figure 5B

3. Light – Late on the last night of our residency after a hard day in the lab, we thought the crabs could use a little fun. We teamed up with Andy and Chris to create a final, light-based experiment. We temporarily attached colored LED lights to different crabs and allowed them free (more or less) to chart their own courses. First in a confined environment in the house (Fig. 6A) and later completely unbounded on the beach (Fig. 6B). Of course, this technique did not allow us to record the tracks of the crabs in any detail but it had several other advantages: 1) LED lights were more durable than paint; 2) it allowed us to study crabs in the dark and we were in a hurry; 3) it looked pretty damn cool!

We actually had 6 (maybe 7?) crabs in our initial trial and unfortunately LED lights could only be set to 3-4 different wavelengths. This meant that we had crabs with completely different shells wearing the same colour, which completely confounded our results and did not allow us to unequivocally associate specific crabs with their tracks, but to be honest we didn’t much care anymore.

Figure 6A
Figure 6B

(Photography by the indomitable Andy “Never” Quitmeyer)

Conclusions

In conclusion, based on our poorly-designed and shoddily-performed experiments we can firmly reject the null hypothesis (based on pure self-confidence): hermit crabs are not just simple arthropods made more relatable to the human eye by their mismatched shells. We argue that these crustaceans exhibit unique personalities and advanced artistic sensibilities, revealed only in part by their choice of shell and crawling behaviour.

Future directions. These experiments, as well as recent reports by Minsky et al. 2018, show that there is great under-appreciated art potential in hermit crabs, and arguably in crabs of all species. Indeed, in the following weeks, while exploring other tropical beaches we came across many interesting sand markings left by other kinds of crabs. Not only do crabs produce elegant tracks when they walk but most of them burrow during the day, producing further patterns of great interest. Here are only two examples: the Ghost Crab (Fig. 7A) besides looking extremely badass, also creates these comet-like shapes around their burrow (Fig. 7B). The elusive Sand Bubbler Crab (too small for us to take a good picture), builds delicate constellations of tiny sand balls (Fig. 8). Finally, take a look at these crazy snails which we met on our last day in Phuket going round and round in celtic-looking tracks (Fig. 9). This will no doubt provide inspiration for many years of amphibological studies.

Figure 7A
Figure 7B
Figure 8

     

Figure 9

Practical applications. Beyond their aesthetic value, there is considerable potential in crab-inspired designs and tools. As a proof of concept, our in-house designer studied the individual crab markings and processed these into a series of digital brushes (Fig. 10A) – available to download at this link -which she then used to compose a meandering, infinitely repeating pattern (Fig. 10B). Some fabric prints have been tested and we welcome suggestions for further artistic and commercial applications.

Figure 10A

Figure 10B