chocochunk

After hosting over 70 shows with several hundred artists, the PAC is no longer able to make ends meet. Special thanks to Gavin Shettler and Kelly Rauer for their dedication to our art community over the years. PAC was one of the largest free-form spaces in the Portland metro area, and it supported so many installations and collections that were outside the niche of Pearl District standards. There will be a noticeable shuffle around Portland as many of these artists that were booked at the PAC for 2008 shift toward smaller arts spaces.

One exhibit to keep an eye on will occur this year at the New American Art Union. The individually funded Couture exhibit is providing 12 artists with a $7,000 stipend + $1,000 for materials to create an installation piece. The focus is on areas of art that are limited in their marketability as products, and therefore have historically had limited exploration due to expense. It should provide much discussion of the position of art in our society, which has been gradually scaled down as a publicly funded activity. The curator is hoping this will challenge others in the community to step up their financial support of the arts. I hope it will make lots of waves!

I am continuing the development for the “Caddy” video rig with the addition of the popular Arduino board. As I have documented previously on my blog, the Caddy is a video camera rig that drives on a 2″ track to tow a helium blimp outfitted with a 13-ounce Sony camera.

The Arduino, an open source electronics developers board, has a usb port and software for flashing code. Very accessible and well supported by its fans, it should be a perfect addition to the Caddy since it supports both analog and digital I/O and there are code libraries available to make use of servos, which are small yet accurate motors with lots of torque. In this application I will make use of an electronic speed control similar to a servo. Once the code is worked out so that my sensor and speed controls work together correctly, the main chip can then be removed from the Arduino and placed in a more streamlined circuit at a fraction of the cost. And then the Arduino will be ready for my next development project.

The video Caddy tends to slow down a bit in the turns of the track due to the wheels cinching. With a microprocessor on board, I will be able to instruct the motor’s speed control to increase if there is a loss of speed relative to the throttle on my radio controller. Since I am towing the blimp with three 6-pound fishing lines, it will be very critical to have a smooth-moving “train” with plenty of mass. To keep the speed steady, I will print out some sheets with equally spaced black lines and glue them to my track. To keep these calibration lines accurate, I will use Adobe Illustrator; with its large workspace I will be able to make accurate lines out to the 9′ radius of the Caddy track. I have some optical sensors that are designed with this application in mind. The sensor contains two readers in one case. By timing the difference between the light and dark lines, the Arduino will determine the velocity at which the Caddy is moving. And the Arduino will sit between the radio and the speed control, as seen in this graphic.