Anatomy and Art

(photo grabbed from 3D Printer’s coverage of this story http://www.3dprinter.net/makerbot-3d-printers-accelerate-distribution-of-robohand)

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/06/18/191279201/3-d-printer-brings-dexterity-to-children-with-no-fingers

This is a story about about a puppeteer and a carpenter teaming up to create a 3D printable prosthetic robotic hand.  It started with carpenter Richard Van, who lost fingers and went searching for a solution.  He found puppeteer Ivan Owen online who specializes in awesome robotic puppet hands.  Add Makerbot to the equation, who donated their Replicator 2, 3D printer to them, and things really got going.  Now these two are in the news for creating their functional Robohand using inexpensive materials and fitting them to children in need.  What’s more awesome still is that they’re making their work accessible to anyone who wants to download the files to a 3-D printer on a site called Thingverse. (link- http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:44150)

It is advised that anyone wanting to try this technology consult with an orthopedic doctor or similar expert to ensure the proper attention to fitting.  It’s also something that requires assembly after printing.  But all in all, it’s still a huge leap in prosthetic accessibility.  I also have a personal fondness for seeing fields converge like this.  Having started in sculpting with an instructor who had learned in collectible model making, and taking that knowledge into my studies of anaplastology and the making of those kinds of prostheses, the gap between similar fields has been readily apparent.  It’s great to see those kinds of gaps bridged, and a bunch of kids get functionality back, and without breaking the family bank accounts even!

There’s a math book on the horizon so lately I’ve been giving a lot of thought to art and math again.  I have this tendency to want to represent numerical values with color value, and working in digital art only feeds that thought process.  The other day I put together a little piece on median and mean, trying to utilize color like that.

I feel like there is a lot to work with to improve clarity in mathematical concepts.  I don’t know if color is the answer for everyone, but I think it’s a strong tool that is generally under utilized.  When you think about it, color is like pitch in that it all comes down to wave frequency.  And any time you use color in a digital program it all comes down to numerical values of either red, green, and blue, or cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.  I found a site that lays this out pretty well…

http://resources.esri.com/help/9.3/arcgisengine/dotnet/8d81aed9-9643-4e22-930c-3cadcb816891.htm

In fact I’ll steal one of their charts right here to further illustrate what I mean

I’ve often thought that I might have been more invested in math early on if I’d had a better understanding of it’s potential.  It is not an opposite field from art, it is in fact the groundwork upon which art is based.

Actually, I got into a conversation with the man who helped me buy my house just the other night and learned that he is his own kind of math geek when it comes to finances and investments.  I’ve known the man for years without realizing what a data cruncher he is, and sometimes on very intuitive level.  I believe that we all do some really advanced math on a very intuitive level, but it’s so often unrecognized.  I feel like tapping into color and other art techniques can only help to express mathematical concepts in more intuitive ways and help to bridge that connection for students that might not quite see it yet.  And I think that the more students take in about math theory and practice early on, the better they will be when it comes to assessing the everyday things where such calculations come into play, whether it’s in the creation of art, or thinking out investments, or just timing when to cross the street and how quickly in traffic.

It’s food for thought.  And I hope to have further solidified my thoughts on all of this by the time we start that text book.  I want to work with the power of animation too!  I mean, c’mon, we make digital text books!  You get to do so many cool things with that!

Ok, enough ramblings for tonight.  I haven’t been posting as much lately, and it’s nice to get back to it.  Big thanks to all of you regular readers out there.

The new house is great!

This is just great.  It’s not anatomy, but it’s one of those visuals that makes a concept clearer almost instantaneously.  I don’t know who made this, but kudos to all involved for this little gem.

The Pythagorean Theorem – In any right-angled triangle, the area of the square whose side is the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares whose sides are the two legs (the two sides that meet at a right angle).

We changed offices here at Sapling over the weekend.

Goodbye awesome West Austin trees.

Hello downtown!
*This is seriously the view from my office desk.  I think I’m gonna like having a window spot.  🙂

Next weekend, I move homes.
Pictures to come!

I’ve been pressed for time lately, but I wanted to show off this link to a Huffington Post bit calling the Brewery Artwalk the best art show in California with photos by Steve Payne (aka Paynie).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-payne/the-best-art-show-in-california_b_3073167.html

I miss participating in this artwalk.  They really were and continue to be fantastic.  If you’re in the LA area, it’s happening again this weekend.  Don’t miss it!

photo is from ’07 (the last one I participated in)

Hello again readers!  I’m so happy to be able to finally share with you all an animation that I worked on some months back for Sapling Learning.  Some of you will recall me writing about this one before.

The 3D models were created by studying the molecular sizes and shapes of the relevant molecules and then creating simplified representations. The 3D animation itself was created using Maxon’s Cinema 4D. Then the individual shots were composited together in Adobe’s After Effects. Audacity was used to record the narration, and then it was all put together for timing in Final Cut Pro (I still use an older version and cannot speak to all the changes they made in X.) I went back into After Effects for further labeling and effects (like the zoom into DNA polymerase) after that. So that’s the basic work flow.

There are a lot of biochemical processes that feel like a very complicated ballet as you get further into them.  Putting together the action of everything happening at the same time for the final shot in this animation really got me thinking about that analogy again.  And the truth is, that when this actually happens in nature, that lagging strand is actually being whipped around by helicase and read in an even more complicated fashion.  I really like that we emphasized that we were simplifying for clarity with this one.  A lot of educational materials would just let students find that out later if they went on to the next step in their studies.  That kind of thing always bothered me when I learned about such processes in school, and I’m happy to be with content experts who are willing to take the time to either make something more accurate, or let students know when things are being brushed over or left out of the picture for clarity.  I think that kind of thing is important.

Anyway, I’m really happy to be able to share this with you all.

So, yesterday marked the end of the SXSW festival out here in Austin.  I’ve actually been pretty distracted this spring with other things, and haven’t taken full advantage by a long shot.  But one of the perks of living in this town is that SXSW rolls through whether or not you’re paying attention, and at some point you will most likely catch word about something pretty damn cool happening, or possibly just happen to stumble into something.

For me, I think the epitome of this was on Thursday when I was having a particularly frantic day, trying to keep track of too many things, and I got a few texts from a good friend about Amanda Palmer doing something at the Scottish Rite theater.  There was no cover, and they hadn’t hit capacity yet.  All I had to do was show up.

In retrospect, I have come to really appreciate a few themes from that night – Saying yes, asking/ crowd funding, being grateful, getting your voice out there, the power of modern social technology….  In fact the entire event was constructed on those very themes.  It was first mentioned on Twitter, either that day, or maybe the day prior.  The venue was donated.  Musicians and other artists came and performed and/or shared their insights in interview.  Amanda asked them, and they said yes.  People brought along extra instruments to accommodate an acoustic setting.  Some offered their stage hand skills.

Amanda recently gave a TED talk on the art of asking.  If you haven’t seen it, I’ll embed it here…

The issue of asking to be paid for one’s art is in fact such an issue that my first reaction to this talk was perhaps a little judgmental.  But, I’ve always had a hard time with working out matters of payment.  I’ve known very few artists for whom that wasn’t a difficult area.  On second viewing tonight, I can’t help but take notice that that’s exactly what she is addressing.  And I am thankful to have had Thursday night’s presentation to really drive some of those thoughts further home for me.  It’s funny, the thing I was so distracted by that night was my recent efforts to buy a house, the biggest financial deal I’ve ever made in my life, and I was relieved that night that the show I was so distracted from was only announced on Twitter. If Amanda herself could tweet with a mic in her hand on stage, maybe I wasn’t being just horrendously rude by texting with my real estate agent and loan officer in the midst of what proved to be a fascinating panel of Amanda, and various other artists she either knew or had just met here this week amidst the festival.  And only slowly did it sink in, the relevance of the themes being covered that night to me personally.

I actually had a funny moment out in the hall when I had stepped out to take a phone call.  I was discussing construction and money and I was pacing, and feeling disheveled.  I hadn’t had time to shower that morning and I had literally dressed myself while on the phone with an insurance agent, and in the midst of it all I look up and see not 5 feet from me, Neil Gaiman.  Now, this wasn’t shocking.  He is married to Amanda Palmer and I knew that he was there that night, and apparently having his own brand of difficult day.  But in that moment, I recalled meeting him, maybe 15 years prior, in the same city, when he came for the opening of Princess Mononoke.  It was the first time in my life I’d really felt starstruck meeting anyone.  I had been a huge fan of his Sandman comic series when I was in highschool, and meeting him all those years back was a really big deal for me at the time.  I remember a friend laughed at me for wanting to meet him so badly that night, saying I had a celebrity crush.  But it was more about needing to say thank you for his work that had meant so much to me.   And this time, I passed right by him, neither of us having that kind of energy in us.  And the world felt a little smaller, and the network of people in it that much more connected.  And I also felt grateful, that these people had all come together that night (Amanda, Neil, various bands and other artists, fans, people with equipment and skills to donate,) to create an event that was truly a gift to all involved.

Lately I’ve been the recipient of a number of gifts.  Some have been more obvious or more direct than others.  But I really feel downright wealthy with the gifts that have been given or offered to me lately.  And in general they have come from either asking for what I want, or from saying yes when opportunities have presented themselves.  It’s pretty powerful really, just those two seemingly simple ideas of both asking, and of saying yes.  You wouldn’t think that those two practices would be hard, but they can be.

And in feeling grateful, I realize that it’s true, this idea of wanting to give back.  It’s true in the larger scheme of lets all get along together now, and also in that specific way that is wanting to support art and ideas that have been of value to you.  This Saturday I met a woman who teaches and writes about intellectual property law and theory.  We talked a little bit about this fundamental disconnect that currently exists between that desire to give back or to support meaningful art and artists and those corporate entities that seem at best only loosely tied to that process.  It’s all so common now to see people go out of their way to buy media they already stole to give to someone else, or  in one friend’s case, simply send a check to an artist that you don’t have a way to buy from because something they’ve done has meant so much to you.  Amanda is on to something when she talks about not demanding payment from fans but allowing  them to give it. And while we don’t all have a big fan base like she does, sometimes just saying yes to things, reaching out, and going after what you want is enough to make people want to help you.  It will be interesting to see if we get more meaningful art as sites like Kickstarter become a viable alternative to corporate representation.  The internet has certainly opened certain doors.

I’m not so sure that I’ve done these topics justice tonight, but right now I seem to be very much in need of sleep.  Those of you who have followed my thoughts this far, thank you.  And as always, I encourage you to comment with your own thoughts if you should feel so inclined.

Hand troubles prevail. I saw a hand specialist today. And it sounds like I’ve strained a ligament and mucked up a joint rather than a tendon. I seem to be doing mostly the right things so far but the doctor was concerned about me wrapping my thumb so close to my hand. I tried on another brace, but wasn’t convinced that it would keep the right spot in line. They had someone there who could do custom work, and if I could have seen her today I would have done it, but it would have been more missed work hours to make up and likely sleep deprivation if I tried to catch her in the morning.  So I just made myself a spacer out of some paraffin wax to keep my thumb better positioned when I wrap it down with gauze.

This was actually pretty difficult when I was trying to mold the wax directly on to my hand.  But then I remembered having a stone copy just sitting in a box from my anaplastology years.  And voila!

I molded the wax into the stone crevice and then pulled it off and tweaked it to fit in the way I wanted.  I still have some wax sculpting tools, so that worked out well.  A torch would have been handy, but I had to make do with a candle.

So now, when I wrap my hand up, my thumb is no longer crammed against the rest of my hand.    The wax acts as a spacer and provides the more natural hand position that the $130 brace I tried on at the clinic today was meant to offer.  Only it fits better.

I think this is going to work!

Wow. This is more about humanity than anatomy, but it is absolutely art. I saw this online tonight and wanted to share it.

I wasn’t familiar with Shane Koyczan prior to tonight, but it would seem that he is a spoken word poet who got his start in Vancouver.

You can learn more about him, and “To This Day” at his website here http://www.shanekoyczan.com/