Playing with Python for next-gen Twitter extraction

Hive-Mind Fortune Teller may be coming back from the dead....

Just started getting Python to replace Processing, so it can be ported to Raspberry Pi and small brain modules can be fitted instead of micro-laptop. 

A new GitHub repo is here:
https://github.com/rosemarybeetle/python-twitter/blob/master/getTweets.py

 first results here...

Fortune Teller Hive

OK, a new project to be playing with - Fortune Teller Hive!

Creepy automata and enjoying being spooked in a crowd.

Fortune Teller Hive is a plot to make a physical fortune telling automaton that you find at fairgrounds, but mash it up with online digital social interaction to create a more colective experience, and generally play about with some concepts of persona and social buzz.

Here's an example of on the epic 'Zoltar' machines
They usually come in large glass case at fairgrounds. You put your money in and it reads your fortune. There's an enjoyably creepy magic about such automata. Like puppets and ventriloquists' dolls they are all just a bit Frankenstein - inanimate people-like objects with life breathed into them.

One aspect of the enjoyment of such creepy things is that they are seldomly experienced alone. Most occur in public areas. I am interested in the emotional aura that occurs in such places that comes specifically from there being groups of people experiencing it at the same time.

In fairs, cinemas,  circuses, theatres, amusement arcades and on theme park rides, the thrill is not just from the slightly risky or creepy nature of the exeriences, it is heightened by sharing it with other people and a social sensing of other people's excitement.

The shared collective excitment is different than that if one experienced something alone - the gestalt consciousness, if you like. This changes the emotional sense of the surroundings. It is other than what it would feel like on one's own. If the attraction is working well, when a crowd uses it, the crowd tends to increase excitement and risk-taking as the presence offers a sense of safety in numbers. Having said that, it is possible to feel swayed by collective disappointment too, if the experience is not working!

Why an automaton?

Anyway, as much as I love making creepy shit, I am not that interested in perfoming with it to an audience. I love puppet-making, for example, I but can't be bothered to perform with them. This has led me to think I should make more stand-alone interactive things, rather than props for a performer.

The most obvious things are automata.

So what has all this got to do with social media?

I didn't want it to be a passive thing though. I wanted to explore how people might contribute to the experience, so that it was changed when people engaged with it. This led me to the idea (eventually) of a fortune teller who's brain is empty of thought unless used. That is, the only way that it could tell fortunes was if it had thoughts induced in its mind as a result of lots of people engaging with it simultaneously.

The obvious advantage of this crowd-sourced model is that the Fortune Teller would offer a different style and character of fortune reading, depending on the people who ere engaging with it at any one time.

And this is really what effective social media do. They provide a standard platform for engagement that enables a large range of very different collective gestalt experiences to be created, from one single platform. The medium is creating a means to build social experiences, based on the active participation of individuals.

What can we learn from Twitter hashtags?

Twitter hashtags are a great example of a simple mechanism enabling a huge range of different shared social digital experiences. The sense of conversation that anyone has when posting using any one hashtag is driven by the way all the people using that tag do so.

WTF?

OK, this is getting weird now.  The bottom line is what Fortune Teller Hive is hoping to achieve is to create a physical automaton, that is connected digitally to multiple people, using some sort of social media, to create the content of its thoughts and therefore the nature of its readings.  I'm not going to build social media, so the starting point is to use the dev tools of openly available social media, starting with Twitter..

But mainly it should be ceepy!

Here's a new twitter account for making this happen...

Making chipotle from chillis smoked over a bonfire

Ever since visiting Atlanta, I've loved anything with chipotle in it.
So I thought I'd make some (it was always gonna happen!)

The thought had been rolling round the brain for ages. And perchance, one day as I was passing a market grocer, conveniently he charmed me into buying a big bag of glossy red chilli beauties, with his rakish grocery ways!

Drying the chillis

Here are the beauties. The first thing to do was dry them out.
They were plump when I bought them, but here they have shrunk as they have been air dried on top of a boiler for about 10 hours.

Smoking the chillis

I chose a tray with holes in to allow for the smoking stage. Here is a close-up

This was covered loosely in foil to keep in smoke later.

Here's the fire. It was the same one I had been using for blacksmithing, to anneal (heat soften) the handle of a spatula.

Adding semi-green leaves to the fire created a lot of smoke. Of course, these have to be not from any sort of poisonous tree, just to be on the safe side (though probably very low risk). These are birch leaves from the lovely silver birch in the garden

Photos of smoke always come out rather underwhelmingly and this one is no exception. The foil covered tray of chillis

Of course even well died down fires give off quite a lot of intense heat and chillis are high in sugar, so burn real easy. The finished chillis here were just on the right side of charred. Any more and they'd have been bitter. These were air dried again after smoking to dry off any moisture from the wet leaves' smoke.

The chillis were very brittle after this process. They were popped into my heaviest mortar and pounded to oblivion with the granite mortar.

A thoroughly enjoyable exercise. it takes quite a while to get all the seeds crushed to dust. Good for the arms. The smell was really good too - smokey, almost tomatoey pungency. Lovely!

ta-da!

Making lightweight hands for a giant puppet

Some simple, but rather amusing 18 inch long hands!



They started as packaging foam, glued together with hot glue...



Add to this was some cardboard to form a palm...



To which cling film was added for lightweight padding...



Seen palm up...



Here's a standard size hand for comparison...



An outer skin is added with papier mache. This is tissue (wet strength) with latex as glue



From the top...



One hand was made manky, using coloured paper in the mache layering...



Eventually looking like this...



Some knuckle joint detail was drawn on using marker pen...



and finger nails etc...



To give basic details...



Finally a top coat of coloured latex was applied. This is simply natural latex with craft paint mixed in...



yum...



Sponged on with a washing up sponge...



Drying is sigificantly accelerated with heat from a hairdryer...



The latex is opaque before it cures...



As it dries, it starts to become transparent...



The finished hands.

3D workshop at Metrix Create:Space, MCN Seattle

Some shots from a great 3D printing workshop at Museums Computer Network 2012 in Seattle, in the really awesome Metrix Create:Space. Missing some names, so if you were there, please comment them :)

Don Undeen showcases Autodesk 123d.

Here's what I have managed to knock out with this:
.

Looking at Meshmixer to clean up captured 3d models

The awesome racks of makey hardware in the Metrix Create:Space

The even more awesome hacking hardware VENDING MACHINE!

Using Repetier with a Microsoft Kinect to capture a mesh

The object is a person standing on a turntable.

Looking at a powder printer in the Metrix Create:Space