spetku

Oil Painting During the Second Renaissance

Hey everyone! Many of us have found ourselves with a lot more free time than we ever expected. It has been a great chance for personal growth and healing! Part of the process for me has involves trying out new things, or rediscovering with old hobbies.

When I was a student I use to oil paint every single day for like... 4 years!! crazy!?! right?! Well, I have decided that it's time I *brush up* my skills enough to eventually do an updated self portrait at the end of the Summer. While I ...

Ahoy! Fellow Soldiers of the Apocalypse!

First, I hope everyone out there is doing well, and that your tribe is safe and healthy.

No matter what your take on things is, it's been a hell of a year so far. In many cases, an emotional rollercoaster of sorts. 

Amidst the shit storm of social-unrest and disease... I have been on something of a healing journey, where I have taken time to myself to just, exist and try to pull myself together so that I can function better in the future. Today, the journey involved some word...

The Season of Spice is Here

It's Fall now! What is everyones favorite way to get into the season changing mood?

As a child, my mom use to take me to the local cider mill in Michigan to get a dozen fresh cinnamon donuts and unfiltered cider... SO - the tradition has since followed that on the first of October, I seek out some vestige of pumpkin-spice donuts and eat them like a monster.

Tonight- I've invited my friends over for "Hocus Pocus" and "Beetlejuice" - because those both seem to be fun staples for amp...

New Ambiance for a Fresh Series of Videos

The Summer has not gone as I’ve expected so far. This is alright however, I welcome the change of pace.

The catalyst was an unplanned span of time where I was without my primary laptop for several weeks. I was not able to edit video, publish things in the wild, work on web-site stuff, or even draw with my tablet in Photoshop. My life as I know it came to a screaming halt.

While I was without my apparent life-staple, I decided to clean, organize and remodel my side of the lab so ...

Project: Chicken Noodle

At the end of May I've decided to switch my focus from SHE BON and the augments I've been toiling away at, onto my two immobile robot offspring.

This is : "NoodleFeet" and the less known "Carl" <3

The two were technically born in the same year, Noodle being a Spring baby of 2015, and Carl coming at the end of the year in December. HOWEVER, even though Carl has been around as long as No...

Neck Sucking SOOOON

I just want you to know that we are getting painfully close to mechanized neck sucking... and I'm really very excited about that O_o

I received the controller board for the Suck Choker from fab this Monday, and have since assembled and tested one with Mark. All that is left to do is connect the suckers to the motorized syringes with some silicone tubing and write out some test code... and we're go.

This is some footage of me mashing the CALAMARI boards inside of the suckers =F The...

There will be drawing...

If you ask me, I’ll tell you that the SHE BON project is a series of wearables that senses and indicates arousal. That’s the low impact description.

If I were to be completely honest though, I can admit that the project is an elaborate coping mechanism that has followed a period of self discovery prompted by unpacking emotional baggage from my youth.

I suppose this cause and effect relation between my life and the project isn’t unusual or surprising. The function of art is t...

a Back Rack of Syringes

I woke up today and prepared myself to do annoying CAD design. 

One of the things I've been putting off is making a mounting plate for two different SHE BON augments that need to overlap and thus share space without inhibiting each others function.

The mounting plate will seat on top of my back and capture a central stalk for the unannounced head augment, and two racks of syringes for my suck choker: one for either shoulder blade. 

I want to thank everyone who kept...

April: the Month of Suck

Suck Choker & Squeeze Choker

This month I began developing my first new SHE BON augment of the year! I haven’t really decided on a name for it yet, but for now I’ve been referring to it as the “Suck Choker”. As the title suggests, it is a device worn on the users neck which replicates the experience of someone’s lips tangent to the skin creating a small oscillating vacuum… but from many angles all at once!

(here is a mockup of the look I'm shooting...

Spring Heat

It's mid April-ish now already. This means two things:

• I get to find out if any of my seeds germinated
• It's going to get hot very soon

By seeds... I mean, if I am to receive any of the grants and residencies I applied for earlier this year. It's like waiting to hear back from the colleges you applied for all over again, anxiously anticipating the sensation of blissful success of bitter rejection.

So far this year I am 0-4, that is, four of the seeds I pl...

I'm still here.

it's that time of year again where I sit on the couch and prepare proposals and submission materials for things, the likes of which will shape the months to come. My days are quiet and boring, so I've been keeping to myself as to get the practical part of my adult life handled and out of the way... then I can return to the fun artist part. 

In the occasion that I get every single thing I apply for:

• Spring in Austria for an artist residency.
• Summer months down t...
  2019-02-05 21:59:49 +0000 UTC View Post

I'm making a tap floor O_o

Hi everyone! I hope you're all acclimating to the Fall/Winter season fairly well!

I just wanted to let you know how your support is fueling my madness this month... as I feel you have a right to know:

So I'm going to let you in on a little secret that I don't typically tell people unless I'm drinking and ranting about my childhood. I use too dance back when I was a kid, for about 12 years- specifically tap dancing.

For the duration that it is cold outside here in the deser...

Hackaday Prize Finals

I entered SHE BON into the HackaDay Prize in the Human-computer interface category. =O 

I made it through the first round of submissions so I'm technically in the running for the Prize itself......... which is exciting. It however has also dropped a hefty todo list on my lap for this month so far. 

Happily, I'm almost done with all the required documentation. Mark and I only got the core system working a day or so ago, so it's functioning at minimal capacity... but working none...

Busy and kinda anti-social

Hi everyone! I just ordered this thing last night (a nice mic!): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078RZZ927/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A3SPLR0MSOYZ8O&psc=1

...with the intent of getting back on a regular streaming regiment leading into HackaDay's SuperCON next month in Pasadena.

Before then I have some deadlines coming up that have been keeping my...

All things SHE BON

It's October 2nd (I missed the 1st). 

I hope everything has been going well with you and that you've made your peace with summer. It already feels like Fall here in my part of the country; the kitty pool has been deflated and folded up, the weather is cooler, and I'm preparing for the talk I'll be giving at HackaDay's SuperCon in November.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it or not, but SHE BON was a finalist in the Human-computer Interface Challenge, which means I'm also a finalist for ...

Training Session no. 5!

...He can see everything, accept his pizza. O_o weird as hell, cause it seems like a triangle with big red spots on it would be pretty easy to identify. Guess not.

Since Noodle will need to recognize not only my face, but also the faces of potential onlookers in the gallery space, I may need to add either some false positives to his next training set, or some images of me without my glasses on................. right now he's cheating by saying anything with my glasses on is me. O_o

Hey, I survived the weekend!!

It wasn't my intention to attend DEFCON. I had consciously decided to boycott it in fact. 

This being said, I still wanted to see my friends who would be visiting for the conference, so I planned to bring my own cool-aide to the party and hold the loose and impromptu "noodleCON".

I crashed the foodcourt this weekend with NoodleFeet, to chat with my friends and give hugs in passing. I was al...

The Climax of SUMMER

It's about mid August: the time of year I start to feel this special anxiety.

I'm not certain whether the feeling is caused by approaching deadlines, the social expectations of Defcon, or the cabin fever brought on by locking myself indoors for weeks at a time while avoiding the desert heat... but whatever the cause, I'm a bit nutty again.

It might be because this is also the point in my year where obligations suddenly take precedence over the projects I do out of immediate passion, or f...

In the heat of Summer

First. To those of you who are my newest patrons: thank you. Your support makes my rocking world go 'round, and is appreciated more than you know!!

It's an intense summer so far. Every year I anticipate the disappointment of a lull relative to the previous one... but this hasn't happened yet (and this is of course very good!).

WESTWORLD PANNEL @ SDCC

This weekend I'm participating in my first panel at ComicCon for the show Westworld. This is also my first ComicCon....

To Noodle, the universe is Fisty

...So, Mark and I finally got the first classifier to compute for a sample of 200 or so images of NoodleFeet's favorite stuffed animal, "Fisty", posed in various positions. It ran for a minute and ended for some unexplained reason. When we opened a test image, this is what noodle saw.

=) Noodle is either experiencing confusion for the first time, or enlightenment. 

It's busy (and hot!!) again!

May into June seems to be the point where the rest of my years takes shape and I am on a committed path with set goals deep into Fall. (this is what adulthood as an "artist" has become for this girl)

As it goes, I am splitting my attention amongst three or so different tasks a week, trying to get larger projects underway so that they have fully matured by the appropriate time... in the eventual future.

Here is what my life is now:

• Noodle WILL see and recognize things at the A...
  2018-06-27 19:38:23 +0000 UTC View Post

ANOTHER WEARABLE PROJECT

I'm already working on the masks, and with all of my other backlogged stuff it seems like I've got enough on my plate. BUT this project that I started brainstorming back in February is my passion right now, and the thing I enjoy developing the most... therefore important =P

Hopefully the sexual nature of "SHE BON" doesn't turn too many people off. The uncomfortable squeamishness is what I am actually trying to combat by creating this project. In the end, I want to have a good, honest dialogue ...

Fitting my friends with their new faces...

I totally felt like Krieger on Friday night, rushing around the house preparing my mad tea party for all of my friends... fitting them for harnesses one by one as they arrived... feeding them alcohol so they wouldn't grow tired of me collecting data from them...

It was a fun time! Admittedly, things didn't go exactly to plan, but they rarely do when coordinating with four people at once. The good news...

Spring Project : Flocking Masks

Hello everybody!

It seems that I'll be sticking around Vegas this Spring-Summer, which means I'll have quality time to work on fresh new projects to my heart's content. :)

I announced a couple of weeks ago that I'm working on a series of reactive masks that will respond to the wearer's facial expressions by animating features on the exterior. I'm calling them the "flocking masks" and I'll be making a total of five, one for myself and each of my closest friends.

Where the video abov...

Instructions are up!

I finished the base instructions for the Anthropomorph-EYES this morning and also got the product approved and listed on Tindie!

Spread the word! There needs to be more emotional appliances in the world. Noodle needs friends! <3

Anthropomorph-EYES on Tindie 

Thank you as always for being awesome and encouraging my crazy =P

-Sarah

I added a new thing to my Tindie Store =P

I had a lovely package delivered from China on Friday evening; the new circuit boards for my latest project and product that I'll be adding to my line on Tindie, the "Anthropomorph-EYES"!

As I mentioned, I'm trying to create another revenue stream for myself by offering the circuit boards I've designed from some of my past projects on Tindie.  Part of this endeavor involves creating instructions so that someone at home can replicate one of my designs, needing only a 3D printer to produce ...

Ok... back to work as usual

Things have been shipped! Deadlines have been met! Stuff has been applied for! I can now go back to the finer things in life...

...Like playing with this box of shiny new sensors. I bought three different kinds, for three separate projects that I'll be taking on this spring:

• One involves the control of Flower 2.0 (which is something that got shelved almost two years ago now >.<)
• The s...
  2018-02-28 22:52:06 +0000 UTC View Post

Untangling myself from loose ends

This week will be somewhat uneventful. I am putting my oil painting, the jelly spawn dev, noodle's walking endeavors, my comic, and my social life on hold so that I can finish off some things that have now been on the back burner for quite some time.

I probably won't do any streaming, but I intend to make up for it in a big way once I pay some energy to the people who truly deserve it most right now. If I'm a good raptor and get this all through sooner rather than later, I'll be back before Fr...

I just bought a bunch of sensors =P

Your support has allowed me to order some extra goodies for R&D this month! Thank you <3

After I finish wrapping up my residency from last year (I'm still tying up some loose ends from the end of summer!!!) I intend to dive into several new projects this spring that will all be in the same vein: extending personal expression through mechanical enhancement/augmentation. =P 

These sensors will allow for a good amount of learning and play while I figure out what my inpu...

Streaming is Fun!

Starting in mid December, I decided to live stream a work day here and there for the sake of conversation, feedback, and defeating that lonely fog that often rolls in during the "work at home" experience.

So far, I'm loving it! I realize I'm quite awkward attempting to focus on what I'm making while holding multiple conversations- and the feeling of hearing my voice alone for hours on end is unnerving... but again- I'm getting the hang of it!

In addition to having great company, some of ...