Updates is a tumblelog.

Paper choices

Left to right: The book paper I used for my ‘Poetry of Modern Life’ project last year, newsprint and Bible paper. The Bible paper, besides being relevant in its religious links, feels far better for what I want. It has a delicateness that matches the hazy photocopied pixels; both ideal for my urge to emphasise that the pixels have now been made physical.

Through pushing the tactility of the object (making the materials more noticeable/unusual) my hope is that the reality behind our relationship with Google is made more clear, and feels rightfully strange.

‘Prayers to Google’ book

Based on my previous experiments with calligraphy, I felt the book needed a stronger sense of neatness. I decided, then, that in lieu of siting in a dark room with a lamp on for weeks like a monk (!), I’d use the computer somehow:

I’ve decided to develop the original ‘pixellated shrine’ illustrations from a few weeks ago, and to use a single page of the book for each of the best epic prayers to Google that I’d found before.

As with the previous experiments, I’ve tried to reference religious iconography in having mirrored compositions around a dominant central element. With this new imagery, however, I’m also including elements like the mouse cursor, scrollbars and windows, in an effort to express that these things are the equivalent of an altar or stained glass windows in church, or the decoration on a manuscript… They are there, part of the architecture, as our Google-searchers share their thoughts with the ether.

Computer pixels aren’t an arbitrary choice of course. They stand for similar things in this project to the pixels in my slow website as, in both, they can be taken to reference the gridded mass of knowledge and technology that we’ve built around ourselves.

Google book

A possible inspiration for the cover of my prayer book:

As it’s only 10 or so sheets of Bible Paper, it only wants a thin soft cover. Something precious though…

Google as God (book + shrine text)

To recap, I want to somehow compile the deepest phrases I found through Google Suggestions before into a book.

Here are a couple of initial references in addition to the religious iconography I showed before; the first is a book from 1885 that I bought a few months ago, and the second is a booklet I bought cheap when I was in Rome last year…

As mentioned, I tried to see some real manuscripts at the British Museum especially for this project, but there weren’t any there! Had to rely on the books considering the short time frame.

Inspired by my books, I went to L. Cornelissen near Holborn and bought the following:

And of course had a play!:

(Note my attempts in the above image to make pixels using the calligraphy pen nib sideways)

Throughout was referring to my Italian calligraphy book for more relevant hands; generally the Gothic sorts like those in religious manuscripts. Also tried out a range of nibs that I got when I bought the pen, and found the thicker ones worked better.

Also then furthered the pixel idea by thinking about how a Graphical User Interface could be referenced using calligraphy…

Making these small folded pieces of thick paper, I was trying to get close to the size I wanted the book to be. One thing I really liked was the thin gold border I tried out here; something I want to keep hold of! Also experimented with some gold pens I’d bought by chance for the NEWD project, and they were far neater for details like the border:

Overall, I didn’t feel the visuals were polished enough; perhaps down to my lack of experience as a calligrapher, despite enjoying it. So left it like that to build on later.

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On a side note:

Have made the text on my circuitboard shrine to read:

‘Searchers sit at screen and pray to Google’.

Much more self-explanatory I think, so that anyone new to the project could understand what I’m trying to say.

Google shrine pt 3

Could then put it all together (all last weekend).

A rough test of layout and colours in photoshop:

Spray-painting the rays:

Decided to get rid of a couple of the rays, as it felt too cluttered otherwise.

Spray-painting the centre halo effect on the back piece:

And the small white burst in the middle of the halo:

Wasn’t massively keen on that white bit though, so went over it again with the gold.

Attaching the LCD screen, and hot glue-gunning the rays on:

The LCD part had 4 screw-holes already, so used two PCB mounts (like screws with screw threads in the top) on top of each other, then hot-glued to the main circuitboard piece. This way, the LCD circuitboard can be removed so batteries can be replaced and text can easily be altered.

Here, the text was meant to read ‘Our motherboard, who art in server, Google be thy name’ but that goes over 46 characters. Have since changed it to ‘Our Google, who art in server…’.

Still, need to think if this says enough or even the right thing. Maybe ‘Google=God’ is simpler, although it lacks subtlety.

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Overall, really pleased with how it turned out. As I’m not sure it completely puts across the depth of my intentions and the ideas I’ve had, I feel as though it should be more of an accompaniment to the book I’m planning on doing (perhaps influenced by religious holy-books).

Google shrine pt 2

The idea was to either scratch into or print on acetate above that screen, to have either the words ‘Google Search’ or ‘Google = God’… something like that.

The same would’ve happened with the other two screens I had though, so I went about trying to buy a new one that I’d leave unconnected and affect the surface of.

Then I found this on the Maplin website:

http://www.maplin.co.uk/mini-lcd-message-board-37836

A programmable scrolling message board, that works off 2 AAA batteries.

This really was ideal — both visually with the pixellated letters, and practically, with the allowance of 46 characters that scroll at a speed you’re able to set. I wasn’t sure on the text (and still need to work on it in fact), but thought I’d write that to conform to the limitations.

Anyway, managed to get one, and it came like this, which was a bit of a surprise:

Wasn’t expecting to originally, but spent the day then building the thing — borrowing my dad’s soldering iron (lucky I was at home!):

AND…

Nothing.

After so many hours of soldering.

Rechecked the instructions. Altered a rotatable component. Still nothing.

Then realised that I’d got one of the diodes the wrong way round — and it’d actually burnt out the copper connection next to it that connects it to the circuit. Turns out diodes don’t like being the wrong way round:

From here… “In the event that the battery or power source is connected the wrong way round, the diode does not allow current to flow. Electronic devices can be damaged or even destroyed if the polarity is reversed (positive and negative are connected to the wrong terminals).”

The problem then was that, because it’d burnt out the copper link to the circuit, turning it around the right way didn’t fix it.

In the end had to scratch away a bit of the green plastic layer, and solder a tiny undamaged part of the exposed circuit to the diode leg.

And, thankfully…

Google shrine

When I last posted a picture of my sculpture, I had the following sort of thing in mind:

I didn’t know quite how (imagining ceramic, or a glass covering…) but I wanted to originally have the ‘Google Search’ button there. It felt more authentic for this to be the real pixellated button blown up and printed but on close inspection:

Even with glass over the top or something, I felt it looked like an unintentionally bad print, when it was supposed to be noticeably intentional.

So the next thought was to perhaps use one of the three LCD screens that I’d accumulated when breaking up the appliances earlier in the week.

One particular screen looked better than the others, so I attempted to break it away from the circuit it was on.

Not one of my best ideas, as seen in the next post!

Google shrine

Here are the best circuitboards (back and front) I was able to separate from everything else:

The best wires and small details:

You forget how advanced and complex all of this stuff really is; how much engineering and design has gone into each and every component. Even the smallest of objects is clever by itself… The cassette player mechanism seen in one of the photos in the last post had me amazed for quite a while, having had its faceplate removed to reveal how the pause and play action operate so many hinges and levers at once… how the rewind and fast forward buttons switch from one set of cogs to another… And to add to that amazement, it’s all so small!

Reminds me of finding a crab’s claw on the beach and being able to pull the ligaments to make it move (that held my attention for ages a couple of holidays ago!)

There’s a parallel, I think, between my awe for the beauty of the circuit-boards and awe felt for the sorts of divine decoration seen on religious objects and shrines. Religious objects are intended to appear godly through the use of gold and other precious materials, as well as demonstrating the craftsman’s extreme loyalty and devotion, all to substanciate the belief in God — whereas the circuit-board is born out of practicality, and is impressive in its natural complexity.

Here are a number of images I’ve accumulated for reference of religious iconography:

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An interesting thought I had was that while religion offers one set of beliefs on life that a person subscribes to, Google offers open, uncensored access to all beliefs. The difference is that of broadcast compared to an open network.

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Some sketchbook pages (thumbnails etc):

And a Photoshop test using the images at the top of this post (resized), chopped up and arranged to test out the sort of design I want for the shrine:

Here are some process photos since then:

Pulling larger components off some of the circuit-boards, so they can be cut easier:

Using a soldering iron to remove some of the more difficult-to-remove components:

Marking out the shape to cut the largest circuit-board into:

Using my dad’s Dremel-Multi to cut the shape:

Testing spray-paints (white and gold):

(Silver):

Spraying the base shape, having decided that a dusting of white on the component side rather than the green side was the best way forward (being subtle and less distracting/obvious than the green):

Having cut a few of the rays and testing out the composition:

The plan with the above rays is to spray them half gold and leave half green (similar to the effect seen on the test pieces a few photos ago).

The mess on the kitchen table:

Our Google, who art in server

Typing a search query into Google has become such a common occurrence in most of our lives, it’d be hard to imagine using the internet without it (or another, similar, search engine).

A while ago I was playing around with the predictive search function (which is based on common searches people make), typing in one or two words and seeing what other people had put after it. It’s always interesting to see how others use computers, especially when they do something wrong or unusual with them, and I found it funny that some people asked Google questions rather than typing keywords.

Considering that websites like AskJeeves encourage questions, it’s not all that strange really. But what I found most interesting were the sorts of phrases and questions that seemed more personal. Here are a few screenshots (taken a few months ago and just now), some more revealing and interesting than others:

Some are obviously specific names of films, songs, products etc… but there are a number that don’t return any specific results (hinting to me that they’re fresh from the person’s feelings).

Knowing that, having access to such personal things, feels strange — and it’s only enabled by the fact that the people in question are sharing such intimate words not with a person, but with a non-judging, (virtually) all-knowing machine. When more people were religious, this place was surely only reserved for gods.

There seems to be a human urge to reach out into the ether and connect with something bigger than us, and I feel as though the above images demonstrate this.

Looking at these phrases, bearing in mind they represent more than just one person’s words, we’re faced with the universal human; the fragile, emotional being who (through using technology) is stripped simultaneously of shyness and individuality.

It occurs to me that, like religions and gods over hundreds of years in a single country, one search engine has had to come out on top. People want to put their fate (of an internet search) in the hands of the strongest, most popular and most likely to deliver. Google, being that most popular engine, feels like ‘the one’. I’m not saying this is the reason for those people’s personal searches at all, but rather that its oneness is the reason for me choosing it over others.

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An initial experiment in expressing the link between Google and God:

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Above: Choosing to use pixels to stay in-keeping with the language and substance of the technology itself, I went about using singularity, centrification (if that’s a word!) and symmetry to mimic religious iconography. For the last two I used my drawing tablet, and was influenced particularly by the following image:

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Though I liked the pixellated nature of what I’d done so far, I felt it was slightly too similar to my other project and like it wasn’t real enough. This modern ‘god’ should be more physical, I felt, taken out of its familiar screen-based context and into the real world; perhaps in an unfamiliar, physical form, people will see how strange a phenomena it really is.

This technology goes further than merely the pixellated output that the user sees; it’s made of huge complex structures of metal, buzzing and whirring away. The servers, the physical manifestation of Google, are made of wires and LED’s and motors; circuits and circuit-boards.

So I went off in search of electrical scrap…!

At PC World the ‘Tech Guys’ told me that they send scrap materials elsewhere, and so didn’t have any to give me. They were helpful, though, and suggested I went over to an industrial estate to rummage through any skips or bins that were around. When there, I found a lot of rubbish but nothing electrical besides a few old CD’s (where I was being watched by CCTV anyway).

Next try was Maplin on the High Street, where the components turned out to be far too expensive. The sales assistant advised me to get in touch with local schools though, as they’re apparently always getting rid of old computers.

A lift from my dad to the local tip was far more fruitful in the end though; here’s the aftermath of breaking a CRT monitor, TFT monitor, airband radio, hi-fi system and VCR (a lot of fun!):