I, as I’m sure lots of people, am big fan of Ted. I heard through the grape vine that there was going to be a Tedx MidAtlantic conference near Baltimore. Tedx being an independently organized Ted event, as clearly stated in the image… Anyways I somehow missed it, but Tedx MidAtlantic is free.. sort of, and hosted in the Brown Center at MICA. A building I’m in just about every day. As if all that weren’t enough, the event is going to be on November 5th, the same day as the Sight Sound Interaction exhibition opening. So I’m pretty excited, hopefully that’ll help pull in a good crowed for the show! Make sure to be there, Tuesday November 5th.
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BlogTedxMidAtlanticOctober 12, 2009
Sight Sound Interaction 4 ExhibitOctober 4, 2009
Best of BaltimoreSeptember 25, 2009
Here’s a link to the CityPaper article – Best of Baltimore 2009: Baltimore Living
Disco BoxingSeptember 3, 2009
I’ve been talking about Disco Boxing for a long time, but now I’ve finally laid out what it is, and how it was made. This post is going to be updated until it’s entirely complete which will probably be a week or so. Disco Boxing is an interactive boxing project created by Mick Zimmerman, Clark Agre, Mike Anderson and myself which made it’s first debut at Artscape 2009. The idea is based off of the classic “strong man” carnival competition, the harder you hit, the more lights fire off. This blog post is arranged mostly for anyone curious about how we built the Disco Box using fairly simple and inexpensive methods. A Basic Description: Disco Boxing is comprised of two walls, 8ft tall by 8ft wide and arranged to create a corner. Hanging in the middle of the “room” is a mid weight punching bag. Inside the punching bag we implemented a system to embed pressure sensitive switches which determine how hard a punch is being thrown at the bag. From there the information is sent to a computer running Max/MSP where we created a custom program to send data to an Arduino micro-controller which is then in turn connected to all 96 lights arranged on the wall. Unfortunately at this time I do not have the edited video documentation, that will be coming shortly though, I promise. Here’s the rest of our photos and video,
Artscape 2009July 26, 2009
Disco Boxing ProgressMay 16, 2009
We’ve also launched our new website for the project, right now located at http://discobox.politeauthority.com/ Hopefully once we get the order in things will start moving faster so we’ll be ready in time for Artscape, but we’ll see!
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As he has done for the past 4 years, 
Last week the Baltimore City Paper compiled there list of the Best of the best in Baltimore and on page 26 of the 2009 issue, Best Festival went to Artscape Midway. It was the first time in the past three years that Artscape as a general festival did not win, and only Midway’s second year as a festival. The first mention in the City Paper article was of Disco Boxing. Midway came out on top even with festivals like Wartscape, Starscape, Station North Arts Festival, and many others so we’re all pretty proud!
Saturday we made an order for 250 triacs, 250 opto-isolators and 1,000 15k resistors. They should be coming in some time next week and that’s when our progress will really take off. With this shipment we’ll be able to make each light bulb have independent control with an Arduino Mega, the newest Arduino micro-controller, which we’ll be able to control 2, 8 ft by 8ft panels holding 64 lights.
