Arduino LCD Knex Twitter

i've been really bad about updating here lately. it's spring, the weather is finally remembering what that means and i've been outside a lot, but not enough. i'm fighting my way through the final 5 weeks before i get to see mon after 6 months of digital substitution. wedding plans are coalescing and it's getting really exciting.

my work has been slow, but this weekend it picked up. some of you may know that i've been working on some kinetic sculptures built from knex. when i say some, i mean, really, just one. i have a smaller prototype and a much bigger (but not big enough, i think) alpha version in which i'm incorporating some of my crazier mechanical ideas. the mechanics of these knex machines are the easy and fun part. construction progresses intuitively and playfully, reminiscent of how i paint. since the outset i've been searching for a way to make these works interactive and/or networked. i've been stumped.

it's been a hard transition for me. going from media-centric, passive art to what i now know is "post-media", active work. but after taking a couple of days off this weekend, i figured it out. i use twitter. twitter is an extremely fascinating example of simple rules spawning a complex system. it asks, "what are you doing" and gives you 140 characters or less to answer. it can be used and accessed through a wide variety of media. it's free. it's open-source, to a point. the api is available for development and hacking. the basic idea is you say what your doing, other people do the same and you can "follow" or subscribe to all the other people twittering. it's like quick n'dirty, stream of consciousness blogging. and it's been used during times of crisis when traditional communication has broken down.

i've decided to incorporate live twitter feeds, via an arduino and lcds, into my kinetic sculptures. largely because i'm starting to see these knex machines as social sculptures. sculptures based on and influenced by cities and society. and twitterfeeds could arguably be called the societal stream of consciousness. i've not thought through them completely yet. i'm still building. i'm still excited. that's gotta be a good sign.