Circuit bending kids’ cameras

I’ve added new slides to my portfolio :

Cool article about textures in video games : https://agentlien.github.io/texture/

Now planning a new 2 day workshop at the end of november that will include glitching digital cameras, digital files themselves, and the sending of digital signals to screens.

I’ll need some kids cameras (and cheap webcams?), participants with laptops, and rpis with various components and breadboards.

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ENSCI workshop :

-glitching workshop needs theoretical framework either of the practice of glitching or of the architecture of various files. Students felt they had no control, that the activity was meaningless and completely random. (Menkman Rosa 2010 A Vernacular of File Formats is the perfect thing for this)

-I need more moments where the students have to show what they are working on during the course of the workshop instead of just at the end or just informally.

-Somehow a dynamic formed wherein it was up to the workshop leader to make projects happen, and a certain number of the students, didn’t take the initiative to try and develop a mature (if very quickly made) project for the workshop.

-I did a better job than normal is revising and learning about the references and technical things I brought up in class before hand so I was more informed. I think I need to go even further to be really comfortable with what I’m talking about.

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This viewfinder prism thing is incredible, it somehow automatically focuses and it has the backlit quality that feels like it must be powered even though it’s not.

I fell in love with this thermal printer camera combo, could it be a workshop unto itself ? :

Trying to see if I could control the thermal printer mechanism myself ?

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/2-Inch-Original-Thermal-Receipt-Printer_1601425785504.html

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/QJ486-101-2Inch-Thermal-Printer-Head_1601779477708.html?spm=a2700.prosearch.normal_offer.d_image.276567afnEGOJb&priceId=3b08110c5d97474b979cd0218d1ff567

https://download.mikroe.com/documents/datasheets/LTP02-245-13_datasheet.pdf

I can now put VGA output, HDMI output, rpi input, and camera input in the ACHIEVED category ! I can already to a VGA electronics workshop where the video input is from a camera and not from the rpi. Next versions could also select between an SD card raw video and camera input. This could work for NO SCHOOL next year for instance and obviate the need for rpis completely and make something inexpensive enough that the students could keep after (cost : OV7670, FPGA, SD card holder, SD card, VGA female). At the same time, I think I am actually getting tired of glitching, especially when I saw how cool it was to have low res pictures that I could print on the Chinese camera.

I am thinking of revisiting LCD, SD card, and making a board for a thermal printer and getting help from AI.

Basically, having a physical output from my machine just seems so much more valuable than endlessly manipulating images. Though a physical mini screen on the FPGA board would make things more tangible, it remains kind of virtual like a smart phone. The idea of physically printing something is appealing. Printing out glitched things doesn’t really work with the low resolution of the printer unfortunately. So I think the printing camera really has to be an actual normally functioning device. The interest in using it over buying a Chinese printing camera would be the custom design, the learning I would gain for doing the project ? It certainly won’t ever be cheaper than the Chinese cameras so I have to subtract this from my stated motivations.

It connects with a project like Tom Garçon’s low resolution projector. Essentially let’s not store big files when little ones do fine for many things. It goes a step further into not even storing files on an SD card but just printing them right away. As a designer to have quick records of things and be able to collage them all together could actually be useful. It also takes keeps taking me in the direction of machine vision, but away from screen into something physical.