Over the summer I worked at ITP, and one of the jobs I had was to help in scanning every single thesis in ITP's archive from the past thirty years.
Papers had to be taken out of folders, binders, and bindings.
Unfortunately some of the theses were professionally bound, which would have meant scanning each page individually rather than running them through the automatic tray.
I found a solution to this by cutting off the spines of every thesis on the bandsaw. I amassed quite the collection of spines so turned them into an art piece.
Whether it's Duct, Gaff, Packing, Electrical, Masking, Painter's, or any other tape roll under the sun, the easiest way to keep them is on a loop of rope with a clasp or carabiner on one end.
Just like using the right tool for the job, using the right tape is also essential. There are folks who are in the cult of duct tape, but frankly, it's comparatively expensive and in many cases there's a tape that can do a better job. Keep them all together in the way I've shown, and get familiar with which one is right for the job.
I learned this little trick when I worked briefly in film production. I didn't see it being used anywhere outside that field, until I met my classmate Luis Violante. I asked him where he learned to do that and he said "oh...when I worked in production." Go figure.
After a feverish build session on the "Bounce Announce" project, I trashed the workshop and re-organized in the aftermath. This is probably the cleanest it's going to get for months, so I decided to document it.
The "Bounce Announce" instrument will be completed by Sunday, at which time I will post video of it in action. If you'd like to see it (and lots of other awesome projects) live, make sure to go to the ITP Winter Show.
On September 4th I was married to my lovely gal, Melody - twas an amazing DIY wedding with mismatched dinnerware, handmade papergoods, and an ass-kicking crowdsourced band. Once all the photos and video are in I will dedicate an entire post to it.
I am keeping a project blog of my work at ITP here if any of you are interested.
3 days later, I started grad school at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. My first class was a lecture hosted by the founder of ITP, Red Burns. Our first speaking guest was legendary performance artist Vito Acconci, who spoke right after I found out I was chosen to be in the first group for the following week's presentation, which would be a "reaction" to Vito's talk.
I became intensely close with the members of my group, and over 50 hours of work within one week's time, we conceived and presented this piece: a 40x50 foot sheet of clear plastic was pulled over the entire audience, and text of some of our most personal and controversial opinions were rear-projected onto the sheet. With the screen being wavy and up-close, the audience had to cooperate with each other in order to decipher what was written, and in so doing have a moment in the present with each other. Following this, we asked each audience member to write down a personal/controversial sentence of their own and stick it to the sheet. The sheet was pulled off and onto the stage, where I read several of the audiences' sentences aloud. Then we bunched up the sheet and carried it off stage. Afterwards Red said "this group set the bar very high." I must admit we were unsure whether this would be pulled off, but in the end it worked wonderfully. Pic by Becky Kazansky by and video by Matthew Rader below:
