Thank you gifts

Those colourful boxes were in fact thank you gifts I made for staff and tutors who helped me in my three years at Central Saint Martins.
They are brightly coloured they have a private message and each has a box of plasters within. The name of the person they were given to set in Letraset (Helvetia bold condensed).

Photos curtesy of Rathna Ramanathan

20 colourful boxes

What a sight...

What are these bright coloured boxes I am making??

Coming along nicely!

Washproof Plasters

I am reimagining how to say thank you. I don't want to ruin the surprise so will not elaborate.

Ben Fosket - Dinosaur

I was one of the winners in a competition to design a debut classical album cover as a part of the series 'Debut Discs' by NMC in 2012.

I received a couple of complimentary copies in the post today and feel very proud!

Designing a business card printer for the degree show

I am finally happy that I have most of the details necessary for the design of this printer.

With help from Angus Main the system is now fully operational since Monday. All that is needed to make the printer print a business card at the press of a button is to plug it into a power supply!

The printer is currently reserved for external assessment and the result of this is that I can only start working on building it physically next week. I make what I can in the interim.

Front view of the printer

Top view with section cut

Back view

Designing my final first of three hand-in booklets

I have not logged much recently, and foolishly as it would have helped to have my ongoing impressions to hand at the moment. So here is what I am working on presently - my final hand-in document. I am planning to make three booklets two dedicated to my major projects from Unit 10 (Talk Over Tea and the joke Dispenser) plus one more dedicated to the smaller briefs I am or was involved with this year (CSM degree show identity + another project I am doing with CSM research department).

The deadline is May 12th (nine days away) and I should be finished in time - I am trying to feel calm, which is a challange.

Indesign screen shot of the overview of the booklet dedicated to Talk Over Tea (WIP)

Where are things with the joke dispenser

SU asked me to send them a short description of my project so far and include photos so:

Last year I began researching what social capital is and to test it in real life by making small adjustments to the way I behave in everyday situations. The first notable change I made was with beggars on the street. If anyone asks me for money in the street I give it to them in exchange for them going on tape to say what they will do with the money. Once they do and I pay them I upload that video to Twitter and tag the council this happened in:

Traded £1 with a homeless so he'd tell me what he'll do with it #BeggingBargain @camdenTalking https://t.co/doJXyUXxXD
— Gilad Visotsky (@v_gilad) August 19, 2013

My next stage was to go go outside and beg for myself, only I begged in a way that challenges the relationship we usually have with people holding signs on the street:

It went very well, I got over 40 jokes in three days, here is an unedited sample.

The next stage was to take this all this content, or the system in which I generated that content, and apply it, or compile it in a way that makes sense. I decided to do it in the context of where I am studying Central Saint Martins college. The reason for this is my conclusion that if all the contributions were made at one location it will make sense if seen one after the other - it is a way to get to know the people of that place. 

I began to design an experience based around this system. The core idea is that if you participate in this experience in any way, you get something meaningful in return.

And so began the journey of making this thing happen. I have invested in a coin acceptor, and with the help of 4D technicians Angus and Sion, wrote a program that plays a video when a penny in put into the system.   

Programming the coin acceptor

Building the Kiosk

The kiosk has wheels!

behind the screen 

For each penny inserted into this kiosk a joke is played. If someone chooses to participate by contributing a joke (which means finding me and recording it) they will receive a 10p voucher.

Here is a demo of how it works

CSM canteen vouchers for joke contributors 

And finally, today I have painted my Joke dispenser with the first layer of paint, during this process I tweeted and was asked to share this with the SU blog.

today: watching paint dry... (!!!)

Success!!!!

I managed to print my cat jokes properly using the thermal printer!!!!

Turns out I had the Arduino plugged in all wrong. I changed the wiring according to these instructions, then continued to use the code from aidafruit. In order to print the jokes properly (previously words got broken into new lines) I am now using bitmap images at 384px wide, thus controling the font, characters, line spacing etc. I can even print images!

I am using images instead of text to control the text appearance

The correct way to wire up the Arduino (from adafruit)

In this old printout you can see spaces appear at beginning of new lines, and words broken into the next line  

Vouchers for my joke contributors

After talking to Ian yesterday I have made 10p vouchers which I will give to anyone who contributes a joke for my project.

I hope no one can fake these bad boys!

Working on Talk Over Tea Posters and Table Tents

I am redesigning the posters and table tri-folds to mirror the changed way the service will work as of tomorrow.

Posters 

tri folds

Today I need to write down many things

Insert from my diary:

–  where am I with regards to the cat joke box project
– where am I with regards to a penny for your joke project
– where am I with regards to talk over tea project

I will start with the left latter as it is the freshest in my mind.

# Talk over tea
I just finished working on a third or fourth variation for the talk over tea logo. I want to play with negative space and at the moment, I am trying to make a teacup superimposed with the word talk and have that the handle serves as the capital O for ‘Over tea’.
It isn’t going very well… Tomorrow is the first day when talk over tea will be running.  I got a second number for texts, so that customers do not have to use twitter. At the moment I’m thinking that I should promote people to use what’s app.
I have printed three logbooks for tomorrow they have places to enter date, time, name, location, order and further comments.
I am fairly apprehensive, as I am aware there is a lot that can go wrong. I have made plans to do other things during the day tomorrow in case talk over tea does not prove popular. Right now the’ worst’ thing that could happen is if #TOT proved extremely popular. I would not know how to deal with too much demand. But I will cross that bridge when I get to it. I really hope that it will prove easy to enlist help from other third years (or final year MA students).
it just occurred to me that I now have time to make quick designs for a talk over tea tray. The tray will be 50 cm over 35 cm it will have the words talk over tea carved into it somewhere and will have four dips for takeaway cups.

Log book mistake printed on see through paper

My three plain and proper log books

Inside layout - plain and to the point

I am struggling with the whole logo concept - I may just stick with a logotype or my older variation of the logo

Tray design

# Penny for your joke
I have a bag with four castor wheels, I bought from screw fix yesterday.  Tomorrow I will spend the day waiting for customers to request drinks from the cafe. In the meanwhile, I told one of the technicians downstairs that I will spend the day with him building the exterior of my joke machine. Made out of MDF, it will be a 1.7 m tall device, I haven’t got it written down but I am pretty sure it will be 60 cm wide and 60 cm deep. I have recommissioned my old Toshiba and they hope to install processing on it so it can run the joke program. If all goes well, I will have the parts ready and I will be able to assemble everything over Easter Break.



# Cat joke machine
 I have in my hand, envelope which contains a USB A to B cable, there are five thermal paper rolls and an AC power adapter inside it. I bought all of these with the intention of using them to power the thermal printer which I have a university. They should allow me to  to interact with my printer with much more ease than I currently have. I still haven’t used the RFID module which worries me a bit. I don’t know how simple it will be to use it, and I doubt that I will be able to connect it to the printer by myself.

Working on the joke machine and making badges

I spent today preparing videos for my joke machine. I also made badges for TOT.

Tomorrow I have an interview at the RCA and I am stressed!!!

Working on the videos for the 'Penny for your jokes' machine

making badges

failing at making badges

nice badges for the TOT program

making a signal map for Talk Over Tea

Yesterday I received CSM's floor plans and today I am turning them into a map to show where there is good mobile phone reception.

Working on Talk Over Tea logo

I'm just feeling like I need more documentation!!!! so here:

I want to order badges so I need a logo asap

This logo will be used for badges and for the new Twitter feed @TalkOTea

A day of stress and anxiety

My mid point review is on Tuesday at 11:00 - I have nothing prepared to show at the moment and I am #stressed beyond what I can explain.

But here is a description of what I would like to have by then:
- an A5 booklet* with notes and #WIP images of my three projects: ‘Science Book’, ‘Penny for your Jokes’ and ‘Talk over tea’
- the mechanism which will be inside the Joke dispenser for ‘#PFYJ’
- the mechanism that will be inside the Schrodinger cat book (Science book)
- any visual material like badges for the tea service.

The problem is that I must act fast and I am not certain I am up to the task

Here is a work in progress photo of a cat joke printed on thermal paper:

And here are some notes Yoriko took for me during a chat we had about the 'Talk over tea" idea

Success on the 'Penny for your jokes' front

With help from Angus and Sion, I now have a working system that plays a random video from a library of files every time a penny is inserted!!!

Successful use of the 'Penny for your jokes' machine from Gilad Visotsky on Vimeo.

More on Science book brief

Since my last post on the Unit 10 'Science book' brief I have change direction quite a bit.

I am now planning to create a device that will produce freshly printed text each time a magnetic card is detected near it.

The device has a cat shape recess to indicate where a card should be placed. I chose the shape because of the relationship this idea has to the Schrödinger Cat thought experiment.

Side section

Top section

Wireframe view

Unsent letter to Paulus Dreibholz

I just wrote the following and realised it was just an exercise in procrastination:

Hi Paulus,

Not sure what the following email is supposed to achieve but here goes:

I have a very clear idea as to what I want to convey with our brief, these last few days have been extremely hectic and I am ashamed to admit that I suddenly realised my plans for tomorrow are not very developed and a bit tooinappropriate.

I am not looking for an excuse and I hope to make a good presentation tomorrow, but at the moment (22:15) it is unresolved and I am not as confident as i would like to be about it. 

Regards,

Stressed Nervous and Stressed (also exhausted) Gilad

Meaningful Exchange

I noted the following in my diary yesterday:

Avi and I talked and came up with the idea for#MeaningfulExchange

This is after today's dispiriting crit with #KenHollings where it was (rightly) highlighted that my idea for a machine which provides jokes for 1p isn't quite hitting the spot.

The new idea is as follows:
For 1p the machine would offer potential users the chance to hear a joke I harvested for £1 from a stranger. At the same time as replaying the jokes the machine will record the users reaction. It will thereafter produce a receipt which would feature their photograph. In exchange for the receipt, the uni shop downstairs will offer some small discount (maybe 10% or 10p - something related to £1/1p) for drinks bought that day. This serves as both an incentive to participate and as a way to encourage the user to have their face in the right spot. I'm not sure if I should offer drinks as then I wouldn't need the receipts for my records as the shop would need them as proof of purchase.

The idea behind this work is that every exchange in it is meaningful in a true, practical way to all the participants:

• The strangers got £1,
• the users get a funky receipt or drinks at reduced cost
• the shop gets the exposure (with me, most likely covering the costs)
• I get exposure

win win win win