PROPOSAL - CIRCUIT BENDERS’ BALL
GREGORY SCOTT COOK
5.31.17
WHATEVER.PIZZA LASTNAME.CO/OK @EGSCOE
PROPOSAL - CATAPULT
GREGORY SCOTT COOK
4.25.17
WHATEVER.PIZZA LASTNAME.CO/OK @EGSCOE
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// GREGORY SCOTT COOK 2017 Circuit Benders’ Ball Comprehensive Proposal
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// BIO & // STATEMENT
A proud native of western Kentucky, Gregory Scott Cook received his Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in drawing/printmaking from Murray State University in 2010, his Master of Fine Arts with an emphasis in printmaking/new media from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln in 2013, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Visual Communications and coordinator of Studio CreaTec at the University of Texas Arlington. A nationally and internationally shown artist, Scott works in the media of Print, Drawing, Audio Recording/ Performance, and Installation - specializing in the creative use of emerging technology (making robots talk, sing, shoot lasers, draw-on and grind-away at things).
“Transmission, be it through time or space, necessitates both loss and alteration. My current work deals with the results of this adaptation as it is applied to systems of language, sound, writing, construction, and design. In the same way that a memory becomes hazy and indistinct through the passage of time, the information that comprises the corpus of digital work also experiences change when being transmitted, compressed, reconstructed in physical space—or all of the above. I like to dig at the guts of that old maxim—as above, so below—layers of connection informed by correspondence, change through time and distance, acceptable loss, brokenness, and reconstitution; In much of the work, mishandled documents are precisely remade/reconstructed, real- world objects are translated through digital space and back to become opportunistically formed sculpture or sound, and found objects are observed with totemic importance.”
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// MULTI-OPPORTUNITY // PROPOSAL
Hello curatorial committee! In this proposal I’d like to share some images/text about my work, and outline some thoughts on possible exhibition/performance/workshop opportunities to be presented during the 2017 Circuit Benders’ Ball. I’ve had the chance to hear about the awesome prior iterations of the Ball from past participants and performers, and I’m excited to apply for the opportunity to share some of my work and diverse skill-set with this awesome communty! This proposal is meant to act alongside the submission forms to contextualize myself a bit, and show you more clearly a few of the facets of my creative practice. I find that sharing information with an eager and engaged group of fellow makers/doers/creators is one of the finest things one can do with their time, and I look forward to seeing you in August as a participant or otherwise. Thank you for taking the time to review this document, and for helping to run such an active and dynamic creative event and outlet. - G. Scott Cook
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// EXHIBITION // ARTWORK
108s and Heartbreak five TI-108 calculators, hand-designed and built electronics, microcontrollers, LiPoly batteries, SLA 3D Printed housing/ brackets
+ Each of these calculators has a hand-designed and built circuit that works with the existing hardware in a symbiotic way to display a very limited body of characters on the calculator’s screen (think back to the limited messages you could pass along in grade-school by swapping numbers for letters) making them rudimentary looping text displays. The first four calculators display and loop the phrase “go 2 hell” and the last loops the word “sorry”.
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// EXHIBITION // ARTWORK
18 Satellites/Still MIXIW handmade and designed circuit boards, solar panels, SLA 3D printed ball joint/brackets
+ Each “satellite” (roughly 3” x 2”) is made up of a handdesigned and built circuit board, electronic components, a tiny piezo speaker, and a small solar panel - they are completely powered by the gallery lighting and each softly chirps based on the precise amount of light they receive. Together they sound eerily like the soft insect-song of an early-summer evening.
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// EXHIBITION // ARTWORK
++/-1.5” OLED display, microcontroller, SLA 3D printed enclosure, LiPoly battery, magnets
++/—, #51F7 (SIFT), and Notable Drift are constantly-running programatically-generated pieces displayed on small handbuilt, specially designed battery-powered display units. In ++/—, tiny digital characters are continuously procedurally generated at a rate of ~ 8 per second—due to the varied nature of the programmatic loop, the probability of them ever repeating is slim to none—each image is born and lives its short unique life in a fleeting fraction of a moment.
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// EXHIBITION // ARTWORK
#51F7 1.5� OLED display, microcontroller, SLA 3D printed enclosure LiPoly battery, magnets
+ In #51F7, you see perpetually shifting cards of color with white text overlaid - each color is derived directly from the hexadecimal value being shown on screen, and each value is derived from every four-letter word in the english language that can be constructed with A B C D E F, and numerical stand-ins for the letters O I S G T (0 1 5 6 7) - what you see is the overlap in very specifc systems of display, color, and language.
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// EXHIBITION // ARTWORK
Notable Drift 1.5” OLED display, microcontroller, SLA 3D printed enclosure LiPoly battery, magnets
+ In Notable Drift you see a constantly generated grid-pattern, inspired by lunar photography, interspersed with shifting, smearing, randomly generated star-fields—the piece’s title, and a large amount of the code itself is based on declassified CIA reports detailing the extra-terrestrial travel of the Soviet Space Dogs - coldly noting in one passage that “...there was no notable drift” in their treacherous line of passage. Each one of these small displays is completely battery powered, and takes advantage of a tiny microcontroller and code that I’ve written to show dynamic programmatic visual material. Unlike a video, they never loop - each continually generates unique visual material during the life of the exhibition.
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// EXHIBITION // ARTWORK
WHATEVER.PIZZA powdered graphite, CNC plotted vinyl mask, custom URL, openGL 3d rendering in-browser via D3.js, sound composition.
+ A custom URL drawn directly to the gallery wall as powdered-graphite drop-shadow, using cut vinyl as a mask. The URL points to a web-based piece featuring in-browser 3-d rendering and sound-piece (to be viewed by gallery patrons on their personal-hand-held web-surfing devices.) You can see a live example of a variation of this piece at: [ http://www.whatever.pizza ]
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// EXHIBITION // ARTWORK
NBS SPECIAL PUBLICATION 424 large-scale cnc-plotted wall drawing - hand-built hanging-pen plotter, graphite, custom code
+ A large-scale layered vector image consisting of the current contents of my working folder (think of it as a digital broadside made physical- infinitely variable, and based on the current working contents of my laptop) drawn directly onto the gallery wall with the aid of a hanging pen plotter (see footage of me using my hand-built plotter for a previous installation at: [ https://vimeo.com/182150373 ])
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// POSSIBLE // WORKSHOPS
In the submission materials I applied with workshops I have built over the following information—I’d be happy to present either or both according to what would be most interesting/ helpful/engaging for the CBB community.
+ Arduino + Switching ICs: Building Infinitely Programmable Banks of Smart Switches Using any Arduino-compatible microcontroller and the common, inexpensive CD4066 Integrated Circuit, you can easily build banks of low-voltage, infinitely programmable and extendable switches - controlling continuity between dozens of points inside or emulating button-presses on your circuit-bent devices. This workshop will cover the construction of a simple programmable 4-point trigger sequencer from the basics of the circuit design through construction and programming.
+ Digital Nomadism and a Sustainable Studio Practice What happens when your access is lost to the complex tools necessary for the creation of digital work? Can you start or continue a studio practice from scratch? For next-to-nothing? In this workshop I give strategies for building a low to no-cost digital studio practice from scratch utilizing found or rescued hardware, and open-source software (Ubuntu Linux and a suite of free/open-source creative software for visual work, sound recording, and synthesis).
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// DETAIL, PROCESS, & // OTHER WORK
The remainder of this document contains a variety of images indicative of process, iteration,ideation, detail, and previous work. I’ve included these images to serve as an aide in trying to communicate a greater breadth in the look-and-feel of my past and present work.
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THANK YOU
PROPOSAL - CATAPULT
GREGORY SCOTT COOK
4.25.17
WHATEVER.PIZZA LASTNAME.CO/OK @EGSCOE