Insect movement
After the Santa Cruz Island trip, I found myself thinking more about insects. This is probably due to the fact that I was bitten repeatedly by those small devils known as mosquitoes. As much as I’d like to know of how mosquitoes target their victims, I can’t say that I’m one to test out the various theories. I feel that I’ve donated too much blood to them already. I suppose what stemmed from thinking about the mosquitoes is more important.
I was watching a moth fluttering about my room as my roommate screamed at it with his ridiculous fear of insects and I couldn’t help but notice its non-existent flight pattern. It just flew around rather aimlessly. I aware that moths are attracted to light but since it was during the day, light was spread out quite evenly throughout my room. Eventually another roommate came in and grabbed the moth off the wall and let it outside while the other roommate wanted nothing more than to kill it. Fortunately for the moth, it was its lucky day. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that prior to this, I really didn’t think about how the moth flies and more about just how to get rid of it. It’d be an interesting project to map the flight of a moth but get rid of the moth in the actual visual representation. I can imagine it to turn out to be abstract and best represented as a sculpture of sorts. A drawing just wouldn’t do it justice as a moth doesn’t fly in a two-dimensional world. But perhaps that in itself would prove to be an interesting project.
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I was watching a moth fluttering about my room as my roommate screamed at it with his ridiculous fear of insects and I couldn’t help but notice its non-existent flight pattern. It just flew around rather aimlessly. I aware that moths are attracted to light but since it was during the day, light was spread out quite evenly throughout my room. Eventually another roommate came in and grabbed the moth off the wall and let it outside while the other roommate wanted nothing more than to kill it. Fortunately for the moth, it was its lucky day. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that prior to this, I really didn’t think about how the moth flies and more about just how to get rid of it. It’d be an interesting project to map the flight of a moth but get rid of the moth in the actual visual representation. I can imagine it to turn out to be abstract and best represented as a sculpture of sorts. A drawing just wouldn’t do it justice as a moth doesn’t fly in a two-dimensional world. But perhaps that in itself would prove to be an interesting project.
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Project Updates
06/07/10 16:24:32 - Spider
I started off tracing the paths of a few spiders that were crawling around the walls of my room. This proved to be quite difficult since the spiders constantly crawled behind things that obstructed my view from. With my best attempt, I managed to track a spider that made his way across all four walls of my room and back over some a couple times. The most difficult problem about this attempt is trying to keep my roommate under control since he has a fear of spiders. All he wanted to do was get rid of it, especially since it spent some time quite close to his bed. The funny thing about this particular spider was that it was literally the size of an ant. I was rather astonished by its size and could suspect that it was a baby spider. Unfortunately, this made no difference whatsoever to my roommate, although he did prove to be quite entertaining at times.
I tracked the spider by simply sketching 5 rectangular panels. Four of them represented the walls of my room while the fifth represented the floor. I decided to leave the ceiling out because I don’t recall any spider ever being on the rough surface of my ceiling. I then labeled the sides of each panel with an R or an A, which is the first initial of my name and my roommate’s name. This was done to clarify which side of the room is which. Other than that, it is pretty much self explanatory and the tracking of the spider was a success.
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I started off tracing the paths of a few spiders that were crawling around the walls of my room. This proved to be quite difficult since the spiders constantly crawled behind things that obstructed my view from. With my best attempt, I managed to track a spider that made his way across all four walls of my room and back over some a couple times. The most difficult problem about this attempt is trying to keep my roommate under control since he has a fear of spiders. All he wanted to do was get rid of it, especially since it spent some time quite close to his bed. The funny thing about this particular spider was that it was literally the size of an ant. I was rather astonished by its size and could suspect that it was a baby spider. Unfortunately, this made no difference whatsoever to my roommate, although he did prove to be quite entertaining at times.
I tracked the spider by simply sketching 5 rectangular panels. Four of them represented the walls of my room while the fifth represented the floor. I decided to leave the ceiling out because I don’t recall any spider ever being on the rough surface of my ceiling. I then labeled the sides of each panel with an R or an A, which is the first initial of my name and my roommate’s name. This was done to clarify which side of the room is which. Other than that, it is pretty much self explanatory and the tracking of the spider was a success.
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06/07/10 16:44:05 - Moth
Finally, a moth found its way into my room. I started off my video-recording but the moth proved to be extremely boring and really didn’t move all that much. I resorted to simple sketches instead. It was during the day and my room was pretty well lit. the brightest part was probably my window but it didn’t seem like much of a difference. The moth fluttered close to the window for a bit. It gradually made its way to my side of the room where it spent most of its time. By the end (the end being when it left the room), I noticed that it had never touched my roommate’s side of the room nor the wall opposite to the window. This is probably just happened by chance but I wonder if there was a factor that attributed to its flight. Although, I must add that there is a small window on my side of the room as well. Overall I’d say it spend the most time in close proximity to the two windows but never directly making contact with either one.
The flight pattern was rather interesting because it wasn’t graceful at all. It would dip and weave around every time it took flight. I don’t think that there was anything wrong with this particular moth but that moths in general fly in this manner. The moth also tended to land on the wall and stay there for at least a couple minutes. In a couple occasions it would stay there for over ten minutes at a time. This proved to be very unexciting. When it did take off, it usually flew outward away from the wall and right back to the wall, close to where it was before. I found this to be the most interesting of all its actions. I mean why didn’t it just crawl over to its next landing location since it was so close instead of going through the trouble of flying outwards and coming back to land? Perhaps moths or at least this moth doesn’t like to crawl.
[Write Comment]
Finally, a moth found its way into my room. I started off my video-recording but the moth proved to be extremely boring and really didn’t move all that much. I resorted to simple sketches instead. It was during the day and my room was pretty well lit. the brightest part was probably my window but it didn’t seem like much of a difference. The moth fluttered close to the window for a bit. It gradually made its way to my side of the room where it spent most of its time. By the end (the end being when it left the room), I noticed that it had never touched my roommate’s side of the room nor the wall opposite to the window. This is probably just happened by chance but I wonder if there was a factor that attributed to its flight. Although, I must add that there is a small window on my side of the room as well. Overall I’d say it spend the most time in close proximity to the two windows but never directly making contact with either one.
The flight pattern was rather interesting because it wasn’t graceful at all. It would dip and weave around every time it took flight. I don’t think that there was anything wrong with this particular moth but that moths in general fly in this manner. The moth also tended to land on the wall and stay there for at least a couple minutes. In a couple occasions it would stay there for over ten minutes at a time. This proved to be very unexciting. When it did take off, it usually flew outward away from the wall and right back to the wall, close to where it was before. I found this to be the most interesting of all its actions. I mean why didn’t it just crawl over to its next landing location since it was so close instead of going through the trouble of flying outwards and coming back to land? Perhaps moths or at least this moth doesn’t like to crawl.
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06/07/10 17:06:15 - Fly
The fly proved to be the most difficult out of the three creatures to track. I started off my attempting to video record the fly but it was extremely difficult to follow since it was so small. This became frustrating very quickly and eventually ended up sketching a 3-dimensional representation of my room. My roommate took control of the camera at this point and attempted to try his best at following it. It was best to just aim the camera in the general area of the fly while the eye focuses on tracking the fly rather than looking through the camera screen. While my roommate took care of that, I proceeded to try and sketch its flight, which was just as difficult to do, if not even more so. The reason it is so difficult to follow a fly is because of its dynamic flight pattern. Humans watch as a fly flies in one path, while the fly can instantly change directions. Because the fly changes directions so quickly, a human is still following the initial path where the fly is no longer is flying. Due to this, the fly appears to disappear and reappear somewhere else. Doing this while sketching was just asking for my brain to explode but I did my best. After reviewing the recording, we initially thought that we either couldn't see the fly at all or that we were aiming in the wrong area which would’ve been horrible since my sketches couldn't really determine the location of the fly in a 3-dimensional space. Fortunately though, reviewing the recording frame by frame allowed us to see very small black dot flying about the room. Fly tracking complete!
[Write Comment]
The fly proved to be the most difficult out of the three creatures to track. I started off my attempting to video record the fly but it was extremely difficult to follow since it was so small. This became frustrating very quickly and eventually ended up sketching a 3-dimensional representation of my room. My roommate took control of the camera at this point and attempted to try his best at following it. It was best to just aim the camera in the general area of the fly while the eye focuses on tracking the fly rather than looking through the camera screen. While my roommate took care of that, I proceeded to try and sketch its flight, which was just as difficult to do, if not even more so. The reason it is so difficult to follow a fly is because of its dynamic flight pattern. Humans watch as a fly flies in one path, while the fly can instantly change directions. Because the fly changes directions so quickly, a human is still following the initial path where the fly is no longer is flying. Due to this, the fly appears to disappear and reappear somewhere else. Doing this while sketching was just asking for my brain to explode but I did my best. After reviewing the recording, we initially thought that we either couldn't see the fly at all or that we were aiming in the wrong area which would’ve been horrible since my sketches couldn't really determine the location of the fly in a 3-dimensional space. Fortunately though, reviewing the recording frame by frame allowed us to see very small black dot flying about the room. Fly tracking complete!
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06/07/10 17:25:31 - Room construction
I went to Home Depot and purchased a variety of supplies for my final project. This included eight panels of polycarbonate sheets, a cutter for plastic material, two different types of wire, and some thread. Luckily I already had a glue gun so it was a green light for construction.
I had to cut two of the polycarbonate sheets to best represent the scale of the walls in my room. This was very difficult because the sheets were so strong and thick. The less than effective plastic cutter didn’t help the situation either but at least it was better than a knife. After spending quite some time carving a straight line into the sheets, I had to snap the sheets at the newly created crevice in order to have the desired size. I snapped the second sheet horribly which meant I’d have to make another. Luckily, I purchased a few extra sheets just in case anything went wrong. After cutting the two sheets, everything else was simple and just glued the sides together. I decided to leave the top off since I still needed to place the substance of the the project into it.
[Write Comment]
I went to Home Depot and purchased a variety of supplies for my final project. This included eight panels of polycarbonate sheets, a cutter for plastic material, two different types of wire, and some thread. Luckily I already had a glue gun so it was a green light for construction.
I had to cut two of the polycarbonate sheets to best represent the scale of the walls in my room. This was very difficult because the sheets were so strong and thick. The less than effective plastic cutter didn’t help the situation either but at least it was better than a knife. After spending quite some time carving a straight line into the sheets, I had to snap the sheets at the newly created crevice in order to have the desired size. I snapped the second sheet horribly which meant I’d have to make another. Luckily, I purchased a few extra sheets just in case anything went wrong. After cutting the two sheets, everything else was simple and just glued the sides together. I decided to leave the top off since I still needed to place the substance of the the project into it.
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[Write Comment]
06/07/10 17:44:51 - Final Project: Trail Mix
I decided to use two different wires to represent the paths created by the moth and fly while using thread to represent the spider. I chose wires for flight because it could hold its shape the best in space while the thread would just droop. Since the spider was only on a flat surface at any given point, I found the flexibility of thread as the best option.
I started off with the spider because I thought it would be done the fastest. Plus this way i wouldn't have to work my way around the wires. I used super-glue in order to attach the thread onto the inner walls of the box because it was strong, watery, and clear. The thread just appeared to crawl around the room which I thought looked fantastic. This in itself was a piece of art and looked very abstract.
The paths created by the fly were fun and frustrating at the same time. It was difficult to pinpoint exactly what it did, when it did it, and where it happened. If I didn't have either the sketch or the video, the paths I created were probably just going to be a rough estimate of what the fly did. Fortunately, the final outcome turned out to be fairly accurate. The many loops the fly performed only enhanced the aesthetic appeal of the project.
The moth part of the construction was undoubtably the easiest since it really didn't do all that much. The most difficult part about this portion was that the wire was pretty thick and much harder to mold than the wire used for the fly.
In the end I think that it turned out better than I could have expected. The green wire represents the moth, the red wire represents the spider, and the thread represents the spider.
[Write Comment]
I decided to use two different wires to represent the paths created by the moth and fly while using thread to represent the spider. I chose wires for flight because it could hold its shape the best in space while the thread would just droop. Since the spider was only on a flat surface at any given point, I found the flexibility of thread as the best option.
I started off with the spider because I thought it would be done the fastest. Plus this way i wouldn't have to work my way around the wires. I used super-glue in order to attach the thread onto the inner walls of the box because it was strong, watery, and clear. The thread just appeared to crawl around the room which I thought looked fantastic. This in itself was a piece of art and looked very abstract.
The paths created by the fly were fun and frustrating at the same time. It was difficult to pinpoint exactly what it did, when it did it, and where it happened. If I didn't have either the sketch or the video, the paths I created were probably just going to be a rough estimate of what the fly did. Fortunately, the final outcome turned out to be fairly accurate. The many loops the fly performed only enhanced the aesthetic appeal of the project.
The moth part of the construction was undoubtably the easiest since it really didn't do all that much. The most difficult part about this portion was that the wire was pretty thick and much harder to mold than the wire used for the fly.
In the end I think that it turned out better than I could have expected. The green wire represents the moth, the red wire represents the spider, and the thread represents the spider.
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