Today I embarked upon learning the Arduino. I thought, should I do this? Will it take me down roads that will take me away from creative artworks. Speaking to other Arduino users in the Fablab, I soon realised that this tool can be used for rapid prototyping of interactive artworks. I want to use it at this level so I decided that yes I have time to learn and incorporate it into the artwork I am making at EchoFab.
I also set about learning the potential of the laser cutter. To quickly make something ‘architectonic’ to test, I used OpenStreetMap to take a map section of Montreal. I then imported this into the 3d application Blender and rendered out the top view. This in turn was taken to the laser cutter. You can see that the result is interesting when I hold it up to the laptop as a quick lighting test.
