[via Make]

Alright, so I’m provoking it this time… but still. I’m really enjoying @NaturesPath‘s twitter presence.

This is

Hello and hi there folks.

If you’ve ever been here before, you’ve probably already noticed a drastic change to the look of the site. It was old, and in desperate need of an overhaul, so I did just that.

For years I’ve been powering the blog side of things with a blogger account, and my portfolio was a handwritten xml database. Because of this the blog was well maintained, but the portfolio, which was the splash page to the site, became neglected pretty quickly.

There were also a lot of things about the way the portfolio was handled under the old site that I didn’t like, including that I didn’t provide a good way to link directly to individual entries, nor did I provide a good indicator of new content. Not that that was an issue, since I almost never updated it.

All these things have been addressed in the new site. I’ve ditched the lighbox portfolio gallery that was so popular when I built the old site, and opted for individual pages for each entry.

The newest portfolio entry is now being publicized on the header of the home page and blog, and the latest blog post is visible on the front page.

I’ve also switched from being blogger driven to WordPress. I never had a single complaint with blogger, but the way I was getting my data was more than a bit kludgy, pulling the blog content from an RSS feed, and reformatting it to fit my needs.

Moving to WordPress I’m giving up my worry free data backup, but I think it will be well worth it.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say on this topic. If you have any thoughts / feedback, I’d love to hear them.

Created as part of the White Box’s inaugural show Inspiration China, Pectomoveo was built in response to a set of ancient combs.

These anonymous combs have been around for over a millennia. In that time the design of the comb as an object has stayed more consistent than almost any other grooming object.

The consistency of this design means that the gesture of combing also has a long, constant history.

Pectomoveo, inspired in action by the object and in form by ancient Chinese dings, attempts to gain a sense of this history, recording it as ink traces on paper.

Inspiration China (Part of China Design Now Portland) opens tonight at 5 PM.

I went by yesterday and loaded Pectomoveo up with ink, and witnessed it put down its first set of lines, and I am absolutely in love with what it’s doing. I’m so pleased and excited.

I’ll see you there!

Last month was just jam packed with work for me, prepping both old and new work for two shows I had opening this month.

Responding to a 1000+ year old comb, I built a single axis CNC comb titled Pectomoveo, which mimics the gestural history of the comb by recording the movement as ink traces on paper.

The piece is laser cut out of wood, and operated by Arduino.

UO’s Allied Arts & Architecture’s blog has some nice photos and a good article on the exhibit, which opens this Thursday, October 8th, 5-7pm, at The White Box, 24 NW First Avenue, Portland, OR.

This is going to be a great show, with a lot of great people in it, like my Maybe We Can cohorts Zach Rose*, Shawna X. Huang and Mackenzie Schubert.

The other show I have this month is part of the Dorkbot PDX group show at ON Gallery where I’m displaying Cardiolumen, which was my BFA Thesis Piece.

Using a heart rate monitor, an arduino, a servo motor, some gears and a dimmer switch, I am able to present the user’s heart rate back to him, creating a meditative loop.

Jason has some great pictures of the show up on his site. I tried to get some myself, but it was just too crowded. (Not that I’m complaining.)

*You can also see Zach Rose, and his heart beat, in the video of Cardiolumen @ Maybe We Can. That’s right, cross promotion within one post.

Hey folks,

Sorry to have gone radio silent for the entire month of September. I’ve got this folder of images I wanted to post about in September, but now that we’re in October, I guess we’ll just skip it. (If you follow me on twitter you got the highlights anyway.)

Back in June I got invited to speak at Dorkbot 0x03. It was…not the smoothest talk I’ve ever been part of, in part because I really rushed through it. But it was a great experience.

Anyway, I recently found out Jared posted the video of my talk, so I figured I might as well share it.

Enjoy.

Seriously, lets just leave it at Maywa Denki, I <3 You.