The Innovation Center is collaborating with folks from the Equity Center, the PEAC²E (Peer Engagement for Achievement, Culture, Connection and Excellence) program, and Diane Carlson (Sociology) on a Peace Pole project. One of the many ideas that has emerged from the collaboration is to create a modular mobile “peace pole platform,” essentially a design specification and a set of affordances that will enable members of the college community – disciplines, student groups, classes, anybody – to create art and interactive content for display.

Peace Pole Platform Prototype Planning

Spent the day yesterday in the Innovation Center (I love having the lab to myself and locking in to the rapid prototyping flow), crafting a 1/4 scale prototype of the mobile modular peace pole platform prototype (M²P⁴?), and in particular exploring how the segments will connect. Nothing especially revolutionary about the basic design; each segment is a simple 12″ x 24″ rectangular box (our big laser has a cutting area of 18″ x 32″), and the pole itself will be three of these bolted together in a concealed way.

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The big circle in the middle of each end piece (Illustrator file above) is the access port, and so I think I’ll be able to reach in and connect them together with bolts. There are other ways of creating access panels from the outside – I’m thinking magnetic – that I might explore just to make the connection process simpler.

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Three of these stacked will be about 6′, and provide 12 possible faces for art and expressions of peace.

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Version 1.0 will be “static” – crawl, walk, run – but the long-term goal is to have the base of the unit equipped with power, sound, and a Raspberry Pi or similar, such that folks have a set of givens they can design for. Think lights and sensors and haptics and interactivity. Two peace poles communicating at a distance? A receipt printer that provides folks with a prayer for peace they can take with them? Lots of possibilities!

We’ve been developing a Quantified College initiative, in an effort to gather and represent lots of data at a variety of scales, macro to micro. The plan is to collect as much data as possible, from weather to the microbiome of the college, and then explore ways to represent those data while providing students with hands-on experiences. A big part of the plan is data sonification, using low tech means – music box mechanisms – and high-tech ones – a Eurorack synth we’re in the process of building out. Faculty, staff, and a student prototyped the former during our most recent Maker Wednesday session, using wind data from a weather station we recently installed outside the Innovation Center. Diane Carlson (Sociology) transferred the wind graph to the piano roll-style music box card…

Wind to music

…which sounded like this:

Here’s what it sounded like inverted (with the roll upside down, resulting in the higher pitched notes becoming lower pitched ones, and vice versa):

Diane Carlson (Sociology) and I are teaching Making Social Change for the third time this semester. Last week, we worked through Indian independence, and students learned to spin roving into yarn with drop spindles they created using laser-cut whorls, dowels, and cup hooks.

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This week , we explore the radical democracy and political art of the Zapatista movement, after which students create stencils of an issue of their choice using the laser cutter. Mario Galvan, a local activist who has done work with the EZLN, shared his story with our students and showed images and videos of his visits to the caracoles of Chiapas.

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After Mario’s talk, students set to work creating stencils with the ever amazing Stencil Creator, after which we went out to the backyard and got out the rattle cans.

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This is our third time out for this class, and we try to expand/enhance/adapt the course each time we teach it. This year, we’re adding a field trip to The Creation District, which provides creative programming for youth experiencing homelessness, and we’re working to incorporate escape room mechanics into the final projects that students complete. Always be prototyping.

You Are Here

We are here.  Diane Carlson (Sociology) and I are co-teaching v2.0 of Making Social Change, a hands-on course at the intersection of making and Sociology, in which we explore social movements and the ways that they use tools to enact change. We teach the class in the makerspace, and we’re working with a brave cohort of interesting students. We’ve been tweaking and adapting the content, activities, and flow, building on what we learned offering a prototype of the course in fall of 2017.

So far, we’ve spoken with Ivan in South Africa, a friend of Diane’s and an ANC activist who fought against apartheid…

Talking to a South African Activist

…worked with the laser cutter and 3D printer to create a Harriet Tubman stamp to perfect a twenty dollar bill…

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…and discussed memory and monument, working through James W. Loewen’s ideas in Lies Across America

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…and creating prototypes for potential monuments to be built on our college campus.

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Diane Carlson (Sociology professor, and co-creator of Making Social Change) and I finally got around to building out version 2.0 of the Wheel of Voter Fortune Diane created as part of the Making Across the Curriculum faculty professional development academy from summer of 2016.  Diane uses the wheel with her students to help them develop an understanding of voter suppression.  Building upon Diane’s original prototype, we added a mask so that only one segment of the wheel would be revealed.

How Many Bubbles?

We also created a control panel to hold a switch and batteries…

Wheel of Voter Fortune control plate

…and used a piece of copper wire and an LED to create a flexible lamp.

Wheel of Voter Fortune v2

Ideas for version 3 include interchangeable question wheels, and maybe some elaborate game show lights and sounds!

Inspired by our class visit to the Rocklin Mini Maker Faire, where the bulk of our time was spent in the open sewing lab, we spent a recent session of Making Social Change creating applique quilt squares for a collective class quilt.  The Theater Arts Department loaned us seven machines to add to the one we have in the Innovation Center, and were able to borrow a few others from students and faculty so that each student would have one to work with.  Students started by selecting fabric from a beautiful trove of fabric samples (generously provided by our faculty researcher Jill Bradshaw) and used the laser cutter to cut out 12″ background pieces.

Sewing for Social Justice

We set up two ironing stations so that students could apply Mistyfuse backing, after which they cut applique shapes and words using the laser cutter (and sometimes good old fashioned scissors).

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T is for Transgender

We had a few folks with sewing experience, and some with none, but students helped each other, and Diane was around to provide guidance and pointers.

U Is For Uterus

Overall a very empowering and dynamic class session! Here’s a gallery of Diane Carlson’s (Sociology) photos from the day:

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At the Rocklin Mini Maker Faire this past weekend, I spent a lot of time in the sewing lab, and was able to gain some confidence in working through the sewing process. Diane Carlson (Sociology) and I have been working to develop a collaborative quilting activity for our Making Social Change class, and one thing we’re really interested in is using the laser cutter to cut fabric.  As it happens, I had an appointment yesterday morning with Mark Boguski (Ceramics and Ceramic Sculpture, Sacramento City College).  Mark works in clay, and whenever he’s in the lab we end up brainstorming different ways to combine technology and other production processes traditionally associated with the studio arts; for instance, our recent experiment with multi-part stencils.  I was sharing with Mark my interest in using the laser to cut fabric, and showing him Tinkercad, and in particular its *.svg export functionality.  In the process of poking around, we found a Japanese prefecture generator, and decided to use that as the basis for our experiments.

Mark set up a few prefectures, after which we exported the file, opened it in Illustrator, made the tweaks required to prepare the file for the laser, then fired up the machine:

I’m not sure why, but I was surprised that it worked as flawlessly as it did. No scorching, no fuss, just crisp, clean, viciously accurate cuts.

Mark Makes Japan from Fabric

Here’s Nagano:

Nagano Prefecture, In Fabric

Not sure what Mark plans to do with them – we talked about collage, and about dipping various things in clay slip and then firing them – but we’ll certainly cut some fabric as part of Monday’s Making Social Change class.

In Making Social Change today, we talked about Zapatistas and the Chiapas conflict, and the role of symbols and murals and art in political and social movements.  Based on social justice issues important to them, students then created stencils using Stencil Creator and cut them out of card stock using the laser cutter.  They spent the rest of the class spray painting their stencils on a makeshift gallery structure Diane Carlson (Sociology) and I created out of leftover metal shelves and an old scaffold that’s been out behind the Innovation Center for a decade or more.

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F*ck the Gender Binary!

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Great students, great class!

Taylor and Zainub and Jeremy and CJ (students) and Diane Carlson (Sociology) and I collaborated on a display to accompany the culminating event of the college’s Social Justice Spring events.

Here Taylor and Zainub are creating a physical (and metaphorical) wall from felt and fabric…

Wall Making

We remixed Shepard Fairey’s “We the People” series, then used the vinyl cutter to create large stickers. Diane and I preparing a sticker for transfer…

Sticker Making

…and Diane and Jeremy laying out the words for the display.

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Here’s the wall, about to be torn down…

The Big Reveal

…and here’s the final result, beautifully back-lit:

All Three Panels

A great and powerful wrap-up for an important month-long series of activities. I’m proud of our college!

Earlier this week, Diane Carlson (Sociology) and I held a preview event for Making Social Change, our Sociology + Making course, as part of FLC’s Social Justice Spring events. We decided to create some drop spindles and spin some yarn, based on an activity Erica Tyler (Anthropology) developed as part of last summer’s Making Across the Curriculum faculty professional development program.

We cut the whorls using the laser cutter (which has been christened “Danger Scissors”)…

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Note the engraved design, inspired by Gandhi’s spinning wheel.  Diane cut the dowels using a good old-fashioned chop saw…

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…after which she and Erica taught us how to turn wool into yarn.

Drop Spindling

We also walked students through some other digital fabrication techniques, using the same spinning wheel motif source file to create objects using the Carvey, vinyl cutter, and 3D printer.  Looking forward to helping bring this course to life in the fall!