Cultural Integrity (at the Dethrone Hackathon)

The last day of breakdown didn't come easy; I learned that the vomiting was a result of a bunch of us contacting norovirus from the catered food!  I guess you can't get a free lunch from a Hackathon :/

While I was taking breaks puking into the toilet bowl at 3 a.m., I had a bit of inspiration and decided to write this poem:

Before Julia went on her flight to New York, she decided to come out and join me for a final goodbye and a cool community open mic.  We checked out the nifty Mission Synths, (geeking out a little on our oscilloscopes) and then grabbed a incredibly tasty ($7!) scoop of ice cream.  

                        Mission Synths, in San Francisco.  A cool hidden treasure!

I learned that dairy wasn't good for upset stomaches and well, neither was whatever the heck else I ate.  But it was a great time chatting with a new friend.  I performed some poetry and utilized the art table at the open mic for making Julia a "best teammate" keepsake.

                    This bookstore hosts a lot of amazing events in the neighborhood.

Julia stayed right up until takeoff time. Afterwards, she sent me a text:

"I'm actually feeling really sad to leave! Never thought I would make such a good friend during my 3-day stay here."

A pretty awesome outcome for my very first Hackathon.  The stomache pains pass, but the good memories endure :)

[The End]

When I came to in my drivers seat, head suction-cuped against the window, I was surprised to find that my stomach and fatigue were a lot more under control.  The grogginess wore off in a couple minutes and I thought, what the heck, I'll check out this art event after all!

The venue felt very different when I arrived back on the scene, there was a security guard outside now, and the lighting was all very dim and "moody."  The bartenders were hard at work grabbing drinks for people, and there was a new menu of spirits and refreshments above their heads.

                        Our exhibit, Cultural Integrity, complete with mood lighting!

Curiosity prevailed of course, as I immediately rolled over to our exhibit to see if people were engaging with it. There is something really fun about being a spectator of spectators - to see how our project was grabbing people's attention in its silent way, inspiring curiosity and maybe even a little bit of awe or wonder.  I felt a bit like a social scientist in some sort of strange paradox; both art maker and art critic.

There was a couple reading very intently on the newspaper articles I had cut out:

"Thanks for noticing all the detail I put into that," I said.

"It's really interesting.  There's a lot of different messages," said the onlooker.

I spoke with them for a little while.  It was surprising to experience how engaged they were, full of questions and something I can only describe as authentic enthusiasm.  The woman, Iota, was so thoughtfuly inquisitive.  The chatter of attendees gave the gallery that boisterous concert feeling, where you feel you have to choose your words carefully, and that they should be important, since you have to practically yell them out.

I hung around the exhibit speaking with a couple more people.  Everyone seemed to be taking the art seriously, absorbing its messages, asking about its creation, and (the fun part!) sitting in the spikey seat.  Some found it to be a sort of massage, while others definitely felt the uncomfortableness of it all.  In this strange way, our art piece reminded me of those carnival house-of-mirror types of attractions for kids.  It wasn't just something you stared at and talked about, you could feel it too.

My admittedly low expectations of some snooty wino entrepreneur tech connoisseurs was quickly being replaced with sincere patrons who really cared about social issues and the betterment of San Francisco.  What a treat!  And the ambiance swelled with professionalism and invitation; Gray Area had really put together a magnificent curation.

After talking with attendees for a while, and embarassing Julia a bit with shouts of "...and this is my partner!!" I decided to meander about to take in the other exhibits.  Amy, through her exhibit, convinced me to throw my arms up in front of a camera where I was projected onto the wall with a animated box.  My arm throws could increase the stock market value of would-be tech overlords.  Another project with fun bits of physicality, which was definitely attracting people.

The project Jess and Koi worked on was probably the most abstract; there was a camera programmed to detect eye movements so that when you blink the screen would show a picture of a...fetus?  It was strange, but very cool.  I greatly admired the quality of the coding which had built in hysteresis for what was essentially a "debouncing" effect.  I was told later by one of the makers that the stool in front of the camera was integral to its success, because it forced attendees into a particular position for the camera to capture your face.  It was only then that I noticed the stool was actually taped to the floor. Clever!

I spoke to Jess and Koi a bit about the exhibit and found that they had both come down with the food poisoning as well.  Since just wasn't feeling well, she kindly gave me her drink ticket.  I proceeded over to the bar and got myself a "Cock and Bull" nonalcoholic ginger beer.  The crass marketing wasn't to my taste, but the flavor was alright?  I found I wasn't allowed to drink it right outside the door though, as Gray Area has strict security rules against that...

Back at the bar I chatted up with Andre- I discovered he was moving to my neighborhood and that he also liked hip hop.  Julia joined us and I embarassed her a bit more by recounting the time when I asked her who 2pac was and she said,

"I know...50 cent?"  (this immediately led to me smacking myself in the face).

I somehow wound up reciting the lines of "The Message" by Grandmaster Melle Mel before moving over to try another exhibit, which had a video display of "the kings of tech" - all giant heads of the likes of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Kanye West, and other douches of the highest order.  A microphone was set up with a pillow on the floor.  The exhibit worked by speaking praises into the microphone which would inflate the head of your respective Tech God... Until they elevated and exploded into outer space.  I decided to have some fun by reciting erotic adoration for "Elon's Musk" and was rewarded with a quickly exploding Musk head (with confetti animation, not blood sadly).  Another fun and creative art piece.

I also really enjoyed a piece called On Our Terms; perhaps the only overtly political piece besides Cultural Integrity.  It flipped the script on Facebook by making the corporate platform agree to what users demands are.  I thought it was a creative and excellent interpretation of the theme!

                                                     Title card for "On Our Terms"

     "On Our Terms" - the exhibit had this message on a desktop computer screen

And who could forget the office printer elevated on top of the hydraulic lift 20 feet in the air?  Dean was one of the artist minds behind this one, and I thought it was a brilliant use of the limited resources available.  You could text messages using a QR code to a microcontroller hooked up to the printer, which would then spit out cryptic messages of the existentialist variety.  I can't say I fully understood the concept, but I thought it was cool as heck, and watching paper occasionally float through the air definitely gave the gallery more of that nifty "theme park" aesthetic.

This reminded me of one of the interesting limitations that made for this kind of creative art: the 48 hour build period.  This is just enough time to make something interesting, while not enough time to actually order parts and materials off the Internet (or at least, not without a very risky game of Amazon Prime chance).  One of the key takeaways to the event for me was how this inspired creativity, and forced us to use our immediate surroundings, as well as support local businesses!  Badass.

Another fun add-on to the fetus video exhibit was some kind of squishy embryo pool in the back.  It looked a bit like one of those children's inflatable swimming pools for the backyard, with multicolored lights and a bit of topology in the middle.

                Dean, Julia, and I Having some silly fun in the inflatable...floor condom?

Toward the end of the night Julia, Dean, and I decided to lay down on the floor condom (well go with that decription), which inspired me to try and figure out why it was so soft. As I began poking my hand under the exhibit, Julia reminded me not to dismantle the art(!) and Wade joined in on the silly times (I told terrible fetus puns).  Someone snapped a photo of us, all a little drunk on success at the end of Dethrone - it was a great night!

[To be continued...]

When we returned to Gray Area, Julia seemed a little calmer.  I think the more controlled environment settled everyones nerves a little bit.  She desperately wanted to finish our presentation early, so I left her alone in her element to do the video editing, while I assembled the seats, 3D prints, lights, camera, and everything in between as a indoor art exhibit.  Fun fact: this was actually my first time making an "art installation" for a gallery!  Pretty cool.

whee- My first ever art card thingy on a fancy podium.  I scribbled my hackaday.io name on there, and Julia added her contact, too

Andre was super helpful finding me some screws, and thanks to (I think it was  Steve) we were given permission to drill into the tall white support pillars that made up the minimalist decor in the space.  I thought it was cool of them to let me do that.  I was about to hot glue the spikes onto one of the metal chairs (fun tip, hot glue peels off hard sufaces easily with isopropyl alcohol), but I think Julia's rebellious exploration had reached its limit - she pleaded for me to get permission first.  A day earlier, I would've argued this (hot glue is freedom!!), but I could see she was stressed, so I agreed to ask, and was granted permission to dispense the hackers #1 adhesive.

The display we got to use was epic - 4K (or maybe 8K?) showing every hair on my chiny chin-chin

Everything got set up in a breeze.  It felt so empowering to have planned ahead with my tools and parts to meet the needs of the moment.  Nothing was left to chance or stress, and I needed no last minute runs for anything.  We cleaned up the extension cord appearance, as Julia added some background street noise to the final video presentation.  I felt a little local music could add some spice, and so we included "Freestylin' at the Fortune 500" at a very low volume as a backing track.  You couldn't hear during the show, but I'll be damned if I'll miss an opportunity to give promotion to The Coup (legit Oakland hip hop!)

Olof was so ontop of it, running around asking 'anything else you need help with?' He is not naturally blurry :P

Thanks to Julia's impeccable time management, we ended up finishing absolutely everything for our presentation a couple hours early.  It felt weird to have so much time to kill before the "grand opening" at 7pm.  I played with some of the hefty metal crowns Rebecca had allowed us to borrow, and chatted with a volunteer named Jenny (also an illustrator in the neighborhood, and Rebecca's roommate)  at the front desk while sporting a tiarra.  It was a very chill vibe, and all the artists were beginning to feel like new friends.  I also got to know Jess and Koi a bit more while checking out their trippy embryo project.  Koi designs dope wearables and sources parts directly from her connections in Shenzhen, and Jess offered to hook me up with a tour of the UC Berkeley lab sometime :)

                    why is the hydrolic lift in the middle of the room, I wonder?

It was super cool to see everyone's work coming to fruition - what only a few hours ago was a jumbled mess of tools, papers, and ideas now looked something like a epic art show!

As the opening time approach though, I felt a wave of exhaustion flood over me, and decided to head out.  I honestly wasn't as excited about the indoor part of our presentation and also didn't want to vomit all over the place, heh.  I went back to my car, and spent some time moving it to a better spot so I could load up my tools.  But before I could do that, I passed out from fatigue in the drivers seat.

[To be continued...]

The big day was upon us, and I was determined to follow-through, despite the lack of sleep and gut health.  Julia was nice enough to come to my place again and help me load up the car.  Despite being sick, we actually had a pleasant drive down to Gray Area where she played me some German rap music and told me that San Francisco felt very different from New York because "You can see the sky" (lol).  I thought it was strange how being in one of the most densely populated cities in the world still didn't count as a real "city" to someone coming from the big apple.

When we arrived at Gray Area I could tell Julia was in full panic mode, and doing her best to hide it.  I was calm as a cucumber, and knew we wouldn't have issues meeting the deadline.  While Julia's expertise was in time management, mine was in making sure all the materials were in place for a successful setup.  But the stakes were higher for her, and she wasn't anywhere near home, so I did my best to offer emotional support in my sickly state. 

We began gathering our materials together to make our journey to the 24th St. bus stop where we would temporarily install Cultural Integrity.  The plan was to set it up for a few minutes, takes photos and videos, and then bring everything back to Gray Area and set it all up over again to display an indoor installation for the gallery opening. 

There was a buzz of excitement as all the projects were coming to completion.  Andre was setting up the spotlights on the hydraulic lift, we got a legit bar tender setup with fancy menus, extra hands on deck for floor cable management, 4K monitor tripod setups, and a fancy illuminated card holder for our exhibit description.  When asked if many people were coming, and Wane said, "We sold 170 tickets. It's gonna be a party."  

                                      (snippet from the ticket link on the website)

At this point I began realizing what the Art Hack Day organizers were supplying - not maker tools (that's easy to get) but an audience!  And a top tier quality gallery opening with the mood set perfectly (insert chef's kiss gesture), including lighting, ambiance, and drinks to go with it!  As someone who's organized more that a few shows in my day, I was truly impressed with the professionalism and the "hey, they really know what they're doing" vibes.  The anticipation for the 7pm opening was definitely building

                              (Things are actually starting to look like an art show!)

I ran into an attendee name Sky who I thought had dropped out of the hackathon (I didn't see her around after the first night).  It turned out she still liked Julia and I's project concept.  We gathered all the materials and a couple other folks: Vincent, the pro-photographer, and Amy, who was our star actor.  They were super helpful and excited to be a part of the installation.  It was sweet to see this team effort, which easily shattered my misconception of hackathon's being an ultra-competitive dog-eat-dog affair.

                                            (Look at this suspicious art gang walking the streets of Mission!)

We marched down the street with all the materials looking like quite the goofy class trip.  And once we got to the bus stop, it was nothing short of chaos.  Even at 3pm, the 14, 14R, and 49 buses were pulling in every couple of minutes, loading and unloading lots of passengers.  People in the Mission give zero shits for privatization of public space (which is awesome), so they milled about walking all around our project setup as if they own the bus stop ('cuz they do!) 

(Part of the hectic setup between bus pickups / drop-offs.  Things were actually calmer in this photo)

I was thriving in the chaos and taping and glueing stuff together.  However, poor Julia looked like she was gonna have a melt down any second, and others in our crew headed back, maxed out by all the commotion, noise, and traffice blocking our setup

(zip ties, glue gun, wires, tool bag, batteries, tape, electronics...flash mob-style installation!)

Fortuntely, Amy was chillin' pretty well, and Vincent was setup across the street for the long distance snapshots.  

                                                            (Amy be chillin' - givin off the regal vibes)

I tried to get Julia into the photos, but she was too stressed I think, and wanted very much to sit this one out.  Without much thought, I decided to pose in the uncomfortabe seat, needing little imitation to look both tired and sick, just like our homeless brothers and sisters deserving of a good nights rest.  It's hard to imagine the photoshoot coming out better than it did, and Vincent deserves a ton of the credit for that!

           (Vincent's photography is just amazing.  I love the way Amy got into the character role so well too!)

I managed to get one shot with Julia in a celebration pose at the end, and then we packed everything up to hear back to Gray Area.  The mini adventure was a success!  No police harassment and there was minimal heckling (just from one or two people who were rightfully annoyed as we blocked their bus exit a bit).  No one got run over by a bus and everyone got to experience a 100% authentic slice of Mission goodness.  I was pleased as punch :P

                                                                        (the victory pose with Julia!)

[To be continued...]

Julia was off to get a good nights sleep, but my night was far from over.

While I knew I could rush through things with a bit of soldering and blobs of hot glue, I wanted to make a project I could be proud of, something professional worth the namesack of my shop and the tools at my disposal.

                                 (Arduino Uno and Nano - "that's no moon..look at the size of that thing!")

My first decision was to axe the giant Arduino Uno board Julia had provided, and use a nice cute little Arduino Nano.  They are largely compatible, since they both have the same microcontroller (Atmega328), just in different form factors.  A smaller microcontroller board would be easier to mount at the bus stop and it would also be easier (and faster) to make a case for.

Which brings me to the other unnecessary "nice to have" I did - modeling and printing 3D cases for everything.  Yes, this was kiiiind of insane to start at 1 a.m., but it made me happy :P

 I'm still in my "honeymoon phase" of 3D printing, and love jumping at the opportunity to make quality cases for things. Additionally, it served some sensible benefits: mounting holes to match on-site demands, a bit of weatherproofing, durability, and easier to remove glue backing.  I also made the design specific for routing and securing wires, to avoid the pitfalls of tugging and fumbling which may lead to re-soldering needs or other major headaches.

                (3D modeling the parts in Tinkercad.  A quick late night mockup with space for wire routing). 

Since Julia and I were planning to put the installation into a public bus stop, as well as showcasing it at Gray Area, I decided to make tear down and build-up as easy as possible.  After all, we would only get one day, and one shot at this. So I wanted to make sure everything ran smoothly.

I designed a case that would incorporate an Arduino Nano and the ultrasonic sensor first.  This would also ease the wiring job for me, since the two devices would be in close proximity to each other.

                         (First print was a success on my old faithful Ender 3 Pro.  Gotta love that smooth PEI :)

Next, I modeled the FET controller.  Julia seemed to be delighted to learn about "metal oxide field effect transistors" and how they are commonly used as solid state switches.  When I talked about it, she seemed to have one of those neat 'A-Ha!' (not the band...) paradigm shift moments of what electronics are capable of!  Very cool.

I love these little NFET breakout modules for breadboards that are everywhere.  They are almost as nice as my custom boards (heh), only they are capable of switching an absurd amount of current.

(One of the better Arduino module breakout boards making the rounds of online shops.  These D4184s support a continuous output of 10A!).

                                                       (The NFET board wired into the 3D printed case)

I printed off both cases simultaneously, since I have multiple 3D printers (living the high life!)  While that was going on, I finished off the barrel jack soldering for our (deliberately annoying) anti-homeless lights.

The cases turned out quite well, with no major issues. Pretty nice for a first pass on everything in the middle of the night!

    (Everything wired into the 3D cases. Just a few dabs of hot glue so wires can be tugged on without breaking).

After that, I finished printing off a couple of articles on hostile architecture as well as the SF mayor's anti-homeless antics, to add more context and visual interest to the uncomfortable half of the installation. It was about 4a.m. when I finally laid down for much-needed sleep.

                                   (I felt like I found the perfect picture for our mayor with devil horns, heh.)

Unfortunately, I woke up about an hour later feeling really, really, bad...

I stumbled over to the bathroom and lifted the toilet seat up. I started vomiting something awful, and could feel everything in my stomach wanting to escape. Almost like it was burning.  I took many dry heaves and spent as much time as possible forcing my lunch and dinner up.

After doing that for a while, I brought a blanket to keep me warm on the tile floor, since I could tell it was going to be a long night.

The bad news was, I wasn't going to get much of any sleep. The good news was that I could get to Gray Area earlier than expected, to setup and film before 4p.m., so that Julia would have plenty of time to edit the pictures and video for our exhibit.  She was confident that she could knock out the video editing in a couple hours, which was impressive.  How many awesome skills does she have?

I called Julia in the morning, and told her I wasn't sure I was gonna make it. I thought I had food poisoning, and had barely slept at all.  I could tell she was disappointed.  After all, she flew across the country to take part in this exhibit. But then she reassured me, "it's OK, I can find someone to help.  I hope you feel better soon."

It was a small gesture, but it showed me that she was able to take a macro focus in the larger scheme of things.  I appreciated that.
This took some of the pressure off of me. Knowing that whatever I did while I was sick would be "enough" meant that I didn't have set expectations to push my body beyond it's limits.

"I'll do my best" I thought, knowing that this was far from the worst health challenge I had faced in life.  Being sick and in pain can easily knock out a nondisabled person.  But cripfam has adapted to the lifestyle, and sometimes we have tricks up our sleeve.  I grabbed a small trash bin and a bag from my apartment, so I could puke in the car or wherever I needed to.  People with disabilites can really tough it out sometimes, and I was proud of that.

[To be continued...]

Once we got back to my apartment, the fatigue began to set in. It had been a long day already, with nonstop running around.  I asked Julia if she could wait for a few minutes while I rested.  She was totally understanding and didn't give me a hard time about it I all. 

I spent 10 minutes with my head in a pillow, wishing so much for a little nap.  The rest felt nice, but I knew there was no chance for sleep yet.  Boy, would I be right about that. 

After the brief downtime, Julia came into my workbench area so we could decide what to do about the (deliberately annoying) detection white LEDs we wanted to use.  

"Do you think you could get working code tonight using the ultrasonic sensor?"

'Yeah, that won't be a problem,' Julia said.  I cautiously admired her confidence, knowing these can be a pain sometimes.

(The HC-SR05 ultrasonic sensor that we used.  These are extremely popular for distance detection, and are commonly employed in robotics projects).

I dug out my bag of HC-SR05 sensors (I always like to have extras) and began soldering the necessary 2.1mm barrel jacks and other wiring.  I fished out a super long, 10 foot cord with a matching connector from my wire recycling bin.  Being able to find these parts at breakneck speed brought me a special kind of satisfaction.  My tedious labelling labors were finally paying off :)  Anyone who has spent the hours and hours digging in parts bins at local makerspaces knows what I mean!

                                   (This is the messiest "hell wire" box I have - and even it is organized! :)

I chugged a few glasses of my special fresh pressed juice pretending I was a Popeye cartoon, and then collected the few last tools.  I grabbed some 1/4" plywood from my woodshop area for a strudier back support to the throne.  Julia agreed that it was a good call (I loved how she was down for improving the project, keeping our goal in mind while being open to on-the-fly changes).  I picked up my staple gun and zip ties to throw into our collective tool bag. 

Julia also helped by climbing the world's most rickety, janky ladder to take down the security camera I had in my garage.  

"Do you want me to hold the ladder for you?"

'Oh, nah.  I'll be fine.'  

I didn't argue, even though it looked dangerous as heck.  Julia is as independent as they come.  Plus, I thought, she's very tall and doesn't need to climb to the top rung.

We made our way back to Gray Area - this time it was late at night so I could park directly in front, VIP valet style, in the loading space!  This felt incredibly satisfying. 

Once inside, we began cutting up the foam board for the throne frame.  I suggested using my special motorized "zipsnip" cardboard cutter tool, which worked great for the long strips.  But Julia was eager to bust out her pocket blade to stab into the poor foam and dissect it like fresh fish.  She was disturbingly good at this.  She also had a clear carpenters triangle (in metric!!) and breezed through the diagonal cutting angles like a boss.

We took the foam pieces outside to paint.  This was, I think, my favorite part of the entire event :)  Two new friends, hanging out on the sidewalk in front of Gray Area at midnight, imitating graffiti artists for a guerrilla installation project.  It was Mission as heck, and a whole lotta fun as we joked around and struck stylish poses for the camera :)

                                    (Video of me and Julia spray painting together outside Gray Area)

We left the paint outside to dry.  I got a little talking-to for bringing the wet paint fumes in previously, which made Julia slightly nervous.  There was something funny about our "Straight-A-Student" meets "Class Clown" dynamic that made her bouts of disapproval ever so entertaining to me :P  It's good to get in a little trouble once-in-a-while, yknow?

While the foam was drying I grabbed a can of the Canada Dry (no pun intended!) and chowed down on some of the catered food trays.  There was fried rice and a nice mix of eggplant, tofu, and green beans.  The event didn't pay us artists anything or have any prizes, so I tried to get my money's worth eating as much food as I could.  Heck, I was hungry!  It's kind of like that scene from Friends where Joey says:

I would regret this later... :/

Once the paint dried we got to do another fun part of the project: staple gunning.  I don't know what it is about using staple guns, but it's always incredibly satisfying.  I began punching holes in the perimeter of the (now completely finished) pillow case

Thwack!

Thwack!

Thwack!

The staple gun was loud in the space, and it made Julia a little nervous.  "This is what they expect us to do here," I reassured her.

We had agreed to leave an extra margin of fabric for the pillows to mount, and it executed beautifully.  When we got down to the last few staples Julia asled,

"Can I try it?"  I handed the staple gun over to her.

Thwack!

Thwack!

She punched staples into the wood with a look of rebellious satisfaction.  After that we put the sparkled card stock embellishments on the top, having decided not to use sharpie marker.  The result was splendid:

                                                          (Julia, standing proud with the new throne :)

I used my drill gun to tap the throne into our acrylic backing piece, and strapped on some handy zip ties. Everything was finally coming together !

Now we had time to explore the "nice to have" of our project: the LED light sensors.  While I was finishing some of the zip tie stuff, Julia was on her computer pulling up the code for the ultrasonic sensor.  She plopped in a large (T1) yellow LED into pins 9 and GND of the arduino.  No sooner had I finished the zip ties, when she calmly proclaimed,

                                                       (Julia and I's first LED we ever coded on.  Daww...)

"Done!"

'How did you finish that so fast?'

"Chat GPT," she said with a smile.

However, the sensor was configured to detect only from a 10cm distance.  The light was also solid, whereas we were hoping it would blink for extra annoyance.

"Here, lemme see if I can improve the code.  Oh look, there's no defines. And it's using delays instead of millis..." I said.

'Yeah, AI isn't so great for when you need to make edits.' Julia replied.

I began picking away at some improvements, feeling like humans could be useful after all. However, when I tried to upload it, I ran into an unexpected issue...

"The menus are in French?!" I exclaimed.

'Oh, yeah...Here, lemme do it" Julia said.

This was totally annoying but also so utterly cool.  Julia had her desktop files in English, codes in French, listens to German rap, and writes (but 'can't speak very well') Italian.  "Gawd," I thought, "Americans are so dumb." :P

Fortunately, I was able to prove my Yankee worth by providing some solid, edited code.  I added some #Defines as well as improvements to the distance to be more sensitive, with a better naming system. Then I created an inverting boolean to handle the blinking effect.  You can check out this code and download it here.  It's great if you're just starting out with ultrasonic sensors (HC-SR05) on an Arduino Uno.

Everything was shaping up nicely for the final show day.

"What about wiring though?"  Julia asked.

'I'll stay up late doing my night owl thing.  Don't worry about it.'

It was 'only' around 1 a.m. at this point, but I had a long night still ahead of me.  Julia wasn't the only perfectionist!

[To be continued...]

Julia and I rushed over to TAP plastics, hoping to get our acrylic sheet before closing. On the car ride over, I opened my CD case and asked Julia,

"is there any music thatyou'd like to hear?"

"You just have old people music, right?'" she said. She wasn't wrong -__-  Gotta appreciate that New York blunt-ness.

I put on some Run DMC, Tougher Than Leather (1988):

[ "Well my name is DMC, the all-time great (great)
I bust the most rhymes in New York state (state)!" ]

We were driving around Van Ness at this point, windows down, amp cranked, on a surprisingly sunny day.

"This is so California!" Julia said.

'Waddya mean?  We're listening to RUN-DMC!'

"I mean, driving around with the windows down, playing music..."

Her completely innocent comments prompted a mini-lecture about the importance of east and west coast rap differences.  As well as some 2pac songs later :)

We arrived at TAP in time.  Julia hopped out while I waited in the car, saving time by not unloading my wheelchair. She came back with a thin, 1/8" piece of gray acrylic. Certainly good enough!  It was $60, so I handed her $30 in cash ("you use cash?" says Julia).  We drove down to Gray Area and I scored a perfect parking spot in front of the US Bank on 23rd and Mission.

When we arrived back to Gray Area, the place was buzzing with makers.  It was really cool to be around that energy, so much motion and creativity in the air:

It was one project in particular though, that I have to credit with getting me truly excited and pumped for this event: Caroline Herman's creative altar to Elizabeth Holmes:

Caroline finished her project far ahead of everyone else. It served as a fountain of inspiration to me. This satirical take on the disgraced Silicon Valley entrepreneur-would-be scammer was complete with love notes, poetry, a guest book, and even printouts of court transcripts- brilliant and hilarious!

Julia and I sat down at the laptop to knock out our first deadline: the description.  I thought it was such a strange way to approach art - naming it before the project was just getting off the ground. Fortunately, we had a solid concept and were working well together.

Julia and I had this really cool "brain sync" moment where words and ideas just flowed together seamlessly for the description.  I've spent hours debating with musicians over a single lyric in a song before.  Yet here we were, trading off words, sentences, and grammatical bits with ease. Somehow, even with both our perfectionist artistic tendencies, we operated on such complementary wavelengths.  That we could be mostly strangers, but flow so well under stressful circumstances, was really friggin' cool!

We came up with the text:  

"Structural Integrity

Who is our city built for? Our art installation, Structural Integrity, points attention to the changes forced our community by exaggerating the duality of public accommodations. One seat is inviting and comfortable, while it's antithetical made features painful spikes and other repelling technologies currently employed against the unhoused population. The emotional and tactile impact of Structural Integrity seeks to foster fresh discussions by exposing the juxtaposition of pain and pleasure in public space."

Julia got some duct tape to strap the three pillows together that we found in the space (thanks to Andre).  While she was doing this, I was peeling through my copies of the San Francisco Street Sheet- a wonderful local newspaper dedicated to homeless stories and social issues, which has been in print since 1989.  I also had some copies of the San Mateo Daily Journal, which proved very useful for taking jabs at Wall Street :P

Just then, we were approached by a photographer named Vincent.

"Can I photograph you two?" he asked.

'Sure' Julia said.

He began snapping shots of us assembling our project.

"Actually, we could use a photographer for our installation tomorrow..."   

Vincent agreed.  What I didn't know was that this humble guy was actually a top rate professional photographer with killer gear!

                                               (the photo Vincent took of us assmebling Cultural Integrity)

Julia assembled the fabric and began sewing the cover for the pillows.  I offered to help with some of it, feeling slightly embarrassed by the stereotypical division of labor here.  But we would collaborate on enough parts of the project that it didn't get at me for too long.

I actually had a lot of fun clipping out newspaper headlines. There was something so liberating about it, kind of like "Ad-busting."  Taking narratives that were tightly controlled and reformatting them to match the daily realities that we live through. Some examples were:

Americans embrace / the cycle of trauma.

Wall Street gets a / $69B acquisition

SMOG (from a car ad)

Human Rights / it's simple.

Don't Evict / Humanity.

Survival Skills

Disaster Preparedness Month

Make Extra Income / Artist Dies. (Julia came up with this one) 

                                                            (the newspaper clippings being assembled)

 
After getting a nice amount of mock-headlines together, I decided to go outside and salvage some extra cardboard for the gold spray-painted throne.  In the Mission, there are marketplaces that always leave cardboard boxes neatly folded up for recycling at the end of the day. I brought the gold spray paint can with me, scored some additional cardboard, and set up a spot near the intersection, just a few feet away from Gray Area.

                                      You can find neatly packed, clean cardboard all around the Mission!

The rebel in me always enjoys a little aerosol.  I got a little adrenaline rush spraying cardboard in public, in this [gasp!] unpermitted way.  Unfortunately, the cardboard wasn't taking very well to the gold paint. It looked kind of washed out.  As my attempts waned, I noticed there was a man behind me pushing a cart lined with a trash bag.

"What are you making?" he asked.

'It's an art project.  We're highlighting the way public space is being made deliberately uncomfortable for the homeless.'

"Good, remember the poor," the man said, before pushing his cart down the block.

I went to a corner store to grab a soda while the paint was drying.  (The event provided catered food trays and Canada Dry as the only non-alcoholic drink.  I need my 'murican Soda!)  The shop worker gave me a discount on the drink, just to be nice.  And on my way back, I ran into a happy couple that was handing out free pizza to people.  I took a couple slices - the last ingredient needed for hacking!  The Mission is so cool that way.

I brought the failed paint job inside and showed it to Julia.

"How's the sewing coming along? I'm not sure this is working out too well..."  

"Great!" she said, and then showed me the perfectly plushed throne seat.  I was feeling like I wasn't pulling my weight as a teammate just yet..

"This isn't turning out so well," I said, pointing to the painted cardboard.  "It's hard to tell if the cardboard is gold, or just more brown.'.

Looking for ideas, I wandered over to one of the artist installations, currently being put together by a UC Berkeley graduate named Jess.

"Where did you get that awesome white board?" I asked

'Oh, it's from Michael's Art Supply.' she said.

"Oh yeah, the one in Daly City?" 'Yeah!"

I chatted a bit with her team member Koi, a friend of Jess's and a fellow artist.  She's into biotech and some really cool fashion design.

Rolling over back to Julia, I proposed the idea of (yet another) materials run to get supplies.  She had finished the sewing, and with little debate, we embarked on another mini drive!

We played some more "old people" rap music on Digital Compact Disc (this time it was The Best of 2Pac) and arrived at Michael's Art Supply just 10 minutes before closing.  Julia was a little stressed, and likes very much to be early for important things.

"I'm Swiss!" she said.

I could tell her anxieties abated as soon as we went through the sliding doors.

We purchased 2 pieces of foam board (I wanted an extra for insurance) and some sparkled gold cardstock.  I was also eyeing a beautiful doormat with plants on it, but Julia talked me (erm, told me!) out of it.  One of our ongoing gags was my desire to have plants on the throne side of the exhibit, a holdover from my earlier, more nature-themed concept.

                                         {the sparkled gold cardstock we picked up!  I think it was only $1.99)

"I think this is my favorite part of Hackathons," I said.

"What, shopping?" Julia replied.

"No it's not shopping, it's material runs" I retorted.

We loaded up the car, and decided to make another stop at my place for LED programming stuff, before heading back to Gray Area.

[To be continued...]

The big hacker day was upon us and the gears were in motion!  

Julia jumped into action during morning solo hacker time.  She went to the Mission Fabric Outlet store to find our throne-worthy textiles, as well as coordinating with a participant named Danielleto borrow their sewing machine.

                  (the go-to place for great fabric in the Mission San Francisco!)

                                           (The gorgeous fabric Julia picked out!)

Looking over the items "we will provide" spreadsheet from Art Hack Day, it became clear that I would be bringing most of my apartment to Gray Area.  There was no soldering or programming equipment, 3D printers, drills, or anything like that.  It puzzled me, because I could swear I'd seen pictures of that stuff in other hackathons online (I found out later that they would be providing something different - and special).  But no matter, I am very proud of my home workshop and honestly, much more comfortable with my own tools ('comfortable' is my healthy way of describing it - 'insanely attached' is probably more accurate :P)

I made arrangements with one of the organizers to help me with moving my belongings to Gray Area.  Rebecca didn't have much (or any) experience in helping people with disabilities, which was a bit frustrating at first.  We had a phone call a couple days prior and after a while I told her "I'm sorry, but I didn't sign up to this event to be a disability educator."  I think people don't realize how exhausting that role is (I perform it nearly every day), and forget that they can also do their own research and spend time on these things.

No one knows how to do this stuff, because disability access, history, culture or education are not taught in American public schools.  A fact I lament frequently.  In fact, I had a mini-conversation with some of the attendees about it.

"It's hard being the spokesperson for your own minority group.  And the pressure that comes with that," I said.

"I'm usually the first person in a wheelchair people have ever had a conversation with..."

Amy, Vidya, and Julia all agreed, "yeah, it's my first time too."

...does anyone ever wonder why that is?

For her part, Rebecca was understanding and certainly willing to learn and lend a hand, which I appreciated.  I sent her a document I found online for how to make temporary events accessible.  It's pretty neat!

There's also another really cool guide website here.

I wasn't looking forward to the accessibility coordination efforts with time-strained organizers to bring my things over.  So it was to my amazement when Julia offered to come to my place and help me move things(!)  She was so nice, and this warmed my heart.  I took a big sigh of relief and went through our "to bring" list while she rode the bus over.  Fortunately, I live only about 10 minutes away from Gray Area :) 

When Julia arrived we got sidetracked almost immediately, geeking out over my workspace.  I probably looked like one of those birds puffing up its feathers the way I was beaming with pride over my home shop.

I've spent years planning and building it out, but few people that come over know what the heck it all is!  Julia immediately recognized the method to my madness asking,

 "Is there anything you haven't customized?"

I showed her my 3D printed scissors holder, my compartment closet, wire organizing / recycling bin, microscope, 3D printers, and other fun tools :)

(Magnetic 3D printed scissors holder - one of many custom designs around my apartment)

                                           (My ridiculously organized parts closet)

We learned a bit more about each other, for example I learned Julia had flown here from New York through a school scholarship!  That really shocked me, as I had been so back-and-forth about attending at all.  It made me want to take the event more seriously, especially for her sake.  I also learned quickly that she was an excellent student who wasn't about to half-ass anything.  Well, well, no lazy hacks here!

We began a little bit backwards in the list, starting with one of the "nice to have" features of the project: LED lighting.  'cause hey, that's fun, and we were already at my workbench with all the supplies.

                                                      (My SMD workbench ^_^)

We had decided on two sets of LEDs. One was a strip of red LEDs just to provide a little bit of ambience (and maybe a reference to "you're in hell" on the uncomfortable bus stop side).  The other was a bit more ambitious:  programming a microcontroller with a sensor that would turn on bright lights to annoy you when you sat down.  This was decided on to highlight the anti-homeless motion-detection systems that people put around SF to stop people from simply sleeping in crevices and rain-free areas.

        (An example of PIR motion detection flood lights used to harass the homeless)

(The mock motion light we found in my parts bin.  It has a nice metal swivel base and a 12V plug from an old DC-DC buck brightness hack I did many years ago ;P)

We ran into our first roadblock though: Julia's sensor for this (a nifty Time of Flight (ToF) board from Adafruit) didn't run on her microcontroller!  She had a stock Arduino Uno with the usual Atmega328P DIP chip. Apparently, it doesn't have enough flash memory for the necessary library.

           (The Adafruit VL53L4CX is great, but the code won't fit on an Arduino Uno) 

I pulled out my bag of ESP32's to "quickly" solve the problem. After all, you can program them with Arduino IDE and it has a whopping 4MB memory as opposed to the 32kb of an Uno!  But the particular WEMOS D1 board I pulled out was giving us headaches with its boot loader mode.

(The WEMOS D1 requires annoying button combos to manually enter bootloader mode.  Perhaps it was just a software issue with my driver though.)

After that we looked around for a photoresistor -- but my shop didn't have one!

We also didn't have the WS2812 LED strips I thought were in my bin... This was getting embarrassing :(

We decided to shelve this part of the project, and to move on to more pressing tasks. 

I found some "oldskool" unintelligent LED strips from my old wheelchair lighting project.  They were dirty, but they had a working controller box and remote.  These will run off just 12V, and the controller box changes the voltage levels of the respective R, G, B to make the desired colors and patterns with remote presses. 

(My old scrappy LED strip - it works, but needed some repairs.  Julia said to try packing tape to reinforce the failed joint - and it worked!)

Because these are unintelligent, the entire strip has to be the same color or pattern and it cannot "move" by cycling individual LEDs on and off within the strip like a WS2812 (aka Adafruit "Neopixel").  That's OK though, as this project doesn't need that :)  I soldered up a strip of LEDs to a 2.1mm barrel jack, then used the remote to set the to red.

Then I plugged in my favorite battery pack to power it.  Yay, one task down!

                 (TalentCell YB1206000-USB.  12V @6A + USB out. I love this thing).

While this was happening, Julia was looking up the hours and pricing for TAP plastics, and phoned them to find out how late we could come by with a custom order. We had decided that the missing backing glass was very necessary for our project.  I worried that cardboard would not be able to hold up the body weight leaning back, and also that it would just kinda look like ass.

Fortunately, the cheapest acrylic at TAP for this large size (42" x 42") was $60.  "Not bad if we split it!" said Julia.

After that we piled up tools to take to the space:

Portable glue gun & glue sticks? - check!

Portable cardboard cutter? - check!

Newspapers to cut out? - check!

Battery, LED strip, and controller? - check!

Large pieces of cardboard? - check!

Scissors? - check!

Drill & Bits? - check!

Gold Spraypaint? - check!

...and we were off  to get some acrylic before closing! :)

[To be continued...]

Now that we were getting out of the concept realm and into the real world tangible stuff, my anxieties began to relieve a bit.  It was time to take some measurements !

I rolled over to the nearest bus stop, and took out my midnight measuring tape and camera:

Bus stops are spooky places late at night.  But one thing I noticed kinda stunned me...the backing glass was gone!  How can anyone lean back in these already uncomfortable seats?

Julia and I planned to use this backing glass to support our "throne" comfy seat, as well as some headlines and lights for the unfomfortable seat.  It was truly ironic that SFMTA's efforts to make bus stops as uncomfortable as possible was thwarting our art project exposing the uncomfortableness of bus stops - agh!

I went around afterwards looking at other bus stops - and it was the same everywhere :(

Fortunately, I could still grab measurements for the 3D printed spikes we planned to mount.  Julia suggested "about 20cm" - bless her metric heart, that made me so happy, haha.  And she was right!  

"It should be easy" she said. I quipped that it was unfair that she had 3D printing knowledge so that I could not gain late night sympathy points for the hours of labor this would take! [sarcasm].  She has a Bambu P1P at home, so she sees through my shennanigans :P

With measurements taken, I went home and made the model.  It was pretty easy in Tinkercad since they have a round-tipped dome preset shape.  Super handy.

After that I exported to slicer, then the SD card, and then fired up the 3D printer (Ender 3 S1 Pro, baby!) for some test prints.  All looked passable - I hardly optimized settings for a 48-hour hackathon.  I decided to make some in red, black, and silver (silk PLA):

The quality is a bit meh because it was printed too fast near the tops, and probably not enough walls.  But it would match the grungy outdoor aesthetic better, anyway :P  With this done, I turned in for the night on Day 1.  It was nearly 3am and Day 2 would be the real project day!

[To be continued...]

Everyone respected my hacker alias and called me 'crip' when I arrived...even got a nametag: "Crip Lishus" - hellyeah!  (Given names are so boring and prescribed.  It's nice to reinvent ourselves and our identity to match what we like and how we are.)  It's meant to be one word, but it said first and last name so...

I had some stuff come up (back pain) that made me a little late to the first day of the event.  The invite said "6pm sharp" but man oh man, nobody is "sharp" for anything in SF!  However, I found out later I missed some pretty important details (woops).  I had assumed that groups would be evenly divided among participants, with all of us spaced out at different tables.  So I'd say 5-6 people a project was what it looked like.  

This gave me some concerns, as I wasn't sure how many people would want to do a political message.  From some of our chats at the table, it seemed folks were more interested in an experimental kind of message.  Stuff that was more casual in its approach to the title "Dethroned" and less literal in a socio-political sense. 

There were also ideas going around for homages to the kings and queens of silicon valley culture - the Overlords of Big Tech, as it were.  I thought it was a strange idea, honoring say, Mark Zuckerberg with a statue covered in toilet paper.  But, as I would learn later, the artist brain works in some cool and mysterious ways - and I actually loved what people came up with at the show.

Fortunately, one person on a similar vibe spoke up in their introduction.  When asked the prompt, "What does 'Dethrone' mean to you?" she answered,

'...Smashing the Patriarchy!'  

Immediately, I knew who I wanted my teammate to be :P

(Julia (pronounced "You-lee-uh"), striking a pose as we spray paint our throne outside Gray Area)

That first intro and discussion winded around different concepts, and someone brought up the idea of doing art in the community.  I loved that.  It felt strange being in this seperate space, apart from the vibrant world of the Mission right outside.  The Mission is world-famous for its art: Murals fill the streets here, music pours from our of cafes and cars, and it seems everyone has something to say and a unique life experience to share.  I wanted to be a part of that, and to share whatever we would create. 

The vibe wasn't ideal at first though, as the doors at the front were kept closed for security (I heard there was a stalking scare earlier), and every time I went outside to unmask and drink a soda or something, a little dog was yapping at me like crazy.  This poor fuzzy guy was just terrified of my wheelchair and no amount of pets and calming speak would change his mind.

One concept floating around was making a bench.  Something to highlight modern architecture and the uncomfortableness of seats in public space.  My original suggestion was a super fancy bench with plants, calming music, and a blue / purple color motif to create a pleasant kind of mini vacation outside  An example of what could be possible in a caring, better world. 

Julia (my soon-to-be-teammate) was into something actually uncomfortable though, admitting she was drawn to the more critical lense of politics.  Then she mentioned an artist (maybe thinking of James Hughes?) that had made deliberately uncomfortable furniture as a sort of protest against hostile architecture:

Voila!  Put 2:2 together and the concept for 'Cultural Integrity' was born :) 

However, no one had commited to it yet.  New ideas were popping up and I was the only person pushing for the outdoor "field trip" art idea.  The Mission was my comfort zone, although (understandably) most everyone else wanted to stay inside the nice space where the food, drinks, and security was.

After a while of discussion roundabout, I realized it was getting close to 9pm, when I had plans to drop off some fresh juice I had made for a friend in the area.  I told the group, "I really want to do something outside in the community.  Not sure if I could participate otherwise" - it was bit ultimatum-y I admit, but my heart was set on that and decisions weren't being made.  So I left it at that and went to do the late night juice dropoff (I'm obsessed with my new Breville juicer).  To be honest, I wasn't feeling super committed at this point, as much as I love the Gray Area space.  I was feeling tired, and a little out of my comfort zone in this first Hackathon.  If it's meant to be, it will happen - yeah?

I wearily drove back at 10pm, wondering if people were still going to be around.  If a concept isn't decided, will the show go on?  How many people will drop out the first night?  Are they night owls like me?

I had also been looking for my friend Alex Glow among the attendees - the only person I knew as a selected participant.  Not seeing them gave me some further commitment doubts, as I would be doing this entire project with strangers, even further out of my comfort zone.

But y'know what they say - a stranger is just a friend you haven't met yet :)

Coming back inside I saw discussions were still happening.  Our larger group had split into others and I found Julia among a small crowd.  She looked a bit confounded.

"You wanna just do the bench idea?" she asked.

"Sure!  But do we have enough people?"  I replied.

and that's when she told me...There was no group size requirement. Gah!  I could even do a solo project if I wanted to :o  Kids, don't be late to the first day of class.

Julia and I set up at a table in the back.  She broke out her laptop and I got a pen and paper (and showed her a 3D printed keychain, as proof of some competence :P).  The secret sauce to our duo is our complimentary talents: she's a whiz at utilitizing digital organizing methods, video editing, communications, coding (among many other things).  and I had shop supplies and soldering iron ready.  I drew pictures and jotted notes while she began forming a "to-do" list.

                                        (the original draft project idea with Julia)

We decided on a bus stop installation - to highlight existing architecture and also save time on the build.  I was stoaked for this because I love buses here and there were a bunch of bus shelter stops nearby.  We found an image of a local bus stop to reference:

2 items were in red, which meant that they were for me to do soon, in my night owl manufacturing capacities before tomorrow.  Julia, as it turns out, is a "morning person" [insert scream] and would be at the space in the, well, morning :P   One of our quickly discovered team super powers is our complimentary solo work times.  Throughout the event we'd strategize and build between our schedules and then seamlessly link up in the afternoon and evening for co-op mode!

Our brains seemed to sync up immediately with ideas.  Another participant, Amy, joined us for a bit too, and kindly offered to assist in other parts of the project.  I was begining to see a very cool and unexpected community vibe here - this wasn't going to be a cut-throat competition of artists in isolated projects.  This was something much cooler! 

We parted ways at midnight - Julia to a good nights sleep and me, to some afterhours manufacturing.  It was off to the races!

[To be continued...]