When I was told we were going to be using Arduino again, I was thrilled. NOT

I’m just not a coding, technical type of person. Things frustrate me more than I would like them to.

Even though the idea of making another circuit and coding more lights was very intimidating and not very exciting to me, I was excited to use the laser cutter and start making some original illustrations.

I chose to illustrate a poem that I wrote a couple years ago.

It’s called LadyBug and it reads:

 

The world is no place for a lady bug

they will tell you

She’s too small

Too fragile

Her wings can easily unfold

And the wind will take her

She’s helpless

They will tell you

The world is no place for a lady bug

Her red will stand out

And make her too vulnerable

Man will surely stop her

Because the world as we know

Is no place for a lady bug

though

She will try and try to make her way

Out

But no man is kind enough

To open the window

She dies silently

In the window sill

 

And on that happy note!

I broke the poem into four parts and illustrated them, these were the images that I came up with.

Over time the design changed to fit the needs of the project and limits and logic of the laser cutter and the way that it works; the design process in action!

I drew my designs digitally on my ipad using the app procreate, but that app doesnt use Vector, witch means that the image resolution was not perfect and could not be blown up or shrunk down without losing it’s quality.

So I had to take the drawings into illustrator where they can become vector documents, along with doing a bunch of other steps that we did to let the laser cutter know what we wanted.

This is what that looked like

After everything was put in the correct layer, and the right size, it was time to go to the digital fabrication lab where the design would be cut into the wood that would be put together and become my lantern.

It was so interesting to watch this happen in person, technology can be cool sometimes, I guess.

Now it was time for Arduino….

I programed the lights to flicker in a way that it would kinda imitate a candle to enhance the lantern persona.

Making the circuit was by far the most difficult thing that I had to do for this project. It gave me such a hard time, I was so frustrated and I let my frustration get the best of me more than once.

In the end I got the completed the circuit

For this project I think limitations were necessary, and I wish I understood them more and did a significantly less difficult design. I think that with art or really anything creative in life there is an important balance between freedom and necessary limitations. I think that the guidelines for the laser cutter created challenging limitations but it also taught me valuable lessons about thinking inadvertently and outside of the box.