GMU:DIY-Microscopy/Nils

Miroscopy stage construction

The aproach was to build a cylinder form for the microscope in order to pick up the shape of the petridish. two srews at each side of the cylinder are added to manually lift and lower the plate with the camera (which is insider of the cylinder).

3D Model

You can download the .stl files of the plate and the plain cylinder

Stage construction

Model side view
top view
webcam without body and flipped lens

3D Printed Model

This Model was printed with a Rapman 3.1 within 4h 37min. i used sketchup to create the needed .stl file and then used netfabb to check it. Last step was to create a .bfb file (for Rapman) via Axon (Windows only) likewise you could use Skeinforge.

Media:Axon bfb file nils.zip

Specimen/Probes collected

rowan berry
spider (used to be 3, one ate the other 2)
Pondwater
sawdust
window cleaner
pigeon feather

In order to get the specific specimen i took al little walk around weimar: for instance the sawdust is from the woodshop at the architectual faculty, the berries are from bushes found at Kirschbachtal, the Pondwater is from a swamp area near the Ilm, the window cleaner (no need to describe that...), the pigeon feather waited at the cemetery to get collected, and the spiders i had to chase around in my bath, and i found a horse.

Captured footage

Still images

pigeon feather
pigeon feather
moss
rowan berry
rowan berry
sawdust with pondwater
spider leg
spider leg
spider leg
window cleaner
window cleaner
horse semen

Moving images

<videoflash type="vimeo">57355494|500|340</videoflash> first attempts on working with the captured footage

Final Presentation

<videoflash type="vimeo">58303903|500|398</videoflash> The video footages, taken by our DIY microscope appeared very roughly. The resolution as well as the image quality were defined by glitches and a certain limitation in color and saturation. At the same time the aesthetics were new to us and we were impressed by the visual outcome of accidents and random happenings. We started by focusing on aesthetical aspects and the idea to combine a micro and macro world. For that we were inspired by a video detail of one second from Alfred Hitchcocks movie "the birds" from 1963. Which is one of the first commercial movies that adapted experimental video and sound effects. After animating the footage with vector graphics we assembled the surfaces with microscopy videos that are matching to the objects. By changing the video elements with several visual and timing effects we aim to carry further an abstraction.

We extracted a sample of a historical movie like we inspected parts of feathers, sand, water, stones and other materials. You can see this as a stage, open to wonder between various meta levels. The length of the loop of these videos in a video refer to the original sound track of Hitchcocks "the birds" which is added to the video. We intend to initiate a conversation about the immaterial, aspects of staging, abstraction and transformation. We want to enable an experience that can be captured in a minute or through the hole piece that is 1:54:36 seconds long. We consider this piece as work in progress that can possibly be finished in context of an installation. Here we can imagine to place the audio/video piece back into a TV formate were the quoted source is coming from. We can also picture this piece being shown on a high resolution screening medium that makes this work a definite work of the 21st century, since it is highly estranged by the original footage. These decisions depend on the space we can show this work. But we are certain about introducing this work to an audience in context of an exhibition space.

DIY-Microscopy Poster

For our documentation Amel, Brian and I worked on this poster to illustrate our workflow and the final output we generated through out this semester. Media:DIY DOCU LO Grafic 08.pdf