KIM: “Dad, did you ever try to change a friend? To make them better?”
ROCKET SCIENTIST: “Well, not a human. But back in grad school there was this lab rat. Pinky-Joe Curlytail, I called him. Poor little guy was always running mazes for those psych majors. How I hated them.”
KIM: “Dad? What does this have to do with me?”
ROCKET SCIENTIST: “Well, it seemed to me that Pinky-Joe Curlytail was just so helpless. So I constructed a very tiny cybertronic battle suit.”
KIM: “For the rat?”
ROCKET SCIENTIST: “No more mazes for him. Now, in retrospect, giving him a working plasma-blaster probably went too far. Blew up half the science building. Rampaged across campus. Oh, Pinky-Joe.”
“Kim Possible: The New Ron”
season one, episode three
In the sandpainting of southwestern Native Americans (the most famous of which are the Navajo), the Medicine Man (or Hatałii) paints loosely upon the ground of a hogan, where the ceremony takes place, or on a buckskin or cloth tarpaulin, by letting the colored sands flow through his fingers with control and skill. There are 600 to 1000 different traditional designs for sandpaintings which are known to the Navajo. They do not view the paintings as static objects, but as spiritual, living beings to be treated with great respect. More than 30 different sandpaintings may be associated with one ceremony.
The colors for the painting are usually accomplished with naturally colored sand, crushed gypsum (white), yellow ochre, red sandstone, charcoal, and a mixture of charcoal and gypsum (blue). Brown can be made by mixing red and black; red and white make pink. Other coloring agents include corn meal, flower pollen, or powdered roots and bark.
The paintings are for healing purposes only. Many of them contain images of Yeibicheii (the Holy People). While creating the painting, the medicine man will chant, asking the yeibicheii to come into the painting and help heal the patient.
When the medicine man finishes painting, he checks its accuracy. The order and symmetry of the painting symbolize the harmony which a patient wishes to reestablish in his or her life.
Sand Painting
at Wikipedia
If I were going to build a robot
I’d build a robot that did sand painting.
It would optically scan a photograph
or any other image positioned
appropriately under its scanner
and convert the image into a range
of simple values and simple colors.
The purpose wouldn’t be to make exact
copies of an image painting with sand,
but rather to create sand artifacts
with a process transforming an image
into something else—another image
that can get blown away, destroyed by wind.
The software wouldn’t be making choices
requiring any artistic thought,
just analog-to-digital sensing
and then simple coordinate transforms.
Hardware wouldn’t be a trivial build
because the sensor would need good control
and even if the sand painting device
is simple—a wooden popsicle stick—
it would need to drop sand with good control.
And of course it would have to work outside
because out-of-doors is where the wind is.
I’d shelter the robot while it’s working
and when it finished I’d let the wind work.
It almost sounds like a simple project.
It almost sounds like a harmless project.
It almost sounds like a student project
designed to test someone’s all-around skill.
It doesn’t sound like the kind of project
a mad scientist would work on, laughing.
But maybe the mad scientist would laugh
watching people watch the sand images
blowing away, thinning, disappearing.
Maybe the mad scientist would know things
about images and transformations.
The purpose wouldn’t be to make exact
copies of an image painting with sand,
but rather to create sand artifacts
with a process transforming an image
into something else—another image
that can get blown away, destroyed by wind.
If I were going to build a robot
I’d build a robot that did sand painting.
But I’m not much of a mad scientist.
I’d build a robot that did sand painting.
It would optically scan a photograph
or any other image positioned
appropriately under its scanner
and convert the image into a range
of simple values and simple colors.
The purpose wouldn’t be to make exact
copies of an image painting with sand,
but rather to create sand artifacts
with a process transforming an image
into something else—another image
that can get blown away, destroyed by wind.
The software wouldn’t be making choices
requiring any artistic thought,
just analog-to-digital sensing
and then simple coordinate transforms.
Hardware wouldn’t be a trivial build
because the sensor would need good control
and even if the sand painting device
is simple—a wooden popsicle stick—
it would need to drop sand with good control.
And of course it would have to work outside
because out-of-doors is where the wind is.
I’d shelter the robot while it’s working
and when it finished I’d let the wind work.
It almost sounds like a simple project.
It almost sounds like a harmless project.
It almost sounds like a student project
designed to test someone’s all-around skill.
It doesn’t sound like the kind of project
a mad scientist would work on, laughing.
But maybe the mad scientist would laugh
watching people watch the sand images
blowing away, thinning, disappearing.
Maybe the mad scientist would know things
about images and transformations.
The purpose wouldn’t be to make exact
copies of an image painting with sand,
but rather to create sand artifacts
with a process transforming an image
into something else—another image
that can get blown away, destroyed by wind.
If I were going to build a robot
I’d build a robot that did sand painting.
But I’m not much of a mad scientist.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“SO THE WIND WON’T BLOW IT ALL AWAY
is a novel written
by Richard Brautigan,
published in 1982.”
at Wikipedia
*
The Mad Scientist Is Always Laughing
The Dragon With The Girl Tattoo
Thinking About Real And Fake Villains
LuthorCorp Experiments: The Hero’s Commitment
Candles
The Question For Frankenstein’s Friend
Beautiful Queen Of All The World’s Gadgets
Painting Los Angeles In Earth Colors
Los Angeles As An Insane Painting
Somewhere Between Chicago And Paris
*
Friday Night Note:
I don’t like changing a post
after I post it, but I
changed the title of
this post after it was up
from “I As A Mad Scientist In Sand”
to “Me As A Mad Scientist In Sand”
and really the only reason
I did it was because I remembered
Karen Kilimnik’s great
sort of self-portrait—
“ME—I FORGOT THE WIRE CUTTERS—GETTING THE WIRE
CUTTERS FROM THE CAR TO BREAK INTO STONEHENGE:”
—and she used “me” not “I”
so I figured “me” must be
more appropriate in a title
like this. It’s just me
trying to fit in with
Karen Kilimnik.
And I added the link to
the Richard Brautigan
book. It’s just me
trying to fit in with
Richard Brautigan.
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