#3: First Draft

This past week has been busy! I’ve had a pair of high-profile events at work since last Wednesday, which were successful but have taken some work. I’d planned on having all of next week to finish my plot for the Holy Cross Theatre Dept’s Good Person of Setzuan, but have decided to move that timeline up to… this week. I was fortunate to spend a solid day on it, but that’s a bit stressful. It’ll help in the long run – we’re still working on hiring a Production Electrician, but it looks like we won’t have it settled in time for this show’s lighting hang, so I’ll need the extra time to prep hang paperwork myself.

I spent a lovely weekend in sunny Glens Falls, NY, exploring the Adirondacks and catching up with an old friend I haven’t seen in too long. We spent some time at The Adirondack Experience, and they had some wonderful interactive exhibits! A clever logjam-clearing game used an Xbox Kinect and a pair of projectors. You could clear stuck logs by jabbing a them with a stick with a tennis ball on the end, and presumably the Kinect tracked only points in the few inches above the floor. I also discovered a surveyor’s telescope in the museum that fits delightfully well with the concept of this telescope project. The compass-beneath-telescope design would be fitting in and of itself, but I think the telescope I’m looking at would obstruct anything below it.

On the telescope project, I’ve created a series of 3D sketches, to try different solutions to some of the problems with the design. Immediately apparent was that putting the time-axis-screen beneath the telescope, while fitting, makes it impossible to see. Even if the screen were on the base but to the side, in certain positions the telescope itself would obstruct it. But as it turns out, there’s a perfectly sized flat surface on top of the telescope, which might be a perfect location. I couldn’t find an elegant way to add a viewfinder, but adding an radio-telescope-greebly to the side (it currently has no function) definitely helped the look.

Based on these sketches, I started work on precise vector drafting to create build drawings, but have since realized that constructing and refining a physical prototype should happen first. And that’s the next step – I expect to spend the next sprint creating a mockup of this telescope, with a couple of variations based on feedback.

I also spent some time putting the sprint presentation together. Rather more than I expected, in fact – looking back over the past two weeks’ progress and formatting it to present was a challenge, but has provided a much clearer sense of my current status and direction. I’m incredibly grateful for the feedback from the Seminar class – several ideas and interpretations came up that hadn’t occured to me. A greebly I added as a way to route cables into the main box read as handle, and while that wasn’t my intention it’s brilliant, and this device should absolutely have handles. Generally, the transparent paddles definitely help the telescope read, and are probably enough as well. I’d been leaning towards an audio-heavy piece, but based on this feedback I think that a video focus, even exclusively, not only makes sense for the project, but lends rather better to my own skills.

Working on RJ’s Studio Project, I’ve spent most of my time managing tasks in the Miro board, but I’ve also done some research into how Agile & Kanban management are supposed to work, and I’m glad to have a chance to learn about these methods in action on the project. I’m also very curious how these might apply to theatre production (and I have to wonder if Interactive Theatre course is trying that).