Recursive Instruments

Following up on Mike Frumin’s excellent suggestions, this series shows a day in the life of Sheep Island’s most popular residents?????”her sheep. On the left is a screen shot of Second Life. In the center is Blender’s rendering of the .obj file OGLE created from the previous scene (thanks again to EyeBeam and OpenLab!). Finally, that pink cutie on the right is the end result of our mill’s loving 10,000 rpm embrace.

There is a larger image here:

http://www.recursiveinstruments.com/images/3sheep_large.jpg

The first of our flock.

More of the same. You can see the image wall from Second Life in the upper left corner. The three small bumps around the lower left corner are spotlights.

There’s just something about this coffeehouse that makes people want to copy it. First the good folks on Sheep Island, and now us. A woman walked in on Saturday night, saw the video of Second Life, and recognized R&B Coffee. When we told her there was a foam copy just behind her, she really flipped. Great moment.

Anyone familiar with R&B Coffee will probably notice that there is a lot of detail missing, most notably on the front face of the store (e.g. no awnings). This is because we milled it out of one large block and had to decide which axis to rotate to give the most detail. In this case we wanted to bring out the depth in the ‘backyard’ of the shop. We will be milling a more exact replica in multiple pieces for another project later this spring.

This is a test run of the machine knocking out a translation of the sheep from Sheep Island. The block of foam towards the bottom is a reminder of where to start Mach2 after we paused for the night?????”g code line 1273 I think. Anyone who would like a sheep to remember ol’ Dick by, drop us a line.

This is a general purpose office building on Sheep Island. Inside would be conference tables and some faux ferns. Faux everything I suppose. Is it just me or do the canyons remind anyone else of Tron?

Gosh we like looking at this thing. The relief is nice, no?

The buildings on the far left are modeled after a real cafe in NYC(?). In Second Life they rest on a platform that extends unsupported for meters. Not designed to withstand the (what physicists call ‘weak’) force of gravity, the rear of the poor cafe sank. This has since been corrected with a small foam shim.

From the right side.

Well here it is folks, the end result of the last six weeks. We imposed the grid rather than abutting the pieces to emphasize their relationship to both the pixel and the acre. Each one will be available for sale individually, or one lucky person can have the whole thing. Sheep Island regulars will note the lack of the Electric Sheep Company skyscraper. We felt a flock of freshly milled electronic sheep is more in the spirit of the show.