Recursive Instruments

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.

Setting this up only took eight hours, not bad eh? Mike designed the work bench; I’m sad he’s taking it with him when he graduates. The bench holds the CNC mill and the Xylotex control box. The monitor on the left will display Mach2, DeskProto, and their interpretation of the sheep we will mill during both opening nights. The PC on the bottom left will be free to run the machine, while Simon’s Mac G5 runs Second Life on the right-hand monitor. This prevents Mach2 from loosing control of the mill due to render calls from other programs.

The vacuum on the bottom left will keep the room clear of that nasty pink foam dust. The grey cord running off the top is our usb wireless internet adaptor, and the yellow cord is our sole power source.

What a relief it was to finally install our work…and what a hectic two days.