365: Barbed Wire Fence and Great WiFi
Transcript from 365: Barbed Wire Fence and Great WiFi with Cy Keener, Elecia White, and Christopher White.
EW (00:00:07):
Welcome to Embedded. I'm Elecia White, alongside Christopher White. I don't know. Should we talk about art or science this week? Maybe both. Cy Keener is our guest. So I think it will be both.
CW (00:00:21):
Hey Cy, how are you doing?
CK (00:00:23):
Hey, Chris. I'm doing good. Thanks for having me.
EW (00:00:27):
Could you tell us about yourself as if we met, hmm, as if we met at a science conference?
CK (00:00:38):
Well, I always feeling a little awkward at science conferences, like I don't quite belong. But I am a Assistant Professor of Sculpture and Emerging Technology at the University of Maryland.
CK (00:00:52):
And then my niche within art is to make my own custom sensors, put them in the outside world, and then to make sculptures that respond to the data, hopefully close to real-time. So that is maybe why I actually do end up at science conferences.
EW (00:01:14):
You've heard the show so you're familiar with what lightning round is?
CK (00:01:20):
Yes.
EW (00:01:21):
Okay. Are you ready?
CK (00:01:22):
I think so.
CW (00:01:24):
Complete one project or start a dozen?
CK (00:01:28):
Start two dozen, unfortunately. I wish I was different, but yeah, it's way more fun...to start something new and exciting.
EW (00:01:38):
If you could take a college course, any, one, what would you want to take?
CK (00:01:45):
Oh gosh, this is going to be embarrassing, but I keep trying to audit introductory courses in C at our computer science department. So I guess I would take, I would take some intro CS stuff.
CW (00:02:00):
What's your favorite artwork?
CK (00:02:04):
A specific artwork. That's kind of tough.
CW (00:02:11):
Yeah, that's a horrible question. [Laughter].
CK (00:02:11):
[Laughter]. I guess I'm going to throw a slight curveball, but...I live in the Washington DC area, and there is a place called The Phillips Collection, and then they have a room of Rothkos.
CK (00:02:21):
So, I am not a painter. I have nothing to do with painting, but I sometimes like to go and sit there. So I guess I like artworks that enable that kind of moment of peace and contemplation. So there's a room of Mark Rothko paintings that maybe I would go to.
EW (00:02:41):
Would you rather blow glass or solder together parts?
CK (00:02:49):
Oh goodness. I have no qualifications for blowing glass. I am the bad lackey assistant in the glassblowing world. So that is stressful to me. I have a lot of admiration for what happens there, but soldering at my desk sounds way more relaxing.
CW (00:03:09):
If you could sculpt anything out of ice, what would it be?
CK (00:03:15):
Ooo. I don't know that ice needs sculpting. I think that ice is really beautiful. If it forms with moving water, then it has no bubbles in it.
CK (00:03:27):
And then kind of depending on the mineral content that it has, it obviously takes on different colors. So I think I would pick the, maybe just being like a collector of ice, as opposed to a sculptor of ice.
EW (00:03:42):
Do you have a favorite voltage?
CK (00:03:46):
So my answer is going to be a range, and that is 2.8 to 5, which is because I spent six months of my life in 2018 trying to get a Arduino-based circuit to work with that range.
CK (00:04:02):
Because that is kind of what is required to have things work in the Arctic if you're not regulating power. So you kind of have to. Because of the cold and the batteries, the voltage varies pretty drastically. So that's kind of my range.
CW (00:04:21):
Finally, what about your favorite artist?
CK (00:04:26):
I think the person who influenced me, I did not know this person personally, but Trevor Paglen, is a person that has influenced me because of his research. Kind of his ability to do research as an artist. So he has an MFA, but he also got his PhD in geography at Berkeley.
CK (00:04:48):
And then he wrote a book on decoding the top secret patches that the different armed forces put out when they have a kind of top secret development project. So satellites, or nukes, or kind of different technology things. So he wrote a whole book about that.
CK (00:05:11):
He also, during the kind of peak of the war on terror, Iran, Iraq, or sorry, Iraq and Afghanistan, then he was using astronomical telescopes and photography to record CIA rendition flights from public lands. So, I think that anyone who can use art in that way is pretty amazing.
EW (00:05:41):
You mentioned the Arctic.
CW (00:05:45):
[Laughter]. That's always a good opener.
CK (00:05:50):
Did I? I did.
EW (00:05:50):
You did. How does that relate to art?
CK (00:05:55):
Gosh, kind of two ways. I guess one way is that I started learning Arduino kind of mid-life, I guess, in 2015, and I like the idea of progressively difficult challenges.
CK (00:06:14):
And then in 2018, I'd kind of been making these ocean drifters for a little while, and then in 2018 I met this amazing individual John Woods...At the time he was at NOAA, and now he's at the Office of Naval Research. And he and I hit it off, and he has enabled a bunch of artists to go to the Arctic in different ways.
CK (00:06:41):
And he's kind of a project manager for putting all of the instruments out in the Arctic. So, I guess it was sort of through connections with him, and then now I'm just kind of on the team. So...I have some National Science Foundation funding to just keep making things in the Arctic and putting them out there.
EW (00:07:06):
One of the projects you have done is called Digital Ice Core. Does that have any Arduinos in it?
CK (00:07:12):
Of course. Yeah, so that one, it was a really fun project to work on. And so there's kind of a core circuit, I guess, or board, that I've been working on different versions of since 2015, and it has an Arduino, a bunch of power management circuitry on it.
CK (00:07:35):
I guess when I say Arduino, then no. At this point I'm talking about nothing that has the Arduino logo, but working with the ATmega328, and the 644, and 1284, and then using those as the kind of main processor.
CK (00:07:51):
And then the board that's in that project, also has the BMP280, this Bosch pressure sensor. And it has a GPS on board, an Adafruit GPS, this thing that Adafruit sells. And then it has a external temperature sensor.
CK (00:08:11):
So that was kind of my part,...before that iteration of the board, I'd been doing a bunch of work to do power management. So just kind of getting a low sleep mode with the ATmega, and then turning everything on and off when I wasn't using it.
CK (00:08:30):
And then the kind of big hurdle for that iteration was then working the voltage range. Obviously there's a bunch of different ways to do things. And I have a kind of different version of the board that has RTC and then regulated power.
CK (00:08:45):
But, for that one, that was kind of a challenge. And then I worked with this amazing guy named Lavro Valcic, who has a sensor company out of Croatia. Just his shop, and his life is making sensors for the Arctic. So he built these really amazing temperature chains and light chains.
CK (00:09:08):
So in oceanography, one of the tools that scientists use is, they kind of use temperature as a proxy for different things, to kind of track parcels of water, or to measure different things...They're using temperature, but a lot of times it's a proxy for something else.
CK (00:09:29):
So this particular set of instruments, it had a 3.2 meter circuit, basically a flexible PCB that had 160 thermistors on one side. And then it had a separate circuit flex PCB on the other side that had 64 RGB sensors. And then we had drilled a hole in the ice and put that through the ice.
CK (00:09:54):
And that's a lot of technical stuff, but basically it just means that you can tell what's air, or snow, and what's solid ice, and what's ocean.
CW (00:10:04):
So I know one of the ways of studying climate evolution, and all kinds of things, is to take ice cores. This seems like a virtual ice core, where you stay in the ice, and measure changes over time? Do I have that sort of right?
CK (00:10:16):
That's a great question. So ice cores, different kinds of ice out there. So ice cores are probably most commonly associated with glaciers. So that's where you would get, you can have ice that's 10,000 years old, or this idea that you can kind of get this, as you're drilling down or taking cores, then you're kind of drilling through these different time epochs.
CK (00:10:42):
Most of the stuff that I do in the Arctic has to do with sea ice. So sea ice is this whole different kind of animal, that it basically forms on the surface of the ocean in the Arctic, in the same way that ice would form on a lake or a pond, kind of nearby your house or something. And so it forms out of the saltwater.
CK (00:11:04):
And then, in a season it can grow to be about a meter thick. And then, it used to be in the Arctic that a pretty large amount of Arctic was covered by sea ice that would stick around through the summer. And so it could get to be a couple meters thick.
CK (00:11:21):
So this...is kind of a live, or kind of digital core of the sea ice, but it's basically...floating on the ocean. So you kind of, you're sampling down through that whole layer.
CW (00:11:38):
Okay.
EW (00:11:40):
And the temperature would be interesting, because once you're below the ice part, the water is actually colder because it has a higher salinity. Is that what you're looking for?
CK (00:11:55):
Kind of. Yeah, so...these are great questions. So, if you take the time series of these different values and you kind of extend it out for a season or something, then you get this really beautiful thing where the part of the chain that's up in the air is getting warmer and colder.
CK (00:12:16):
So you kind of have a warm day, cold night, or something, or in the winter you're going to get cold, cold, cold. And then the ice, and then below that, I guess it's easier to talk about the ocean. Below that the ocean is basically always the same.
CK (00:12:28):
The ocean's kind of always around minus two C, plus or minus a little, a degree or two. And then the ice in the wintertime is also kind of the same, but drastically colder than the, let's see, would that be right? I feel like then the ice would be colder than the ocean. Yeah. So the ocean is going to be warmer.
CK (00:12:57):
So,...it's kind of a strange thing. Basically you have the air cooling the surface of the ocean, and then that's what's forming the ice. So it's actually kind of,...it's the air that's, in the winter season. And then, you get this one part of the year in the springtime, when the instrument readings all just kind of go to [bleep].
CK (00:13:15):
They're not really worth anything because everything just starts to melt, and you get water running down the thermistor strings, and all this kind of stuff. And...it's not that useful. But there's certain times a year when...you can very clearly see the difference between the bottom of the ice and the warm ocean.
CK (00:13:31):
And then you can kind of, depending on the day, you can see the difference between the top of the ice, and then the kind of warmer or cooler air. Does that make sense?
EW (00:13:40):
It does. It sounds lovely, but it seems like it would be very hard to see in the Arctic. I mean, do I just go up to any piece of sea ice and hope that's the one?
CK (00:13:51):
Yeah. So these things, so the scientific use of these instruments is to track the thickness of the sea ice. So, that's kind of what they're after. And then, I like that you asked about seeing, because my whole job is to make these kind of hidden things visible. So that digital ice core has two parts to it.
CK (00:14:09):
It has the part that I deployed out there in the Arctic, and then Iridium satellite transmitter. So there's Arduino collecting all the data, putting that out through the Iridium transmitter, and then getting that back to my email or to the servers.
CK (00:14:27):
And then I created a RGB, or kind of a RGB LED light sculpture, that then kind of reads back to those values at the same scale. So that's kind of what I'm interested in is, if you were to walk up to that sculpture while the sensors were in ice, then you'd be looking at the color from the ice, and the thickness of the ice from that day, or from six hours before.
CK (00:14:57):
So yeah, so I think the colors to me are kind of beautiful, where that the ocean is this kind of deeper green, and then the ice has some blue in it. And then all of the sensors that are out in the air just have the 255 values. They just come back white.
CK (00:15:14):
So that's kind of the goal to me, is to take this thing that's been created for science. But temperatures are kind of interesting. But you have to colorize them, or make them visible somehow.
CW (00:15:29):
Right.
CK (00:15:29):
And so that one had the kind of back-to-back strings or chains. And so it had the temperature on one side and the RGB on the other. And what I loved about the RGB is I could just put that straight through.
CK (00:15:38):
So I did fuss with the projected color a little bit in the ocean. And then I gave it a little bit of glimmer, because I was trying to distinguish between the ocean and the bottom of the ice, but I didn't actually change the color of the ice. It's just sort of those straight RGB values.
CW (00:15:59):
The cool thing about this, and I think, I want to make sure that people visualize it properly, or go to your website and see it. But it's not a tabletop thing. This is in the shape of an actual drilled ice core. It's three meters tall, four meters tall?
EW (00:16:13):
Column of light.
CW (00:16:14):
Yeah. It's very cool and extremely big.
CK (00:16:18):
I think that's kind of my job, is to take the data from these far off places and put it into a form that people can understand. And hopefully put it in the form that is interesting or makes you want to kind of spend time around it. So, yeah, the temperature string is 3.2 meters.
CK (00:16:43):
So that sculpture is 3.2 meters tall. And I really like working at this one-to-one scale where, when you see one of my pieces, that I'm usually trying to recreate something that's been sampled in the field at that same scale.
CK (00:16:59):
So instead of making a graph, or data viz, or something, then I'm trying to come up with a way for you to experience it, to some degree, as you might encounter it. But the sea ice is kind of neat.
CK (00:17:12):
Because...when you're standing out there, we drove out with snowmobiles, and then drew drilled this hole in the ice, but when you're standing out there, it's quiet and you're standing on six feet of ice so that...there's no motion or anything.
CK (00:17:24):
It's kind of a mental trick to remind yourself that you're actually standing on ice. So it's a really strange and interesting environment.
EW (00:17:35):
Walking on water.
CK (00:17:37):
Yeah.
EW (00:17:37):
Or on the ice.
CK (00:17:37):
Yeah. Not just water, but the ocean.
EW (00:17:42):
You also had a project that was a rain recorder that used a special paper? Could you tell us about that?
CK (00:17:53):
That's a fun one to talk about. Because it's one of those awk -
EW (00:17:59):
It's very visual so perfect for a podcast.
CK (00:18:00):
Right, right. But it's one of those awkward kind of teenage projects, where you're in transition from one thing to another. But I showed up at the Stanford MFA program with architecture skills. So kind of drawing and building things.
CK (00:18:18):
And that was my first real data-based piece, in the sense that I didn't have the skillset to really use Arduino, or to do sensors, or to do any of that stuff yet. But I wanted to see what a rainstorm or just, not even a storm, but just a second of rain looked like as it was coming down.
CK (00:18:41):
So if you were to be able to just kind of freeze a small chunk of a rainstorm, and then be able to just walk around it, and kind of look at it. So the method that I figured out how to do that was that, there's these papers that are manufactured for agriculture at this point. So it's a yellow paper that turns blue whenever moisture gets on it.
CK (00:19:04):
And what they do is they just put these little pieces of paper on the field, on the crops, and then they spray with whatever thing that they're spraying. And then, I think at this point there's probably just a phone app where you can kind of take a picture of that little card, and then it'll tell you...how much you sprayed.
CK (00:19:24):
So what your drop distribution, how many gallons per foot, or acre, or whatever it is they're measuring. But it's this really beautiful paper that's just bright, bright yellow. And then it just turns blue wherever the rain touches it. So my thought was that I could just use a video camera to record the rain hitting that.
CK (00:19:47):
And then I kind of treated those pieces of paper like a negative, like a photographic negative. So I scanned them in, and then I sat there in CAD, in AutoCAD, and I just, I measured all the drops, and then I would watch the film until I figured out what frame the drop landed on.
CK (00:20:07):
And then from that, I could just do some simple math, and kind of build the rain, or sorry, where all the rain was when the first drop hit. So it was kind of this little exercise in trying to model something that you can't really see in real life, or you kind of see it very briefly.
EW (00:20:29):
And the results were water-splattered paper, where the paper was yellow, and the raindrops were dark blue. Was it that contrast to start with, or did you play with some of those pictures?
CK (00:20:46):
No,...I guess I'm kind of consistent in the way that I work. So a lot of my work has a field side, and then kind of a gallery side, or a representation side. So those were the field recordings. And those colors are natural.
CK (00:21:02):
That's the magic of the chemistry. That's not my sort of Photoshopping or anything. That's just the Swiss company that makes that beautiful paper. But what I did do is I made a series of three recordings, and then I built a room, sort of a darkroom, that had about 1500 fiber optic sort of strands.
CK (00:21:28):
And then those strands had a bunch of different sizes to represent the sizes of the raindrops. And then I would score those strands with the location of the raindrop. So I kind of made a sculpture that allowed you to walk into this darkroom and just see where the raindrops were before they landed.
CK (00:21:46):
So the rain recorder is kind of half of that piece. That's the field side. Kind of like in Digital Ice Core, how there's the buoy, or the kind of electronics enclosure, and stuff that goes out in the field. And then there's that 12-foot-tall tube of LEDs.
EW (00:22:03):
So you said that that was before you were familiar with Arduino. Was there a moment, or a time when you saw it, and said, "Oh, I don't want to do this data collection stuff. I want to play with hardware."
CK (00:22:17):
I knew that's why I was at Stanford because there's a lot of places you can go to get your Master's of Fine Art. And most people do not select engineering schools, but I was down to MIT, Stanford, or UC San Diego.
CK (00:22:33):
And then, so I showed up there with scientific instruments, purchased off eBay, and a bunch of like dreams about what I was going to do with them. And then my advisor was this really amazing guy, Paul DeMarinis, who's the chair of the department, and he's been a Bay Area electronic and sound artist for a long time.
CK (00:22:56):
He actually worked at Xerox PARC and he worked at Atari. So he's been around tech for a while. And I said, "Well, Paul, I want to buy, I've got this instrument and I need to buy a data logger." And then he just looked at me, and he's like, "Well, you don't,...nobody buys data loggers anymore. You don't need a data logger."
CK (00:23:15):
He's like "Just using an Arduino." And then I was like, "Well, what is an Arduino?" And so that's the beginning of it. And then I think in our subsequent conversation, I was like, "Well, what can you do with an Arduino?" And he said, "Well, that's kind of like asking what can you do with glue?"
CK (00:23:34):
So, that's kind of where I got my start. And then Stanford had, I guess I never took a coding class, but I did take a environmental and civil engineering class on sensor networks.
CK (00:23:50):
So that was kind of as deep as I got into the technical side outside of art, but basically all of the coding and electronics stuff that I know is learned in an art context. And then through just a ton of help from a bunch of different folks.
EW (00:24:08):
How much are you in it for the art or for the science? Is it mostly about showing the science, or is it about doing the science?
CK (00:24:19):
I think, I mean, if there's a clarification here, I think that it's, I have a ton of respect for what scientists do. And I don't really think that I do science. I think I'm kind of on a little bit of a mission in regards to the Arctic, with trying to get more sensors out there.
CK (00:24:43):
I'm now in the position where the Arctic sensors that I place are reporting to the servers...that scientists use to monitor the Arctic and to do climate change modeling and analysis. But I definitely don't, I think of myself as an artist who's there to use scientific tools in the same way that a photographer would use a camera or a painter would use a brush.
CK (00:25:16):
So, I think it's just that those are my chosen tools, but I don't really confuse what I'm doing with science. So I think that that's kind of a strange answer, but that's sort of where I'm at.
EW (00:25:34):
Do you see yourself as communicating science, or is it really about art?
CK (00:25:44):
Yeah, that's a really great question too. And I think that art has to work when you don't know anything about it. For art to be good, you have to see it or hear it, and then want to spend time around it, and want to try to understand it better.
CK (00:26:01):
And then if something more interesting and more complex unfolds in getting to know the piece, then I think that that's a really beautiful, a beautiful thing, and kind of a magic moment. So, I think I'm not personally interested in, gosh, this is kind of sounds bad, but I think, I'm not interested in didactic information or displays for a science museum.
CK (00:26:31):
But I'm interested in making really beautiful, intriguing objects that, then if you get to spend time around, or you know a little bit of the physics, or the oceanography or something like that behind it, then you have a different appreciation of it.
CK (00:26:47):
So I think that those are, yeah, there's a lot of different things out there. There's sort of science education, there's science communication, and then there's art, and then there's doing science. So sorry to kind of parse all of those things into different bits, but I think that that's kind of, that's the weird territory that I aim for.
CK (00:27:14):
And I think you can, as an artist, you can kind of aim for something, and then people perceive the work how they perceive the work. So...that part's a little bit out of my control, but that's what I'm aiming for.
EW (00:27:26):
...I mean, yes, those are some of the titles, but there is also an element of the maker movement. I think just by picking up an Arduino, you become a maker. And...the building parts of it are engineering, and there's just so many titles roaming around, and you are an artist.
EW (00:27:53):
We've had people on the show who make art, but don't accept the identity...How did-- When did you become an artist?
CK (00:28:01):
I'm an assistant professor in an art department. So to some degree I have to call myself an artist. But I think that that, it means a lot of different things. And as someone who does, I'm part of tech art, I guess. I'm part of this branch of art where people focus more on using technology and digital things.
CK (00:28:30):
And so then that's kind of this weird branch, or this sort of subgroup of art. And in that sense, it's not, tech art is kind of, I don't know, it's not, it's less the kind of, the beautiful people and the fancy art.
CK (00:28:50):
And so, I'm already kind of on the sidelines, to some degree, of contemporary art or of these other kind of things. I think those conversations are important, and I understand other people's hesitancy to kind of take that on.
CK (00:29:10):
But to me, an artist is someone who has a fairly unusual skill set, and they've been practicing something for a long time. And then they can use that skill set to make things, to share with people in a way that makes them see the world in a little bit different way, or kind of moves them on some level.
CK (00:29:34):
So I think that that skill set can be a lot of different things. And it could be making, or using Arduino. Or the skill set could be coding, or the skill set could be cutting and welding things, or painting with a canvas.
CK (00:29:47):
So, I think that maybe that's why earlier in the show I brought up the Trevor Paglen example. Because I think over the last 15 or 20 years, art has gotten a lot bigger than what people think of as the traditional arts. And I feel like because of that expansion, then there's room for me to be in there.
EW (00:30:11):
But the way you do it is so complicated. I mean, you could just have pencils and ink, but no, you have Fusion 360, and CNC milling, and Eagle, and Excel, and programming, and Arduinos. Is the complication part of the draw for you?
CK (00:30:29):
I'm a little hesitant to say that the complication is the draw, but I am only interested in doing things if I'm not sure that I can pull it off.
EW (00:30:41):
Oh, that was definitely yes, by the way.
CK (00:30:45):
And so, and I think that sometimes complication is part of that. And then I feel like the other side of it is also collaboration. So like I mentioned before, I'm now on basically on this team of people that are responsible for deploying all of the instruments, all of the meteorological and climate instruments in the Arctic ocean.
CK (00:31:08):
And so that's kind of part of my collaborators now. And then I'm super, super lucky because...Dave Eldenberg is my uncle. And he has probably put in a thousand hours into taking the kind of bad Arduino code that I hacked together and making it into something that can run autonomously for a year.
CK (00:31:36):
So,...it just so happened that when I was getting Arduino, he retired from being a software engineer at Seagate in storage tech. And he basically had a 30 year career of writing software for hardware at a pretty low level. So I kind of, I'm interested in taking on these big projects that I can't really do on my own.
CK (00:31:58):
And then I really like the conversations that come out of making things. And then, I've been really fortunate to just be able to build my skill set. So I think that the thing that you're asking about is like, "Why is it so complicated?" But I don't, I think to me, any good project should be a 20-year project or something.
CK (00:32:21):
When I was in middle school, one of my friends' fathers was this Dutch guy named Treppen. That's his artist, his art name. And he had moved to Seattle so that he could be near Boeing and Microsoft, so that he could figure out how to make his own musical instruments that were played by mechatronic systems so that he could compose for those kind of new instruments.
CK (00:32:47):
So there's no synthesizers involved. It was figuring out how to play actual instruments or kind of hacked versions of instruments. So I think when I got into this idea of putting sensors out, then it was in that kind of understanding of a 20-year project. So I mean, if you put enough time into things, then you figure them out eventually.
EW (00:33:12):
Do you have any new projects going on?
CK (00:33:15):
This one that's been in development just...I guess, since September, which is kind of fun. Which is just taking the kind of a version of my Arctic electronics and trying to make it survive being dropped out of an airplane.
CK (00:33:31):
So one of the crazy things about the Arctic Ocean is that it's about the size of the United States, but...it's pretty inaccessible. And then, so it's hard to get to. You can fly over it, or you can get there by boat, or you can kind of snowmobile out when it's frozen.
CK (00:33:55):
But in order to deploy a bunch of sensors, you kind of need to be able to throw them out the back of a C-130, or have them drop out of a sonobuoy chute. And that's what my collaborators do.
CK (00:34:07):
So my kind of current project has been trying to figure out how to do that cheaply, with this idea that we could then take a flight, and be able to deploy 40 or 50 sensors over maybe a 600-mile path or something like that.
CK (00:34:25):
So, that's way out of my area of expertise. It's been super fun to figure out all of those things. And I've had a really amazing undergraduate assistant that's helped with that. And then a good friend who used to work at SpaceX and now works for a Bay Area aerospace startup who's also been helpful.
CK (00:34:46):
So I think that that's another one of those things where I just, I'm not sure I can do it, but it sounds like a really cool thing if I could do it. So I've been putting my time there.
EW (00:34:56):
If you deploy the sensors as you want, how will you do the other half? What will the installation look like?
CK (00:35:05):
Yeah. So this kind of comes back to the science part. And I know I spend most of my time saying that I don't really do science, but right now, so I think I mentioned that the Arctic Ocean is the size of the US, and right now, at any one time, there's only about 150 instruments out there.
CK (00:35:27):
And I feel like with my tech, that there's a chance that maybe I could double that in a couple of years. So, it became kind of my COVID project, and I don't know what the installation is, or what it will look like at some point in the future. But I think if we could double the number of sensors out there, then that would be super amazing.
EW (00:35:53):
You have an NSF grant, a National Science Foundation grant. How does an art professor get an NSF grant?
CK (00:36:01):
I do. So there's this kind of interesting thing where the NSF, I might get my timing wrong here, but I think it was maybe a decade ago. But they made this, one of the criteria for deciding who gets the grants, they made this criteria called "broader impacts," much greater emphasis.
CK (00:36:24):
So in kind of theory, on paper, then 50% of your evaluation is due to your intellectual merit. And then 50% is due to broader impacts. And so, I'm on a couple of NSF grants, and then I've applied for a few more. But sometimes that's the role that I play.
CK (00:36:44):
So with this group of collaborators that puts buoys out in the Arctic, I think, initially I am kind of on there in this communication role, or this ability to share what I do through arts.
CK (00:36:58):
And then also, with that same group, I teach some STEM classes, some high school STEM classes, through the US Navy, where we teach high schoolers how to build these buoys, and then we deploy some of them. And then, but I guess as a technical person, I didn't feel comfortable just saying, "Well, I'll be there as an artist."
CK (00:37:21):
And then the other kind of half of, at least my part of that grant, is to push forward these open source and kind of low-cost electronic options. And to see if we can kind of move the needle of the science that way. So it kind of sounds strange to have an NSF grant as an artist, but the way that they run the grants has kind of opened the door to that a little bit.
EW (00:37:50):
You started the show by saying you make custom sensors. But the sensor we've been talking about isn't yours. What custom sensors do you make?
CK (00:38:00):
This is good. So, custom means different things. I definitely...don't make custom sensors. I guess when I speak to a lay audience then I can get away with saying that I make custom sensors.
CK (00:38:15):
But more often I'm taking sensors that are available through the kind of larger Arduino environment, and Adafruit, and SparkFun, and then, kind of using those to figure out a piece. So, I have a ocean drifter piece that measures wave motion with an IMU.
CK (00:38:39):
It's...a Bosch IMU. And then I have this wind piece that I did, that has a digital compass and then it's actually a hot-wire thermistor that measures the wind speed, so you can get wind speed and direction. So I guess I make -
CW (00:38:59):
No, that counts.
EW (00:38:59):
Those are sensors.
CK (00:38:59):
Alright, but yeah, no, I think that...I got intimidated with idea getting my electronics to report from the Arctic consistently. And I was like, "That's a big enough problem for me to take on." And then this other guy has this thing that he's working on.
CK (00:39:17):
And actually he just published a paper on the light sensors, but at the time in 2019, they weren't really a scientific instrument yet. They didn't have the data to even know if they were useful.
CK (00:39:28):
So it was kind of like, I borrowed this kind of experimental technology, which, they were basically looking for a less expensive way, for some reason, RGB sensors are cheaper than thermistors. So they were looking for a less expensive way to do the same thing or to collect similar data.
CK (00:39:46):
But I was like, "Well, RGB sensors are way more exciting than a thermistor for my purposes." So, yeah. So I think...that one of the kind of interesting things about art is that you have to decide what your level of authorship is. And so, every artist has to kind of figure that out for themselves.
CK (00:40:10):
And for some reason I love working, I guess, because I had a background in kind of architecture, and drawing, and CAD, that I've kind of fallen in love with circuit design. Just as a place to spend my time and be kind of constantly tweaking things.
CK (00:40:29):
I've grown my skills, but...I like being able to work in this world where I can kind of grab somebody else's Eagle files for four different projects, and kind of mix and match. And get in my own power management stuff there and kind of go at it that way.
EW (00:40:48):
I should ask you about the power management and all of that. But what I want now is these sensors you've mentioned, the wind sensor. It has an installation component that was, maybe you should describe it.
CK (00:41:03):
Yeah. So it's again the same kind of premise of the one-to-one scale. So...I did this project while I was at Stanford, and Stanford runs this amazing place called Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. That's about four miles up the hill from Stanford by the Collider up there. And I got permission to put -
EW (00:41:25):
Wait a minute. Is this where the dish is?
CK (00:41:27):
Kind of behind the hill with the dish.
EW (00:41:30):
Okay.
CK (00:41:30):
It's a little bit around the corner. It's on the other side of the freeway.
EW (00:41:35):
Ah, okay.
CK (00:41:35):
Yeah. So it's back there, and it's barb wire fenced, and then it has great Wi-Fi. So, it was the perfect place for all my kind of delicate, about-to-fall-apart, homemade sensors. And so I got permission to work up there.
CK (00:41:52):
And I placed 30 of these homemade anemometers, basically, a wind sensor that can do speed and direction, but I made them into these bird shapes. So I placed 30 of them out there in the field.
CK (00:42:05):
But...at the same time...I was kind of designing the field side and the gallery side, and at the same time, I had gotten permission to use this, 19-foot by 50-foot wall that was part of this new building at Stanford. And so basically I put the sensors out there, in the same way that I could stage some servos and lights on a wall back at the Stanford campus.
CK (00:42:29):
And then, I use one of the Particle Wi-Fi devices, where you can kind of do this publish and subscribe thing with. And so I had 30 of these particle devices out on the ridge, reporting to the Wi-Fi. And then I had 30 devices on these little cantilever arms, coming out from this glass, and projecting these flashlight things on the wall.
CK (00:42:58):
And so the idea was that you could see, the piece kind of began with just watching the wind move across a field of grass, kind of taller grass out in the wilds. And I wanted to just be able to kind of see that take place.
CK (00:43:15):
So there's 30 of these independently-operating anemometers, and they're spaced about five feet apart, both in the field, and then there's 30 of these lights and servo combinations that are five feet apart on the wall. So if you're looking at the wall, then North is up and you can see which way the wind's coming from.
CK (00:43:33):
And then the wind speed gets translated to the LED brightness. So if the lights are really bright and all in one direction, then that kind of meant that it was maybe a 20 mile an hour wind kind of event. And then if the lights were all just barely on and wandering around aimlessly, looking like the thing was broken, then that meant it was a low wind day.
CK (00:43:59):
So yeah, so that was kind of the idea of the piece.
EW (00:44:06):
And the floaters?
CK (00:44:09):
The buoys?
EW (00:44:11):
Drifters?
CK (00:44:11):
Drifters? Yeah. I'd kind of done that, when you're in any university program, then there's these things you're supposed to do to graduate. You're kind of on this schedule or this clock, but I had done that wind piece kind of at a weird time.
CK (00:44:29):
I'd had done that in the fall of my last year, but it was a lot of work. And then...that same guy, Paul, I was talking to him after that thing was done. I was kind of like, "I don't really need to do a thesis, do I? That was a lot of work." And he's like, "Oh, of course you need to do a thesis. There's still a semester left. You have to do another project."
CK (00:44:50):
And so I think that the drifters kind of came about, is this just question of how far I could take it. It's kind of like, "Well, I know I can get an Arduino to get some sensor data, and make something work if they're in the same room, or on the same circuit. And then I kind of jumped this hurdle of Wi-Fi.
CK (00:45:11):
And then it was just like, "Well,...can I make something that can go someplace that I can't go, as opposed to having something in the mountain range next door, four miles away. And so then that kind of sent me off on learning about batteries, and solar power, and Iridium satellite transmission.
CK (00:45:33):
And this really amazing guy, Mikal Hart, who, he has a website, which I always mispronounce, because I never say it, but I think it's Arduiniana, but he wrote some code up and published it in Make Magazine. And it was basically, how you can use a Arduino Adafruit GPS and then this other thing called the RockBLOCK, which was this UK company that makes the Iridium satellite modem kind of Arduino-friendly.
CK (00:46:06):
And so that was where that started, was just, "Well, can I, if I learn about batteries and solar and switch to satellite comms, then maybe I can put this thing somewhere that I actually can't go." So that was kind of, that was the first iteration of that.
CK (00:46:20):
And then, artists kind of just repeat themselves, or they just kind of keep doing variations of the same things, so I was never really satisfied with the different variations of that project. So I kept doing different versions of it. I spent almost a year at Autodesk kind of making...these blown glass versions of it.
CK (00:46:42):
And that was an effort to try to make it not just a bunch of plastic junk that we're putting in the ocean, and to try to use some a little bit greener materials. And then I did another version of it with an IMU that tries to measure the wave movements and then translate that to this laser light that projects around a room.
CK (00:47:08):
So the idea that you could start to experience the ocean at the location of that buoy when it's transmitting, and kind of see if the ocean's just flat and kind of mellow that day, or if it has these big swells, or something like that. So yeah, that was the kind of the transition from one project to another.
CK (00:47:32):
So I guess I keep going like that. It's, "If I can get it to work, then maybe can I get it to work in the Arctic, and then if I can get it to work in Arctic, maybe can I get it so it falls out of an airplane, and then still works in the Arctic?"
EW (00:47:46):
Space is next.
CK (00:47:48):
Oh, gosh. Yeah, I don't know.
CW (00:47:51):
So how do you think you ended up here?
EW (00:47:55):
[Laughter].
CK (00:47:55):
[Laughter].
CW (00:47:58):
First off with the environmental science, and visualization, and art surrounding that. I mean, looking at your history, you didn't start out with working in oceanography or meteorology.
CW (00:48:11):
Was it just that first project? And then you got into that and like you said, repeated and iterated, or was there an interest that had been kind of kindled some other way?
CK (00:48:22):
Yeah, I grew up in Seattle, and I was lucky that my parents introduced me to outdoor stuff a little bit, but then when I was 15, I kind of got hooked into rock climbing and then that became maybe a 10 or 15 year obsession.
CK (00:48:42):
And the reason that that's part of the story is just because I got to travel a bunch, and go to places that people just don't get to go to, and just kind of experience these environments. Like the sight of El Capitan, or just some glacier, or a kind of mountain in winter, or things like that.
CK (00:49:06):
So I think it just comes from the environmental side. It started just as a way of I'm having these experiences and these kind of moments outside and trying to look for a way of sharing those with people. So I kind of had this other art career before Arduino, before the MFA, where I was doing art installation.
CK (00:49:28):
So installation just means that you take a room or a space, and you kind of transform it into an experience. So in 2010, I did a piece where we made this kind of glacial cave experience using a bunch of CNC-cut plywood, and Tyvek and a bunch of, every Tuesday we would load 2,500 pounds of cocktail ice up into this skylight kind of tray, this acrylic tray.
CK (00:50:02):
And then, there was a actual skylight in the roof of the museum above that. So...you got to kind of walk into this cave where the only light in the cave was from sunlight filtered through ice, and then it kind of changed over the course of the week as the ice melted.
CK (00:50:21):
So sometimes you would have thick ice and sometimes you would have thin ice. So yeah, I kind of had this period of analog installations. And then when that period ended, then that was when I got more curious about the kind of technical side of things.
CK (00:50:36):
Of like, "We're making these pieces about kind of experiencing nature, but what if we could actually just use the data that are kind of recordings from nature, as opposed to kind of making our own constructions, or our own kind of riffs?"
EW (00:50:54):
Is climate change an intentional part of your work?
CK (00:50:59):
It is. And I think that that's evolved over time as well. And it's evolved in a couple of interesting ways, some kind of reactionary, but...I think I gave this kind of labored answer to "Are you an artist or not?"
CK (00:51:19):
And I think that, that for a while,...I did not want to be an environmental artist. I thought that what I was doing was kind of, I believe, I mentioned that art should just be sort of judged on its sort of face value in some sense. And so...just because art is about something, doesn't make it better.
CK (00:51:43):
It's one of the things that I remind my students sometimes. And so I think I was stuck in that limbo for a while. And then we elected a new president in 2016, and then it seemed like that that was just not important anymore. And...the kind of direction that our country was headed in terms of environmental stuff was just not okay.
CK (00:52:08):
And then I think the other pieces would be having a son, I have a three-year-old son, and kind of thinking about what we're leaving him. And then I think the last of it is just seeing, getting to go to the Arctic, and getting to see what's already happened in the Arctic.
CK (00:52:25):
I think when I was kind of growing up, and in my twenties, and climate change was always this thing that was going to happen someday. And then there's these really amazing animations on YouTube by NOAA that showed the thickness and the extent of sea ice in the Arctic.
CK (00:52:49):
And between the eighties, and between the mid, or kind of mid to 20teens, the thick ice, the stuff that I was talking about earlier that survives the summer, pretty much went away.
CK (00:53:02):
And I think that just learning about that, and seeing that this is a thing that has already happened,...it had an impact on me. I think we've been operating for a while on this idea about climate change as this thing that, "Well, if we don't get our [bleep] together, then it might be out there. It might really happen or something."
CK (00:53:22):
And then I feel like over the last five or ten years,...we've shifted to this whole new place, where it's something that we've already, it's here, it's something that we've already done. And then we have a kind of time window in which we need to change the way that we do things. So I think that that is where I am at now.
CK (00:53:49):
And I feel like part of my work is in communicating climate stuff to people. And then part of it is a little bit, it's not really a pessimistic way, but it's kind of like being the bug collector with the safari suit in the 19th century. In the sense that I'm kind of out there to record these things that are going away.
CK (00:54:14):
So both with sea ice and with glaciers, I'm interested in making these recordings of things that are not going to be there when my son is my age or for sort of future generations. So yeah, I think part of it is just wanting to make a contribution to the science, in the kind of open source, long low-cost thing of, if we can get more sensors out there that's better.
CK (00:54:41):
I think part of it is in doing art to raise awareness. And then I think part of it is in kind of making these recordings and really trying to document what's here now. Because it's not going to be there for much longer. Depending on what we do.
CK (00:54:57):
I don't want to end that on this sad note. There's still so much that we can do, and it's not at all a hopeless situation. So I think that that's an important part of this discussion.
EW (00:55:15):
It is an important part. Thinking about climate change is often hard. I feel powerless, so I just can't deal with that stress. There's nothing I can do. It makes me want to look away. And your ice columns, being able to see those. I would love to see those in person, because it's beautiful.
EW (00:55:40):
And I think that's part of it being art. And...do you think it helps people look at it, and think about climate change as opposed to all of the other things we look at for climate change? All of the more depressing things?
CK (00:56:00):
I mean, I would like that to be an effect or a result of my work...I think that humans are, I totally identify with what you're saying. On my phone yesterday, there was this...New York Times article about the changing of the ocean currents.
CK (00:56:22):
And I was like, "Oop, don't the energy to read that right now." I think that there is a part of that, and I think that that's kind of natural. And then, but I think that as humans,...we're not really well-equipped to care about things that are far away from us.
CK (00:56:40):
And I think we're not really well-equipped to make sort of life-altering decisions based on some charts and graphs, and some predicted future situations. And so...that's why I like sticking at this one-to-one scale, or I like trying to communicate what's happening now.
CK (00:57:02):
So that's kind of why I go through all of this hurdle of the sensors and the kind of attempt to be close to real-time. And all of that is just a bridge. I see the technology just as a way to bridge distance, and to try to see things kind of at full-scale, or in a experiential way.
CK (00:57:21):
...I think that's great that you want to see the Digital Ice Core in person, because it was meant to be moved around, as opposed to sort of consumed with your intellect, and I feel like that's the territory of the artist. The scientists have to...come up with the data, figure it out, share it with us, get that in the media, and have us kind of digest it.
CK (00:57:49):
But I think that's only one way of knowing, and that my goal is to kind of help people engage with other ways of knowing. Which is just being in your body and seeing something that is your size.
CK (00:58:04):
I think just the idea that there's six feet thick of ice sitting on the ocean somewhere is kind of an amazing fact, that you can just walk around. And I think that if more people knew about that, then we might think about the situation differently.
EW (00:58:21):
We had one listener question this week. It's from MattyC. "What is your most dangerous deployment? Or "What is your most dangerous art installation?" Where is the danger in your life?
CW (00:58:35):
Why is everybody so interested in danger and explosions?
CK (00:58:39):
I think maybe it's because I mentioned that I have a background in climbing, but I think of what I do as being fairly tame. But maybe my most dangerous and exciting installation is still in the future.
CK (00:58:55):
Who knows what's going to happen with COVID, but in theory, in August, I might get to go on board one of the Air Force C-130s, and I don't think I personally get to throw things out the back, but someone will be throwing my stuff out the back. And that sounds super exciting.
CK (00:59:09):
And then there's a chance I'll get to go on board a Danish Naval vessel near Greenland, and we're going to be tagging icebergs with a drone. So that sounds kind of exciting...I do not think of my work as being highly risk-taking, but I will say we did snowmobile past some polar bear tracks.
CK (00:59:33):
And when I saw those, I was just like, "Oh, I never want to see a polar bear." So yeah...I don't think that what I do is terribly risk-taking, but I think it's super fun to be able to get out there and kind of engage in these different environments.
EW (00:59:52):
Well, Cy, it has been wonderful to talk to you. I look forward to seeing your work and to hearing more about it. Do you have any thoughts you'd like to leave us with?
CK (01:00:02):
I guess I would just like to say thank you to the community, in the sense that...what I do is possible because of people, that know a ton more than I do, have been really generous with their time. And that's been on the hardware side, and on the software side, and kind of all through that.
CK (01:00:33):
So I think that I'm just really appreciative that I can engage in what I do, and I can do what I do. And I do not have an EE degree, and I do not have a CS degree. And it is because of the generosity of the folks behind Arduino, and SparkFun, and Adafruit.
CK (01:00:54):
And my uncle Dave, and Paulo Salvagione, is another Bay area person who's my EE guru, and spirit guide. And he's donated hundreds of hours to looking over my Eagle circuits, and making fun of me, and making them better.
CK (01:01:14):
And Malcolm Knapp is also somebody who had this engineer accelerator program, that tried to introduce me to kind of project management basics for embedded systems. And Paul DeMarinis, for not letting me buy a data logger. So I think just thank you to this audience and to everyone out there who has worked to make the tech that you guys use more accessible.
EW (01:01:45):
Our guest has been Cy Keener, Professor of Art at the University of Maryland. That's Cy as in Charlie Yankee and Keener, K-E-E-N-E-R dot com.
CW (01:01:58):
Thanks, Cy.
CK (01:01:58):
Thank you.
EW (01:02:00):
Thank you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting. Thank you to MattyC for pointing me toward Cy and our Patreon supporters for Cy's microphone. Although he became a Patreon supporter for his microphone too. That's very confusing, but we appreciate it.
EW (01:02:16):
Also, thank you for listening. You can always contact us at show@embedded.fm, or hit the contact link on embedded.fm. And now, a quote to leave you with, from Dr. Jane Goodall. "What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make."