Turbidity Paintings hardware build begins

image from OpenROV
http://www.openrov.com/products/2-8.html

I began the build of the OpenROV 2.8 kits today with the immense moral and artistic assistance of Colleen today. the kits are the hardware for a new project called Turbidity Paintings by myself and collaborator Sara Gevurtz that investigates the notions of primacy of perception (Merleau-Ponty) as common root of all art and science.

i was awarded a Florida Research Fellowship in November which included a seed fund to purchase the hardware and get the project kicked off.

we proposed that in the act of capturing abstract images underwater we would also be creating a database of images that could be analyzed by water quality researchers. the title, Turbidity Paintings, is a nod to this idea—turbidity is the measure of particles in suspension in a water column. our project will use two OpenROV units to capture these images and other key water quality data such as nutrients, dissolved oxygen, etc. these data will be used to name the abstract images merging the images into a concurrent state of data and aesthetic object. See: http://turbiditypaintings.com/

the project has gotten some interest in art/science communities and hopefully i will be announcing some other exciting news soon. it has also garnered some attention by environmental science and i have a research assistant from Dr. Matt Schwartz at UWF Earth and Environmental Sciences. we began collaborative research initiative and i will be working with Haley, a production/research assistant from that department.

Colleen and i put in a good 4 hours today; here's a timelapse of Build Day 01. We estimated about another 10 hours of build time until we can hit the pool for testing and learning to drive.