Fall has come

The crisp night air of the first cold night in Iowa is bracing as I step off the humid Cambus and a lungful of the stuff hisses through my teeth and pours into my chest. It has been overcast and gloomy all day and the creeping night is only the day’s photo negative.

Summer is over. As I walk up the hill towards home I realize that I don’t care. It’s a full three weeks in to this new semester and I don’t think I could be happier. This summer was productive but the new classes are a welcomed change of pace. The rushing around, the new stresses, and the adjustments in eating schedules are a sigh of relief in a season that had grown heavy with routine. 

Tonight I am in a particular good mood.  In addition to coming off a successful week where I felt like everything went well, I also witnessed the first nascent conversations between Denise and Christopher, two of the posse of five NAO robots that we are using in the Robot Theatre class. Up till now we have been doing monologues or pre-creating gestures for a library. The process is involved and laborious but rewarding. We act out both parts of the scene, taking suggestions for refinement or improvements from the class and I can’t help but be reminded of the video that I have seen of Pixar animators doing the same thing for their peers. Tonight through the efforts of the entire class, we combined gestures and dialogue and the results are small, but good and forecast what is to come.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUcQ8n29uQA&list=UUdzlWmmWe- 

(sorry about the directly embedded link. Its a private video but the link will get you there.)

In the coming weeks these robots will stand and move to tell the story more effectively. The voices will be sculpted to add emotion. Later scenes will involve humans and robot interactions. Finally we will add an audience.  

I will post more soon as we get things into a completed state.