1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:10,000
Welcome to the Circuit Python Show. I'm your host, Paul Cutler. This episode I'm joined

2
00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:15,680
by Max Lupo. Max is a Canadian multimedia artist who constructs odd inventions. His

3
00:00:15,680 --> 00:00:20,760
work strives to find meaning in process, value in translation, and creativity in discarded

4
00:00:20,760 --> 00:00:27,260
or mostly useless things. In 2017, he graduated from OCAD U's Interdisciplinary Art, Media,

5
00:00:27,260 --> 00:00:31,640
and Design program with a master's in fine arts. He teaches sculpture at a community

6
00:00:31,640 --> 00:00:38,400
college in Ontario, Canada and is the community librarian for the Innisfil ideaLAB and library.

7
00:00:38,400 --> 00:00:44,780
Max, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm glad you're here. How

8
00:00:44,780 --> 00:00:49,360
did you first get started with computers and electronics? Once upon a time, way back in

9
00:00:49,360 --> 00:00:55,460
my first round of art school, I was gifted a MacBook and that was fun for a long time

10
00:00:55,460 --> 00:01:02,480
and eventually Linux ended up on that computer. I started using Debian for a while and once

11
00:01:02,480 --> 00:01:08,320
that got there, it was kind of a gateway into tinkering in the computer itself and that

12
00:01:08,320 --> 00:01:12,520
was necessitated partly because Debian at the time didn't have great control of the

13
00:01:12,520 --> 00:01:17,560
fan or temperature of the computer it seemed and so I had to do something about that. I

14
00:01:17,560 --> 00:01:23,640
wrote a Python script that later became kind of a graphic user interface for myself to

15
00:01:23,640 --> 00:01:29,460
manually turn on the fan and then from there learning more about Python through some great

16
00:01:29,460 --> 00:01:35,060
books by Al Sweigart making little games, text adventure games and some of that was

17
00:01:35,060 --> 00:01:40,140
able to intertwine with my arts education and making projects that had some degree of

18
00:01:40,140 --> 00:01:46,160
interactivity to them, whether that was a simple button press or later on more complicated

19
00:01:46,160 --> 00:01:50,080
interactions. But yeah, it all started wanting to solve a problem for myself and then kind

20
00:01:50,080 --> 00:01:55,800
of learning Python as a way to do that. Your art pieces over the years have used Arduino,

21
00:01:55,800 --> 00:02:01,260
MicroPython and CircuitPython. How do you know which language is best for each piece?

22
00:02:01,260 --> 00:02:06,700
When I first started making projects, the Arduino was available and it was great. Being

23
00:02:06,700 --> 00:02:12,260
able to use a microcontroller for the first time and having resources and guides available

24
00:02:12,260 --> 00:02:17,400
was so exciting. Being able to add interactivity into a project and so the Arduino Uno really

25
00:02:17,400 --> 00:02:23,180
did a lot for me for a long time. As projects became more complex and as the Raspberry Pi

26
00:02:23,180 --> 00:02:28,240
kind of became available, those first single board computers, it again felt like a kind

27
00:02:28,240 --> 00:02:33,220
of a new world opening up and a lot of possibilities. As it was described to me many years ago,

28
00:02:33,220 --> 00:02:38,660
trying to choose between an Arduino or microcontroller and a Raspberry Pi, thinking about how many

29
00:02:38,660 --> 00:02:45,280
ands are in your project and so if you need to create a text model and make an animated

30
00:02:45,280 --> 00:02:52,160
GIF and display that onto a screen, a Raspberry Pi is probably your best option. Later on

31
00:02:52,160 --> 00:02:59,580
in my art education, I was working on my master's thesis, MicroPython burst onto the scene and

32
00:02:59,580 --> 00:03:04,680
again it was this opening up of creativity and possibility just by virtue of being able

33
00:03:04,680 --> 00:03:10,700
to do so much on one little board and then of course as time goes on, CircuitPython became

34
00:03:10,700 --> 00:03:18,300
available and so now it's really kind of about the availability of the hardware itself, the

35
00:03:18,300 --> 00:03:23,980
availability of learning resources through Adafruit which really makes CircuitPython

36
00:03:23,980 --> 00:03:30,100
a great package deal and even so far now as when I'm thinking of a new project and it

37
00:03:30,100 --> 00:03:35,100
might need a Raspberry Pi, I'm inclined to try to think of a version of that experience

38
00:03:35,100 --> 00:03:40,100
that could live on a CircuitPython board by maybe pre-computing a text model and then

39
00:03:40,100 --> 00:03:45,900
just dealing with the text itself on a CircuitPython board perhaps. So yeah, that's mostly where

40
00:03:45,900 --> 00:03:47,540
I'm at now these days.

41
00:03:47,540 --> 00:03:51,740
Let's talk about some of the pieces you've created and shown at various exhibitions.

42
00:03:51,740 --> 00:03:56,000
You have a master's in fine arts and your master's thesis abstract starts with, Beep

43
00:03:56,000 --> 00:04:01,080
Boopatronics addresses discarded consumer goods, nostalgia, and the creativity inherent

44
00:04:01,080 --> 00:04:06,060
in adapting one object into another. Tell me about Beep Boopatronics.

45
00:04:06,060 --> 00:04:11,460
Well I'm so glad that we got to Beep Boopatronics. So this, yes, was part of a master's thesis

46
00:04:11,460 --> 00:04:17,940
project. It works something like this. I had a discarded chord organ. This is, imagine

47
00:04:17,940 --> 00:04:23,080
kind of an accordion but standing still or sitting still and so it needs air. Air comes

48
00:04:23,080 --> 00:04:28,700
from somewhere, you depress the keys and then sound is generated and originally it had kind

49
00:04:28,700 --> 00:04:33,520
of an internal motor to make sound and you would play your kind of compositions. So that's

50
00:04:33,520 --> 00:04:38,420
the central piece in the show in a way. But of course the motor was broken, the outer

51
00:04:38,420 --> 00:04:42,760
shell was broken, so it was kind of garbage except for the fact that the keys themselves

52
00:04:42,760 --> 00:04:47,220
still worked. You can press the keys and that was just fine as a starting point.

53
00:04:47,220 --> 00:04:53,260
Elsewhere in the installation there was a small radio that I had taken apart and reworked

54
00:04:53,260 --> 00:04:57,860
so that where you would normally choose a station, the little kind of slider, that was

55
00:04:57,860 --> 00:05:03,560
now just an opening to accept a punch card. And so this huge punch card roll had a composition,

56
00:05:03,560 --> 00:05:09,400
a musical composition punched in it as a series of holes. You would put it in the radio and

57
00:05:09,400 --> 00:05:14,660
it would generate MIDI notes and so kind of musical information and put that over a wire.

58
00:05:14,660 --> 00:05:18,360
How did that musical information get there? Well of course it was a micropython board

59
00:05:18,360 --> 00:05:25,560
that accepted the light pulses as notes corresponding to positions on the grid. All that information

60
00:05:25,560 --> 00:05:31,700
was piped through MIDI over a wire to a second micropython board that controlled an array

61
00:05:31,700 --> 00:05:39,960
of servos to depress keys on the chord organ. So we have of course now a musical instrument.

62
00:05:39,960 --> 00:05:43,820
The chord organ as I mentioned needs air and so part of this installation if you haven't

63
00:05:43,820 --> 00:05:50,140
kind of seen the mild humor in play, part of the installation was me constantly pushing

64
00:05:50,140 --> 00:05:55,200
up and down a hand pump to create enough air pressure in the system when a composition

65
00:05:55,200 --> 00:05:59,180
would play you would be able to hear the sound because the servos would press the keys, I

66
00:05:59,180 --> 00:06:03,940
would be making air, it would all make terrible kind of music, it would make something similar

67
00:06:03,940 --> 00:06:07,900
to music but only just barely related to it. And then eventually of course I would have

68
00:06:07,900 --> 00:06:13,440
to stop pumping, put in a new song, then run back to the pump. Eventually there was a motor,

69
00:06:13,440 --> 00:06:18,840
a fan involved to kind of keep some bass line pressure. But the whole idea of it, like why

70
00:06:18,840 --> 00:06:24,960
do any of these things, the thesis project generally was about this idea, what do we

71
00:06:24,960 --> 00:06:32,780
do and how do we think about all this stuff. The chord organ certainly for a modern musician

72
00:06:32,780 --> 00:06:37,900
or really anybody isn't maybe that appealing. The radio on its own, places all around the

73
00:06:37,900 --> 00:06:42,060
world are discontinuing analog broadcasts and so there's a future where that analog

74
00:06:42,060 --> 00:06:49,480
radio doesn't have a purpose anymore. So these two almost useless objects are here and I

75
00:06:49,480 --> 00:06:53,840
have them and I can think about them for some reason and the reason being to kind of just

76
00:06:53,840 --> 00:06:59,400
see what happens when we make them interact. The thesis, you know because it was a master's

77
00:06:59,400 --> 00:07:05,640
thesis it had to really sit in some sort of ideological space. This idea of like adapting

78
00:07:05,640 --> 00:07:09,860
one thing into another and all these kind of maybe bigger ideas but in a simple way

79
00:07:09,860 --> 00:07:15,120
it was just kind of a challenge in a way. We have these two disparate objects, they're

80
00:07:15,120 --> 00:07:21,080
both related to music some way, they're both mostly discarded. What can I do to make something

81
00:07:21,080 --> 00:07:26,600
interesting happen by kind of forcing them to interact together?

82
00:07:26,600 --> 00:07:30,980
Sure, and I'll make sure that I link to all of these in the show notes too so people can

83
00:07:30,980 --> 00:07:34,560
see pictures and not just have the audio descriptions to go with it.

84
00:07:34,560 --> 00:07:36,620
Oh great.

85
00:07:36,620 --> 00:07:41,200
Your latest exhibition ran through December 6th and is called Continuous Memory where you

86
00:07:41,200 --> 00:07:46,560
explore the power and playfulness of words using technology. But not just any technology,

87
00:07:46,560 --> 00:07:48,760
you used obsolete technology.

88
00:07:48,760 --> 00:07:54,720
Yeah, and so it's all kind of part of this these little pieces of the puzzle of we have

89
00:07:54,720 --> 00:08:00,800
all these items and so Continuous Memory was a two-person show curated and put up here

90
00:08:00,800 --> 00:08:11,160
in Ontario and the show itself has a old Centronics electric typewriter. And so yeah, definitely

91
00:08:11,160 --> 00:08:16,460
an obsolete little piece of equipment but in itself was a part of an ecosystem and so

92
00:08:16,460 --> 00:08:20,960
the typewriter you could type on it as much as you wanted of course using the keyboard

93
00:08:20,960 --> 00:08:26,040
but then also it had a parallel port on the side. And so how interesting that it had like

94
00:08:26,040 --> 00:08:32,360
this connection to the outside world and so the obsolete aspect of it is in some ways

95
00:08:32,360 --> 00:08:38,540
an opportunity to again try to create something new, a new experience using like a circuit

96
00:08:38,540 --> 00:08:43,100
Python board that then communicates over the parallel port to make it type out, you know,

97
00:08:43,100 --> 00:08:49,360
whatever I wanted to type. And in this particular exhibition, it was meaningful because the

98
00:08:49,360 --> 00:08:55,180
things that would type out were sort of selections of stories from my own family's history as

99
00:08:55,180 --> 00:08:59,060
part of their kind of immigration to Canada from Italy. And so my father came over when

100
00:08:59,060 --> 00:09:06,300
he was 13 or 16 and I was able to take those stories and the typewriter at the press of

101
00:09:06,300 --> 00:09:12,880
a button will type out a story from his perspective but then elsewhere in the show there's a phone,

102
00:09:12,880 --> 00:09:17,380
there's all these old rotary dial telephones, then when you pick it up it tells a perhaps

103
00:09:17,380 --> 00:09:21,520
the same story or a similar story from one of my other family members perspective. And

104
00:09:21,520 --> 00:09:28,360
so this whole idea of like the past, nostalgia, these obsolete objects in a way as you go

105
00:09:28,360 --> 00:09:33,280
through the show or at least my work in the show is meant to sort of push you towards

106
00:09:33,280 --> 00:09:39,360
kind of these feelings of memory and trying to pick up the pieces between something familiar,

107
00:09:39,360 --> 00:09:43,560
this typewriter, this story, for example. And then as you find these other objects,

108
00:09:43,560 --> 00:09:47,900
you know, that story becomes more complicated. Hopefully your memories about your own sort

109
00:09:47,900 --> 00:09:54,520
of past experiences become more complicated. And so the obsolete objects are, in this show

110
00:09:54,520 --> 00:09:59,460
anyway, are kind of a way into hopefully that feeling of the past and recollection and things

111
00:09:59,460 --> 00:10:00,960
like that.

112
00:10:00,960 --> 00:10:05,620
Tell me about your collaboration on the margin maker, which is described as a meditation

113
00:10:05,620 --> 00:10:10,080
on space, time, and the body and the ways in which our corporatized nation state enacts

114
00:10:10,080 --> 00:10:15,060
order on all three and how one becomes marginal when they are unable to follow acceptable

115
00:10:15,060 --> 00:10:16,920
socio-cultural margins.

116
00:10:16,920 --> 00:10:23,620
Yes, and so this was an exhibition in Montreal with a fabulous exhibition partner, Pascaline

117
00:10:23,620 --> 00:10:32,060
Knight, another great artist. And Pascaline is left-handed. And in Canada, we have copious

118
00:10:32,060 --> 00:10:38,660
examples in our education history of this Hillroy exercise book. It's a pastel color

119
00:10:38,660 --> 00:10:45,080
book with a map of Canada on the front. And inside, it's, you know, these beautifully

120
00:10:45,080 --> 00:10:49,000
set lined pages to, of course, the classic blue and red little margin lines and things

121
00:10:49,000 --> 00:10:54,260
like that. And so for Pascaline, in her experience, being left-handed and having to learn how

122
00:10:54,260 --> 00:10:59,640
to write in these little books and things of that nature, the left hand, you know, goes

123
00:10:59,640 --> 00:11:04,260
forward as the right hand does, but your arm, if you're left-handed, is constantly covering

124
00:11:04,260 --> 00:11:08,420
the margin. So when you go to return back to that line, you're always obscuring your

125
00:11:08,420 --> 00:11:12,180
point of return, your writing looks messy, you're scolded by your teacher for not having

126
00:11:12,180 --> 00:11:16,540
good penmanship, and all these little things start to happen. And your approach to language

127
00:11:16,540 --> 00:11:22,660
is kind of informed by those experiences. And so Pascaline and I set about to take the

128
00:11:22,660 --> 00:11:27,560
form of this exercise book, these blue and red lines, and complicate them, make them

129
00:11:27,560 --> 00:11:32,800
strange in a variety of different ways. And so Pascaline in her practice, she's a printmaker,

130
00:11:32,800 --> 00:11:38,000
so a lot of screen printing, different versions of the exercise book was her contribution

131
00:11:38,000 --> 00:11:45,700
to the show. And then I made a little circuit playground express power device, which draws

132
00:11:45,700 --> 00:11:50,220
a circular margin around a page, kind of like what a record player would do if you put some

133
00:11:50,220 --> 00:11:57,660
pens on the arm. All these things together are meant to kind of complicate and challenge

134
00:11:57,660 --> 00:12:02,560
this idea of like, yeah, that perfect ruled line that we're all bound by when we're trying

135
00:12:02,560 --> 00:12:09,460
to write on a page. And then the essay that you quoted was by a great curator and friend

136
00:12:09,460 --> 00:12:14,180
who wrote some observations on the show, and her observations, yeah, we're kind of extending

137
00:12:14,180 --> 00:12:21,600
this idea outward into what happens when you don't fit into a box. And I'm sure we all

138
00:12:21,600 --> 00:12:25,740
have experiences on a government forum or something like that, where you're trying to

139
00:12:25,740 --> 00:12:30,900
write your answer, and literally your answer doesn't fit into the box, like your penmanship

140
00:12:30,900 --> 00:12:34,920
cannot be contained inside this little box. But then also potentially like the boxes that

141
00:12:34,920 --> 00:12:39,260
are available for you to check or fill out, don't really match your lived experience,

142
00:12:39,260 --> 00:12:45,220
and you have to just do the closest one. That makes sense for you. And so there's all these

143
00:12:45,220 --> 00:12:51,600
little examples where, as soon as there's a rule, there's a margin, which is technically

144
00:12:51,600 --> 00:12:57,860
passable, we can always write in between the margins. But doing so comes with some sort

145
00:12:57,860 --> 00:13:04,280
of usually like weight, or at least some degree of consideration on your part that, you know,

146
00:13:04,280 --> 00:13:09,300
we no longer fit in between these lines. And so the show is playful, all these kind of

147
00:13:09,300 --> 00:13:14,900
big ideas sound like big ideas, but this was very playful and silly. There were opportunities

148
00:13:14,900 --> 00:13:20,740
for people to run their own little drawing devices that were more mechanical, and have

149
00:13:20,740 --> 00:13:25,420
that kind of experience of making those lines in red or blue ink for sure.

150
00:13:25,420 --> 00:13:27,980
How did CircuitPython help with the installation?

151
00:13:27,980 --> 00:13:35,220
Ideally, CircuitPython was there to kind of be a collaborative point since CircuitPython

152
00:13:35,220 --> 00:13:40,420
text is just Python, and it's almost plain language as if you were to read, you know,

153
00:13:40,420 --> 00:13:44,440
what a program was doing. And that was ideally meant to kind of be a point of collaboration

154
00:13:44,440 --> 00:13:48,940
between Pascaline and I. As the show went on, you know, I became kind of just more responsible

155
00:13:48,940 --> 00:13:53,980
for the coding part of it. But having that opportunity there to quickly prototype and

156
00:13:53,980 --> 00:13:58,940
be able to get feedback from Pascaline about what machine was doing and how she would like

157
00:13:58,940 --> 00:14:04,300
it to work or this or that or seeing her kind of work with a certain part of it, just being

158
00:14:04,300 --> 00:14:10,620
able to kind of go back to the code so easily, make minor adjustments. And since it was a

159
00:14:10,620 --> 00:14:15,720
Circuit playground express, being able to give kind of feedback to the user in the sense

160
00:14:15,720 --> 00:14:20,100
of like the LED lights and things like that was really useful for sure.

161
00:14:20,100 --> 00:14:25,780
That's fantastic. Last question I ask each guest. You're starting a new project or prototype.

162
00:14:25,780 --> 00:14:27,940
Which microcontroller board do you reach for?

163
00:14:27,940 --> 00:14:37,500
Ah, yes. So these days I'm really excited by the KB2040. It's the Adafruit board that

164
00:14:37,500 --> 00:14:44,560
fits the Arduino Pro Micro footprint. And it's great. It has a USB-C port, which apparently

165
00:14:44,560 --> 00:14:50,260
is a requirement for me these days. I don't know why. It has a lot of onboard storage

166
00:14:50,260 --> 00:14:55,300
space, very compact. It used to come in purple. I still have a few of the purple ones. I wish

167
00:14:55,300 --> 00:14:59,900
the purple one would come back. But yeah, that's my favorite these days for sure.

168
00:14:59,900 --> 00:15:04,020
Well, if LadyAda is listening, maybe she'll get that feedback. And I'm with you on the

169
00:15:04,020 --> 00:15:07,920
USB-C. I've got a couple of picos and every time I have to use micro USB, I just kind

170
00:15:07,920 --> 00:15:10,940
of sigh and wish for a USB-C powered board.

171
00:15:10,940 --> 00:15:11,940
I know.

172
00:15:11,940 --> 00:15:15,920
And if anyone wants to learn more about you or your work, where should they go?

173
00:15:15,920 --> 00:15:22,960
Yeah. And so please go to maxlupo.com. It's a blog. You can subscribe and get an email

174
00:15:22,960 --> 00:15:28,880
update or put that URL in your favorite RSS reader that should know what to do. I'm maxlupo

175
00:15:28,880 --> 00:15:34,160
underscore on Instagram, which where more of the art stuff is. And then follow the links

176
00:15:34,160 --> 00:15:39,560
to find where I am on Mastodon. I never remember the full URL, but I'm there too for more of

177
00:15:39,560 --> 00:15:44,520
a technical kind of approach to my work and what I'm up to. Those posts end up there.

178
00:15:44,520 --> 00:15:47,820
Well, that's great. I'll make sure to link to all of those in the show notes as well.

179
00:15:47,820 --> 00:15:49,920
Max, thanks so much for being on the show.

180
00:15:49,920 --> 00:15:54,740
No, thank you, Paul. It's been great.

181
00:15:54,740 --> 00:16:00,280
Thank you for listening. For show notes, visit www.circuitpythonshow.com and transcripts

182
00:16:00,280 --> 00:16:04,960
are available in your favorite podcast player. Until next time, stay positive.

183
00:16:04,960 --> 00:16:06,960
♪♪

184
00:16:06,960 --> 00:16:09,020
you