Putting some scattered notes here (in no particular order) of ideas for projects that have bubbled up from the great conversations and resources contributed by all the wonderful SASSers! Open to collaborate on any of these or just discussion and energy if anyone has interest.
I am completely taken with Bulat Galeev's „Human-Machine“ that Natalie posted. Would like to make something which is not a replica, but maybe a series of sound/light boxes in the spirit of the original thing, especially with an interactive communication/diagnostic function linked to the viewer or environment. I have some preliminary ideas about servomotors, mylar strips and smart LED arrays.
The discussion of and links to cultural/archeo-/ethno-/astronomy got me thinking about a sort of on-demand system that could generate new constellations (possibly based on deep multicultural image databases by feature matching) and ad hoc lore/legends (based on machine learning, something like InferKit (nee Talk to Transformer)) as a strategy to defamiliarize/decolonize the night sky and the stories about it.
Interested in building a single-pixel camera after learning about the Vidicon system on the Luna missions–not sure about conceptual rigor here, but I think it would be a great project. Especially if there was a sound component. Makes me think of Jim Campbell's brilliant Portrait of a Portrait of Claude Shannon piece (of course that one has conceptual chops for days). Could be a public-engagement exhibit for the museum?
* From Luke - Some info on archeoastronomy. Start with this video, looks at connection of different myths and legends with the night sky and
archaeology sites - https://johngrigsby.weebly.com/online-lectures.html
If you are interested in any themes from this also read https://johngrigsby.weebly.com/henges-at-the-interface-of-earth-and-sky.html?fbclid=IwAR2TW-owF1uox-zw1EjwE2hgSs6c15Ca0FEqR6xNUns1iUw1cTwJePs0HRk