{"id":1058,"date":"2015-10-05T13:32:54","date_gmt":"2015-10-05T17:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/?p=1058"},"modified":"2015-10-05T13:32:54","modified_gmt":"2015-10-05T17:32:54","slug":"kirk-cameron-illustrates-the-concept-of-parallel-computing-at-the-world-maker-faire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/2015\/10\/05\/kirk-cameron-illustrates-the-concept-of-parallel-computing-at-the-world-maker-faire\/","title":{"rendered":"Kirk Cameron illustrates the concept of parallel computing at the World Maker Faire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the centerpieces of the recent World Maker Faire in New York City was a giant cylindrical object studded with hundreds of translucent green electronic panels that waved around like leaves in the wind. \u00a0The object was SeeMore, an animatronic sculpture designed by sculptor Sam Blanchard and computer scientist Kirk Cameron to illustrate the concept of parallel computing. \u00a0Blanchard calls the project a &#8220;physical data visualization that demonstrates the changes occurring.&#8221; \u00a0The name is a reference to supercomputing pioneer Seymour Cray. \u00a0SeeMore is itself a parallel computer: each of SeeMore&#8217;s 256 translucent green &#8220;leaves&#8221; is a Raspberry Pi microcontroller attached to the main structure with a 90-degree reticulating motor. \u00a0The Raspberry Pis are all networked together to parse up and down a database of New York City public records. \u00a0When an individual Raspberry Pi was idle, its &#8220;leaf&#8221; would be held stationary against the main structure, and it would extend away when it was carrying out computations. \u00a0In this way, SeeMore embodies the process of parallel computing. \u00a0Blanchard says the goal of the installation was to &#8220;get us to stop thinking of computers in a black box.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.inverse.com\/article\/6542-meet-seemore-maker-faire-s-256-node-computer-cluster\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1059\" class=\"thumbnail wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"width: 610px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1059 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/10\/SeeMore-Kirk-Cameron.jpg\" alt=\"SeeMore Kirk Cameron\" width=\"600\" height=\"899\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/10\/SeeMore-Kirk-Cameron.jpg 600w, https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/10\/SeeMore-Kirk-Cameron-200x300.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption class=\"caption wp-caption-text\">Kirk Cameron, Seemore, Sam Blanchard (SOVA), and Ebon Upton (Founder and CEO of Raspberry Pi Foundation).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the centerpieces of the recent World Maker Faire in New York City was a giant cylindrical object studded with hundreds of translucent green electronic panels that waved around like leaves in the wind. \u00a0The object was SeeMore, an animatronic sculpture designed by sculptor Sam Blanchard and computer scientist Kirk Cameron to illustrate the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faculty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1058"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1065,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1058\/revisions\/1065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}