Sand Art—Bruce—Professor Rodolfo Cossovich
Context And Significance of the Project:
Frankly speaking, the research I did for the Group project contributed to our midterm project to some extent because my Group project was focused on the theme of automation. When I was researching artifacts for inspirations, I noticed one special mirror, which was also shown by professor Rudi in the class, that was made of wool and can adjust its color by identifying the object in front of it, therefore functioning as a mirror. This artifact gave me a deeper understanding of interaction. The interaction shouldn’t be based merely on the output in response to the input. Instead, it’s more likely to be a continuous process in which the subject and the object constantly make real time changes. In other words, both the subject and the object are taking charge of the interaction. This laid the primary foundation for the midterm project. After countless talks with one another, we have thought of many possible candidates for the project, but we continuously changed our ideas because we thought they were still not interactive enough, and that they were still based on the simple ideology that if I send one input signal, something else would happen on the output side. I remember that it was one Friday afternoon and we were both exhausted. Suddenly, Jennifer came up with the idea as if this was injected into her brain that we should make a screen displaying the sand painting on another working pad. The way our project involves interaction is that the audience is also required to participate and this should be a continuous process including responses from both sides. At first, we thought that it would be cool if we can display the same thing made on the working pad, and we decided to use approximately 600 LEDs to create a screen. However, (Of course), this was not practical because we only had limited time for our project. After several brainstorms and advice from the professor, we combined different ideas and decided to craft a relatively smaller screen, which means that the accuracy will be decreased a lot, but we thought of a way to change this downside into another feature. At this stage, our project was more a game. One player creates a sand drawing on the working pad while another player tries to guess what the other participant is drawing from the LED screen which is not that precise. This also taught me something that we never take a completely negative view towards something, because the part which we originally thought to be negative or bad is actually possible to be converted into something else by some efforts. Our project doesn’t aim at a certain targeted audience. Rather, we intended to create something that everyone can enjoy.
Conception and Design of the Project:
Since our project focuses on the real-time response to make the interaction process more smoothly, we decided to let the LDRs to de the sensors connected with the sand painting working pad after trying several sensors. We once had the idea of using the pressure sensors because it can cover a bigger area, but we soon got rid of this idea for the reason that detecting the weight on the working pad doesn’t function as well as detecting the light. The ideal interface we initially designed for our project was like two separate boxes, having a working pad and a screen respectively. (Though this interface was only partially achieved because of the limited time. This also taught me something when doing the project that I should always plan accordingly.)
Fabrication and Production of the Project:
Honestly speaking, there wasn’t a so-called most significant step in the production process. Because the overall production process was extremely significant. The reasons for the choices on the sensors were discussed in the previous paragraph and speaking of the screen, we once shifted our ideas that we may as well use an LED matrix instead of making a screen on our own, and we even figured out a way to control each LED in the matrix separately. However, we were struggling with how to connect our digital input from the sensors to the matrix since it only has one pin for digital input. I knew there must be a way, but at that time we were really in a hurry agreeing on a solid plan and therefore had to give up on the matrix plan. We finally decided to do what we agreed on at first, that to solder 64 LEDs and LDRs, which would all be connected to Arduino boards. However, even if we reduced the numbers of the LEDs and the LDRs in comparison with our plan in the first place, to craft the final plan still included a heavy and overwhelming workload. After living in the IMA workshop for 2 whole nights, we finally completed (at least 99 percent of) our project. Though we don’t have time in the end to craft a beautiful interface for our project, we believe it’s capable enough to convey the idea we came up with. Moreover, this experience also taught me one thing, which was also strengthened by Professor Parren, that we should always have a backup plan when our initial plan doesn’t seem to work so well. We sometimes need to think out of the box.
Conclusion:
The goals of our project, in general, aimed at providing users a new way to interact with the sand art, also offering them a way to have fun. To illustrate this idea. Jennifer and I created an artifact with a sand painting working pad and a LED display screen. What is made on the working pad will be real-time displayed on the LED screen. One participant creates the sand painting and another participant will look at the display screen and try to guess what another person is drawing from the pixels displayed. The interaction lies in the continuous process involving the constant feedback from both participants and the artifact. Based on the audience’s responses, the interaction we intend to convey works. This midterm experience also taught me to view things critically and remind myself that I should always have a plan B. If I have extra time to perfect my artifact, I would first polish its interface. Also, I believe that there must have some way to replace the screen made of soldered LEDs with the LED matrix and I will try to apply the matrix to our project. Furthermore, I think there should also have some possible ways for me to use one single Arduino Board to control the 64 LEDs instead of using 10 boards. The perfect version of our midterm project should be made of fewer materials, but still, be able to convey and display the idea we have. To sum up, though I know I didn’t make a perfect project to display, this still means a perfect project to me because the building process taught me way more than what the presentation taught me.
Here is some visual documentation:
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