Sketching Arts from the Hand-disabled: Sketch Your Dreams with Sketch-it

Project Statement of Purpose

The interactive designs I explored triumphed not over the high-tech they included but the interaction they provided for the audience and it was often the case that success of the projects was the graphitization  of people’s mindset or mentality. It stroke me that sketching was also a way to express one’s mindset graphically. Though a simple work of hand, it was almost impossible for many people with hand disabilities and even if they can manage so, it would take great efforts. Thus, the project aims to help people with hand disabilities to accomplish their dream of sketching art, to help them express themselves of sketching in an easier way. 

Project Proposal Plan

The project was basically a robotic sketcher, consisting of two stepper motors hanging on a drawing mat vertical to the ground, which were attached with two strings connected to one servo whose fans were combined with a pencil. On key board, people can control the servo to have the pencil sketching in half circles by clicking the mouse and relocate the pencil on the drawing mat by moving the mouse. The setting up of such device, including laser cuttings and 3D printing, would take about three days to finish without concerning other urgent missions from other courses that I need to accomplish while the code of it would take about one day or three depending on whether I will have time to finish the harder but more interactive version of the code. Starting from the easy version, when the code in Processing is run, the interface would be split into 4 areas correspondingly to four directions of the movements of the servo with pencil, up-left, up-right, down-left, and down-right. For example, when the mouse is placed in up-left area, the stepper motor at the up-left corner of the drawing mat would start rolling to shorten the string attached to the left side of the servo so that it moves in the up-left direction. The harder version would take algorithms. There would not be specific indications of where to place the mouse to have the servo moving towards specific directions. Instead, by tracing the trail of the movement of the mouse, the servo would move to the location on the mat corresponding the location of the mouse in the interface of Processing. Moreover, I wanted to add a variable to adjust the rotation of the servo so that the pencil doesn’t always draw half circles. The variable could be changed according to the strength applied to a force sensor. 

Context and Significance

 I think in this project, it was fulfilled. There was a successful work, Supersynthesis by Amay Kataria which visualized the music produced by people in the periodical glowing of lights according to notes and melodies.( n.d.) Amay Kataria described the purpose of the art is to visualize people’s minds (mediations) in the form of lights per se.( n.d.) I think sketching was also a direct way of speaking from one’s mind in the form of visuals. Though it was easy for us to sketch with a few techniques of drawing, it was hard enough for people with hand disabilities to draw. There is a Polish artist called Mariusz Kedzierski, who was born without hands, but succeeded in making a career though sketching with his arms hold pencils. His works of art were still on sale in his personal website, https://www.mariuszkedzierski.net, and captured multiple global prizes. He was such an inspiring power for people that he became a motivational speaker influencing the world. (Bern, n.d.) 

Interactions, in the perspective of Interactive Media Art, from my perspective would be the comprehensive indications and responses from/for human users that are received and generated from/for electronic artifacts. Processing understands the movements and clicking of mouse while the users, on seeing what have been drawn on the mat could decide her next move to make. The project aims its target audience specifically at the hand-disabled, but doesn’t limit its users or audience within such. The terminal ideology of the project was intended to help people with hand disabilities produce their graphic work of art in sketches. By the works of arts produced, the recordings of production of arts by these people and the mechanisms of the device, more social attention could be drawn to hand-disabled people, to whom more help should be offered, instead of marginalizing. 

References

Dockery, Regan. “Light & Sound Synthesis: In Conversation with Amay Kataria.”interviewed  by Regan Dockery. In Environment Sound. Can-V5. Creative Applications. 2022. Accessed Nov. 15th, 2022. https://www.creativeapplications.net/environment/light-sound-synthesis-in-conversation-with-amay-kataria/.

Bern, Marija. “We Can’t Believe What These 37 Artists Can Do Despite Their Disabilities.” In Art, People. BoredPanda. 2018. Accessed Nov. 20th, 2022. https://www.boredpanda.com/inspiring-disabled-artists/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic.