Project B: Networked Installation

“Comments”

By Xiaozao Wang

Description:

My networked installation, named “Comments”, is an interative visualization of how everyone’s online comments can contribute to changing the environment of the whole cyber-community. By simply scanning the QR code and pressing the button on the webpage, people can either leave a positive or negative comment on the virtual space.

At the same time, in the physical installation, 2 different kinds of acid or base chemical will be dripped into a container based on whether the comments people leave are positive or negative. The mixture will turn bloody red if too many negative comments are left, and will return to transparent when more positive comments are left and offset the effects of negative comments, with the help of the PH indicator inside the container. In addition, the computer will read out the IP address of the viewers, and the comment they leave.

By representing the process of leaving online comments through this physical installation, I want to show the power of every single comment on changing the Internet environment, and reveal how negative comments can cause huge damage to the environment and individuals. Through this project, I want to alert people of the harm of cyber-bullying, and remind them to show more kindness to others in online social medias nowadays.

Part 1. Motivation and concept

When I was told that project B would be about expanding the web to physical installations, I decided to make some of our actions on the Internet be visible in the physical world, but changing its form. Leaving comments is what we do every day, but people usually only care about expressing their own feelings, but rarely consider others’ feelings when receiving negative comments. Saying something harmful online is way easier than in reality. Therefore, I wanted to make a project that visualizes the “commenting” process on the Internet, show the possible impacts of positive and negative comments, and thus encourage people to be responsible for what they say.

Also, I have learned an experiment in my high school chemistry lab, which uses phenolphthalein as an indicator since it is transparent in an acid environment but turns red in the base environment. Therefore I decided to use HCl and NaOH to control the PH of the solution, and make phenolphthalein change its color and help imply the impact of comments on the social media environment.

This is my draft of the project during brainstorming:

A challenging part is deciding the “proper” comments on my web page for the audience to choose, and the proper image to be stuck to the container representing the receiver of the comments. I tried some woman’s images and feminist words at first, I also tried some celebrities’ photographs. But in the end, I changed the words to a more generalized and abstract form, and put icons of social media on the container. Maybe that’s because I didn’t want to focus on a limited area of cyber-bullying, or maybe because I was not brave enough to stand up for a certain group of people?

Part 2. Physical Installation

This part is challenging but also exciting for me. I once thought that I was a person that likes making handicrafts, however, you definitely need to go beyond just doing handicrafts if you want to finish a project on your own. You will need to ask professors and LAs for help, because it’s impossible to do everything on your own. You will need to find materials and digital components on your own, which are not provided there at the school, therefore you have to carefully arrange the time to buy them and wait for their arrival. You will need to learn new things such as mixing chemical solutions and wood-cutting, sometimes self-learning is enough, but at most times, asking for help is necessary and more efficient. Asking for help is an important aspect that I learned from this project, though I still didn’t do pretty well in it lol.

This is my sketch for the physical installation. It mainly consists of my laptop, a frame that supports the laptop, two peristaltic pumps with pipes that transmit the chemical solution, a container that holds the mixture of chemicals, and the Arduino board and wires. I took Gohai’s suggestion and decided to have my laptop be a part of the installation because by doing that, people can get a better sense of being the provider of the comments while they look through the camera of the laptop and see how the chemical solutions have flown from their side to the container.

Here is the photo of my physical installation, I make it lab-like, which is inspired by the jellyfish-like exhibit in UCCA edge. I wanted the installation to look like a kind of organism, which shows the dynamic of web space.

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Part 3. Web Development

In this part, I mainly applied what we learned about web development in class to the project, including node.js, HTML/CSS, and Arduino. There are two crucial points, one is the design of the user interface, which is basically what they see after scanning the QR code of my webpage. The viewers can see the whole process of mixing the solutions together and changing color through the live streaming on the webpage, and choose to leave a positive or negative comment. They can also see how many positive and negative comments have been sent out in total. The other one is the communication between the front end (HTML and Arduino) and the back end (javascript). Here, I received much help from Gohai, but also, I think I worked hard on exploring and learning on my own!

Here is the code: https://github.com/Xiaozaoo/expanded-web.git

Part 4. User Tests and Final Project

Here’s the video demonstrating how the whole project works:

 

During the user tests, I received many very insightful and constructive feedbacks:

1. Improve the user interface, make the buttons more attractive and make the live stream full screen, which is more comfortable to look at.
2. Change the picture inside the container to the icons of social media.
3. Generate random comments.
4. Encourage the chaos caused by many people leaving comments at the same time.
5. Change the paper in the container once in a while, and collect papers with different topics on a big billboard. The color of the paper will reflect people’s attitudes towards a certain topic.

I really enjoyed the user testings, especially the last one, the ideas inputted from my colleagues and professors are giving me much imagination on the future improvement of the project!

I think something feasible is point 5 above, and it will be very exciting if I can print more posters containing the QR code and stick them around the campus. I will keep the installation somewhere, and every time a person scans the code and leaves a comment, he/she will contribute to the completion of the project in some way!

Things that can be done better will be doing more preparatory research on cyberbullying and people’s behavior in the digital era, which will help me better clarify the concept and goal of my project. I could also work harder on learning HTML, and the overall time management!

Thank you for reading!