Recitation 1: Electronics & Soldering
Task 1: Build the circuits
Circuit 1: Door Bell
It’s funny that my partner and I spent almost half of the class finishing this task and only use ten minutes to finish the other two.
Because neither of us choose physics to study in high school, we first used a lot of time to familiarize with the components. We then spent a loooot of time understanding the circuit diagrams. But although we spared no efforts to try it for about thousands of times, the speaker still not worked.
We felt really bad and finally asked the help from the professor. She first corrected our circuit, from which I learnt how to avoid creating short circuits on the breadboard. But the speaker still not worked—-the professor told us that it was a broken one!
After changing it, our speaker finally made its sound. We were too happy to cry! It was an unforgettable success.
(Also we successfully and independently changed the switch into the one we made by ourselves :D)
Circuit 2: Lamp
With the experiences of making the door bell circuit, we made this lamp only used about five minutes, which really inspired us to explore more.
Circuit 3: Dimmable Lamp
Although it seemed far more complicated than the previous two, we still succeeded to make it work the first time—except at first we felt really confused about how to connect the variable resistor into the circuit.
We finished our first recitation arrangements smoothly! Hooray!
Task 2: Switch the switches
Already mentioned above 😉
(Plus: I really enjoyed the process of making things by myself. I am already looking forward to make the final term project.)
Task 3: Q & A
1. After reading <The Art of Interactive Design>, in what way do you think that the circuits you built today include interactivity?
I think the switch is an important part of interactivity, especially when we changed it into the one we made. When we put the switch together, the speaker would make sounds and the light would turn on. This is a kind of reaction to our acts and I think it is a low degree of interactivity mentioned in the book.
2. How can Interaction Design and Physical Computing be used to create Interactive Art?
From the video, we can find that Zach Lieberman used interaction design to meet the purpose he wanted to reach and used physical computing to make the project from imagination to reality. For example, he noticed there were lots of people unable to move, so he designed a project which could catch the movement of people’s eyes, so that the disabled people could use this way to draw or write. After he designed it, he also used technologies to make it out, which finally meant the finish of his idea. To summarize, creating interactive art maintains two parts: first, you need the ideas and design the project, then you use the physical computing skills to make it out.