Recitation 4: Drawing Machines by Xueping

These three steps works pretty smoothly. The only problem I meet is that the arduino on the borrowed laptop does not work. So after a fellow helps me re-download it, everything works fine. I also feel like differentiating color of wines for different use helps a lot when it comes to complex circuits as it is clear when you check the circuit.

Question 1:

What kind of machines would you be interested in building?Add a reflection about the use of actuators, the digital manipulation of art, and the creative process to your blog post?

I would like to build a machine to prevent me from eating eating a lot snacks. Basically, there is a servo motor connected to the lock which controls the door of the cabinet where I store my snacks. And it can only be opened once a day controlled by micro computers such as arduino. Meanwhile, a weight sensor is added within my chair which tests my weight and whenever I am heavier than the preset weight range, it locks the cabinet and I will lose my chance to open that.

I feel like there is little digital manipulation of art in this machine. Or maybe turning this to an interactive installation I might add projectors to it. There is one screen staying in the cabinet and when those people who’s weight suggest they’re healthy or being too light sit onto the chair, the cabinet opens and shows pictures of food good for them according to their weight while the cabinet continues to be locked with food should be banned projected to the locked door when an overweight person shows up. In this way, this project to some extent turns into a digital manipulation of art.

I come up with this idea just because I find myself having too many high calorie snacks these days during the midterm and it is hard for me to resist the temptation. So I think having such kins of machine is helpful for me to keep fit.

Question 2:

Choose an art installation mentioned in the reading ART + Science NOW, Stephen Wilson (Kinetics chapter). Post your thoughts about it and make a comparison with the work you did during this recitation. How do you think that the artist selected those specific actuators for his project?

Mika Miyabara and Tatsuo Sugimoto’s MovieCards is an interesting Though I am still a bit confused about how the the machine automatically generates cards, I think it creates unique interactive experiences for users since they are the ones who move those cards around and create certain sequence or effects. This creation within certain context to some extent resembles what we did during the recitation. The drawing machine also enables us to draw anything we want through direction control of the motors. So while the process is pretty much the same, every user can get their different unique results. I am not sure what are the actuators functions in this work, but I guess there will be certain sensors involved.

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