Project Title:
Motion Painting
Project Statement of Purpose:
The enlightenment of our project is an interactive piece that uses motion detectors to catch people’s hand movements and draw corresponding images on the screen. By interacting with the piece, people can draw whatever they want using their movements such as pushing their arms and waving their hands, instead of just painting with a pen. Looking closely, how people move their hands is like they’re using magic to paint on the screen. This is also very interesting and creative. Our project is going to make some improvements on the basis of our enlightenment, which is mentioned above. Similarly, we also want to show people that sometimes you don’t necessarily need a pen or pencil to create a beautiful painting. There may be an inherent concept in many people’s mind that if you want to draw something, you have to use a pen or pencil or some pigments which would use up your physical strength really quickly. We want to break this concept by creating an interactive art piece that allows people to draw only with their motions. Since art can be in any forms you can think of, we want to let people create their own art interactively and creatively. So we would like to use motion sensors or distance sensors to detect people’s body movements and generate different forms and colors of images on the canvas according to different movements people make. We also intend to inspire people to think outside of the box and create new forms of art with their imagination.
Project Plan:
In order to make our Motion Painting, we would use Arduino to build the circuit for the sensors and use Processing to display people’s art piece on “motion painting”. We would also fabricate the appearance of sensors using 3D printer or Laser-cut. For Arduino, our initial thought is to use a motion sensor to detect people’s movements. To avoid getting confused, we would set a detectable range so that the sensor can only detect people’s hand and arm movements instead of the whole body movements. We also thought about using a couple of distance sensors to build this detector, but due to previous experience, the sensitivity of distance sensors may not satisfy our goal. So the sensor remains to be discussed and tested. In terms of Processing, we want to assign different values from Arduino with different figures shown on the screen. For instance, if people push their hands, Processing would generate different shapes of stars on the canvas; if they wave their hands, Processing would present different sizes of circles. The color of each figure is also changeable based on the speed of people’s movements. If they move faster, the color would be redder; if slower, it would be bluer. Our intended audience is people who are interested in interactive art pieces and willing to create interactive and creative work by themselves. We draw from our previous experience of visiting art exhibitions and learn that people prefer interactive art pieces when they go to an art exhibition and these kinds of art pieces are easily to engage and understand. So what we want to create is also an interactive art piece that is easily to engage and understand.
Our project timeline is basically as follows:
- Nov. 22: Start coding for Arduino, setting up the circuit and testing the sensor.
- Nov. 26: Start coding for Processing and combine it with Arduino.
- Dec. 3: Finish the code for Arduino and Processing and test the circuit.
- Dec. 4: Fabricate the controller (using 3D printer or Laser-cut).
- Dec. 6: Finish the project.
- Dec. 9: Finishing touches.
Context and Significance:
My preparatory research and the experience of midterm project both show that interactive art pieces should focus more on users’ experience. So this has become one of the goals we want to fulfill in our project. On the one hand, experience means communications between the art piece and the users, including different kinds of input and output.In the article called “Introduction to Physical Computing”, Igoe and O’sullivan show us how the computer sees us as a sad creature: “we might look like a hand with one finger, one eye, and two ears” (19). In order to change this, we need to add more ways of input when we communicate with the computer. They also mention that “we need to take a better look at ourselves to see our full range of expression” (Igoe and O’sullivan, 19). What we are capable of when communicating with computers is not limited to clicking the mouse or the keyboard. We should explore more kinds of experience in order to be more interactive with the art piece. On the other hand, experience also includes the simplicity of understanding the project. So for this project, we also focus on how to make people be aware of how to interact with our project and understand it as soon as they see it. Another goal we want to accomplish is to create a continuous communication between the art piece and the users.This aligns with my definition of interaction as well. My definition for interaction is “a continuous conversation between two or more corresponding elements”. It’s important for us to build a constant communication between the project and the users.
Since we are re-creating the art piece that inspires us, what our take from the art piece is the way of communication between the art piece and the users. However, we also make some improvements to it. Instead of generating random figures, we want to create different figures based on different motions people make. The audience of our project can be anyone. But it is especially intended for people who would like to create different forms of art and people who are interested in interactive art. Our project can work as a tool and also an enlightenment for them to create their own art piece. We want to put our project in an art exhibition so that it can inspire more people to create novel and creative art in whatever forms they can think of. Then the subsequent projects can be even more creative tool for people to create art. There is no limitation when creating an art piece. What limited us is only our imagination. People should give full play to their imagination in order to create new forms of art.
Reference:
Physical Computing – Introduction by O’sullivan and Igoe