Project title: collaborative Fourier drawing machine
It is collaborative drawing machine. The project is to stress on, promote and study the human behavior the collaborative work in art design. Many research has been done, including the paper discussing network, Rudi’s video, and a visualization video on Fourier transformation. which, at first gives us a different idea, but after consideration, it lead us finally to this project.
The project consists of a system of nodes that are connected together, each node’s rotation will cause others to rotate as well, the end of the system will has a pen. The users will control the rotation of each node and draw a picture together.
In the following days we will finish three parts:
Arduino: we will make several control machines to the nodes as well as the pen using rotatery encoder, as well as serial communication. We will try two types of the encoder and test their performance. The the device will sent information of the rotation controlled by users to processing, as well as the control flag of the pen, i.e. whether to draw, to erase or nothing.
Processing: we will using oop with sub system idea to design the drawing display. It implies possible advance use of oop including inheritance so that each movement of a node can pass information to its subnodes. it will also involves in complex algorithms to calculate rotation using complex numbers / matrix / inverse trigonometry etc.
Digital fabrication: we will make a cover for the Arduino hardware with each contains a handle for rotation control, a box to but the hardware in and a button shield for drawing control.
As the name suggests, the project is inspired by several research. What makes us want to focus on collaboration are: the paper we found (posted in the proposal) focuses that in a networked system, the individual node is the core essence, and their collaborative work defines the behavior of the whole network. Therefore it gives us the first inspiration. In class Rudi showed us the video that many people ride bicycles to draw display an animation. This inspired us to design a collaborative drawing machine, but the user can design their own drawing. Lastly, the visualization of Fourier transformation inspired us to design the current form. We want to promote the collaboration among people in the design field, and we are also interested in how people will form a collaboration in doing a complex task. Therefore a record will be made by us after observing the collaboration in our project.