Author: az1783

In recitation this week, we learned about processing basics and drew pictures using processing. We designed drawings using the processing tool and emulated famous art pieces.

Inspiration

For my inspiration piece, I looked at Vasily Kandinsky’s Blue Painting. This piece of Bauhaus art has a lot of abstract lines, ellipses, and triangles. I think the piece is very unique and interesting.

I wanted to emulate that piece, but not copy it. I liked the varied lines and shapes, so for my drawing, I also used triangles, lines, and ellipses. My piece was inspired by the Bauhaus piece in terms of shapes, but I played around with the styles of the piece. In order to achieve my goal, I used the ellipse and triangle function as my objects and changed the fill and smoothness of the shapes. I think that processing is a creative way of designing shapes and drawings, and it’s fun to draw different shapes and designs and start over quickly. However, it does take a while to figure the application out, and definitely takes practice.  

CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE 

For our midterm project, my partner Megan and I were brainstorming ideas and we were both inspired by our homesickness, since we are 7,000 miles away from home. Since Christmas is a special holiday for both of us, we wanted to encapsulate the Christmas vibes in our interaction project. Therefore, we created the “Magical Treet of Christmas” music box project to alleviate our homesickness. For our intended audience, it was mostly targeted at people who also feel homesickness and we wanted this project to be a good substitute for a traditional music box and allow other people to enjoy the holiday vibes/festivities as well. Since we haven’t seen many other music boxes designed in the form of a Christmas tree, we thought it would be fitting for the theme, and we also coded the music notes in accordance with our choice of Christmas songs.  For my previous group project, I researched numerous projects that demonstrate the concept of interaction. For example, one project that fitted my concept about the interaction was the Black Mirror interactive movie Bandersnatch. Through that project as well as other interactive projects, I was able to formulate the concept of interaction and put the idea into reality when creating my interactive music box project.

CONCEPTION AND DESIGN

For our design, we utilized the 3D printer to print our tree in 2 parts and a star in addition.  We painted our tree green and chose various red and blue lights that sparkled as the Christmas songs played. Originally, we wanted to use different colored lights such as green and yellow. However, since the LED lights were too weak for those respective colors, we decided to not use those lights because the colors were barely visible. For our users, we targeted mostly people our age, but the project can also be used amongst a wide variety of audiences who would also enjoy the music box. Additionally,  we created a box shaped like a gift box to hide the Arduino and all the cords for the aesthetic of the project. At first, we wanted to use laser cutting for the different boxes, but since it would take too long, we opted in for a regular cardboard box as the gift box, and we spray-painted the box gold and made the buttons’ box silver for more cohesive Christmas colors. Lastly, we added ribbons and other decorations to our tree to finalize the design.

FABRICATION AND PRODUCTION

Initially, we had a lot of trouble with coding the music notes, but we were inspired by the toneMelody exercise we did in recitation class. With the help of some IMA fellows, we were able to code the music notes and have them flash simultaneously with the LEDs. During user testing, we got mostly positive responses. However, there were many suggestions that the users made. For example, someone suggested adding a star to the tree, and we took that advice and 3D printed a star (then spray painted gold) in accordance. There were also advice about the audio since the music wasn’t loud enough, we added a speaker later and hid everything inside the tree. Also, the users wanted more lights to flicker, and we coded the music to follow along with more lights. The suggestions from the users were very useful overall, and we were able to improve upon our project with their feedback.

CONCLUSIONS

In conclusion, I think our project was successful overall. Our users were able to interact with our project and it brought a smile to their faces, which was rewarding. If we had more time, we would use a DC motor to allow the star to spin with the activation of a sensor or a button. This way, we can better engage our audience and make the project even more interactive. We tried to implement this idea during the revision process. However, we failed since the 3D printed parts fit perfectly with each other, but the motor was too big to put inside the tree, and we ran out of time to re-print the tree. In addition, we also could have added more options for Christmas carols if we had more time. Still, our project did align with my definition of interaction, which means communication, and the process of input, processing, and output. Users were able to communicate with the Christmas music box and through pressing the buttons (input), the Arduino processes the interaction (processing) and displays the output, which is flashing lights and Christmas music. Overall, I think our project was successful and demonstrated the idea of interaction effectively. 

IMG_1216 (video of final project)

References

https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ToneMelody?from=Tutorial.Tone

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1155057

https://www.netflix.com/title/80988062

This week during recitation, the task was to build a drawing machine and a potentiometer circuit. However, I only got to build the potentiometer this time and ran out of time. While building the potentiometer circuit, it was interesting to control the movement of the stepper motor with the potentiometer.  Even though I didn’t get to build the drawing machine, I got the idea of how it works by controlling the motors from steps 1-2, as well as observing others, who seemed to have a hard time drawing by controlling 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 be interested in building an interactive clock and portray a story. The actuators would be stepper motors to control the clock’s hands appointing different times/parts of the story. I want to create a story based on a person/specific event and how it changes over time with the use of the clock. In addition, I want to create a mini film to go along with the clock so every time the user turns the clock hands, there would a supplemental art component to add to the telling of the story. 

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?

I chose the Eye2eye project by Angelika Böck which demonstrates physical intimate interactions with machines. It reminded me of a pupil sensor at my office that I worked at this summer.  It opened gates for people who have registered a photocopy of their irises. It reminded me of how this type of technology is similar to the Eye2eye project which also focuses on interactions with eyes. It scares me at times because of how advanced the technology was at little things such as tracking people’s eyeball movements. But also, I liked the technology over the summer because it was very convenient to enter the office instead of swiping a card. The work I did this recitation also had to do with movements, but more computing from computer to paper. Whereas the eye2eye project focused more on the pupil rather than ‘hand movements’. But it’s still similar in a way because it is computing from computers to physical interactions as apart of the body. I think Böck selected the actuators for her project similar to the stepper motor we used, but since she wanted to focus on eye movement, the motors focused on tracking movements. I think it was a very interesting project and I am curious to see how the author want to further develop the project (maybe) in the future.

DEFINITION

The definition of interactivity to me is essentially communication, through input, processing, and output. In order to successfully interact with others, communication is key, as well as language. In a dialogue between two people, there must be a common ground/shared knowledge to begin (language), then an effort to start a conversation. Next, the back and forth dialogue represents processing, for the two people to interpret each other’s speech. Lastly, there is output, for the two people conversing to speak back and forth to understand each other and build on top of what was previously said. This is similar to the Boolean property, which was mentioned in”The Art of Interactive Design” by Crawford. The Boolean property indicates that various degrees of communication equate the degree of interactivity, which is true.  For instance, if two people conversing don’t speak the same language or has difficulty understanding each other’s speech, then the ideas aren’t getting across as clearly, equating to a mediocre if the not poor level of interactivity or communication between the two.  Ultimately, the end result of the interactions is for both ends to understand each other through communication.

ALIGNING/UNALIGHED PROJECTS

One project that I thought matched my definition of interactivity is the Netflix film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. Although I personally did not like the film as much compared to the other seasons of Black Mirror, it was a pretty good paradigm of an interactive movie through the various choices you could make as an audience and it displayed various endings which kept the audience entertained but also followed the storyline. The one end (the movie/code) understood the other end’s (audience) gestures through their input (clicking through the different options) and processed it to display the results of communication (different videos that matched the audience’s desire) without failing. Therefore, the movie was a good demonstration of interactivity.

One project that didn’t align with my definition of interactivity is the Neo-Natur project. For me, the project does not align with my ideas about interactivity because it is displayed as a piece of art and at a gallery where people can touch it and read more about it, but it cannot communicate anything back. Interactivity means communication between two parties. If the project is just a piece of art that cannot display something in return to communication, then it misses one of the three crucial parts of interactivity, which is the output part.

GROUP PROJECT

For the Interactive Device Group Project, my group and I made an interactive life preserver for the year 2119. Since by then, climate change would have a bigger impact on our daily lives, my group decided to create a device that would be useful by then, since climate change will definitely impact the world we live in 100 years from today. For this project, my group members and I collaborated while creating a prototype for the life preserver, which is essentially a jacket that will protect the person wearing it from all types of natural disasters and environmental issues they might face, such as typhoons, pollutions, earthquakes, and forest fires. We demonstrated ways the life jacket could help someone in those events in a witty way, through the demonstration of Ryan (not wearing the life jacket) suffering in those situations without the life jacket in juxtaposition to Sarah (wearing the life jacket), who is safe and sound. Our other group members acted out natural disasters while Nina the narrator/salesperson narrated the scenes. Together, I think our group did a good job demonstrating the definition of interactivity through our actions with each other and communicated throughout our performance. 

SOURCES

Crawford, Chris. “Art of Interactive Design.” Art of Interactive Design | No Starch Press, nostarch.com/interactive.htm.

Neo-natur article:  https://www.creativeapplications.net/environment/neo-natur-a-space-for-thought-about-and-for-nature-artcom/

Bandersnatch Movie: https://www.netflix.com/watch/80988062?trackId=13752289&tctx=0%2C0%2C47f6efc0615c8d62d718fe677d92e49a8f787c65%3A52ef296a521c3b34db012edaa8e17855d95a4df5%2C%2C