Author: Jennifer Cheung

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Recitation 10: Media Controller by Jennifer Cheung

In this recitation, I controlled the size and number of a photo in Processing with a potentiometer in Arduino.

I used this photo that I had previously drawn as the media to control. I wanted to do something similar to the pixelation exercise in the previous class to change the size of the photo with the different potentiometer values. With a smaller sized photo, more photos would fill the screen. With Young’s help, I was able to make this happen. I then decided to add a tint onto the photo that would grow in intensity as the picture got smaller and more numerous. For the last touch, I made the color tint vary depending on the position of the mouse on the canvas.

Technology was used in this project because the picture was displayed on a screen and controlled by a Arduino circuit, both of which fall under technology. As described in Computer Vision for Artist and Designers, art in recent years has more easily been made on computing systems, which allow us to have interactive experiences. Processing is a great tool in combining technology and art to create these interactive projects, in which pixels can be modified live with the use of webcams and Arduinos. Technology gives way for artists to be incredibly flexible in what they make and how they make their art. Technology is a new art medium that bridges art and function together.

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Recitation 9: Final Project Process by Jennifer Cheung

In this recitation, our group of five shared about our final project ideas. Here are summaries of their projects:

Malika’s Maze

Malika and her partner plan to create a maze in Processing in which the user controls a ball going through it with Arduino. The goal of the project is to roll over all the open spaces within the maze, but the challenge is that the ball only stops moving when it hits a wall. She also added that there would be levels, whose difficulty would be determined by how fast the user completed the first maze. I suggested that since the user wouldn’t be familiar with controlling the ball when they first play, the time it takes to complete the first maze wouldn’t be very representative of how skilled the user would be at playing the game. Therefore, it would be helpful to include a tutorial and trial run before the user starts the actual game. 

I found it interesting that the ball would only stop once it hit a wall, since this would make it particularly hard to navigate through the maze. However, this is the whole point of the game, which will stimulate the player’s strategic thinking and make them think more critically about how to tackle the maze. After hearing of her new ideas she later made in class, I am excited to see how she integrates different sensors and graphics into her maze. 

Citlaly’s Ball of Confusion

Citlaly aims to make an obstacle game similar to Super Mario Bros, but instead the character will be a raceless, genderless ball that has the goal of collecting different obstacles instead of avoiding them. These obstacles represent different challenges in the world today, like college debt and discrimination. To control the ball, users will stomp on a platform to go down, or jump lightly on the platform to go up. The goal of the game is to bring more awareness to the world’s different challenges and educate people on how to address these situations. I really liked the concept of creating a nostalgic game for players while making them more aware of current issues, and am excited to see how she combines entertaining gaming with these serious issues. Citlaly said that the game would have educational popups during the game whenever the ball collected an item, but I pointed out that this may be a little distracting for the player to read the text and play the game at the same time. So, I suggested that the text be put after the game ends. Additionally, our group was a bit wary if the vibration sensors would be able to distinguish jumps from stomps, so Malika suggested using a similar pad to the one used in Dance Dance Revolution. 

Caren’s Blurred Picture Game

Caren’s game uses blurred pictures of different well known people, places, and objects to have people compete to guess what the picture is of. Pictures will be blurred on Processing, and users will be shown a list of options to choose from on screen. When they get the answer, they can choose it by pushing a certain button that aligns with the answer onscreen. Caren said that the game could be a multiplayer game that is collaborative or competitive, but said that there would only be one set of buttons to choose answers with. I suggested that another set of buttons be added so that two players could have their own buttons to compete with. Caren also added that the pictures would become more clear as time went on, but I found that this would make things too easy for players, since they could just wait to find the answer. Instead, I suggested that the blurriness would stay constant for each round, but would progressively get more clear with each round if the player kept getting it wrong. I think this project makes great use of the skills we have learned in class, but the playing experience could be heightened by using different sensors instead of just pushing buttons to choose answers. 

Robert’s Obstacle Game

Robert wants to use distance sensors to guide a character through an obstacle game. By lowering and raising both hands over the sensor, the character will be able to go left or right and forwards or backwards. We found that the same hand motions for both character movements could be confusing, so we suggested moving one hand a different way so the player can easily distinguish how to move the character. I think this is a very interesting way of controlling a character and look forward to seeing how he will design the graphics of the game. 

These projects were all generally along similar lines of my definition of interaction. In each project, users controlled a part of the game with Arduino, which would enact a change in the game, which would then influence how the player continued to play the game. 

Feedback Received

After explaining the way our Labyrinth game would work,  my group said that they really liked the general concept and thought it was very interesting, but the execution would need to be careful in order to make the game fair for both players. My group suggested that I add a story at the beginning of the game to better inform players of the contextual Greek Mythology. Additionally, Malika brought up that the player controlling the Minotaur would be able to easily win the game by simply waiting at the exit of the maze to catch Theseus, who would need to go through the exit to win. She brought up changing the maze from a birds eye view to a first person player perspective to make it more challenging for both players to navigate the maze. However, we both agreed that this would be extremely hard to code, so the project will most likely not make this change. However, I will now be cautious of designing the maze so that the Minotaur cannot easily find the exit and wait there for Theseus to come. 

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Week 5: Final Project Intention – Jennifer Cheung

Many years of creating visual art has shaped my approach to design to focus on aesthetics. Creating allows me to put my thoughts into the real world with the goal of communicating ideas to others. In my artwork, I consider and design aspects like composition and color to effectively convey a scene or feeling to viewers. Artists and designers I am inspired by include illustrator Janice Sung, jeweler Ada Chen, and painter Hieu Nguyen. Their use of visual art to create beautiful unique narratives inspires me to design my own style of art.

Most paintings and illustrations that I surrounded myself with have the function of pleasing the eye and making people think, rather than serving a practical use that aids us in our daily lives. However, visuals are powerful in conveying concepts and moods better than words. Visual communications is thus an extremely useful tool in everyday interactions that paint ideas efficiently. 

With the power of visuals in mind, I would like to make a speculative design for a product that can visualize people’s thoughts into pictures that others can physically see. When words cannot fully express one’s thoughts, this product will be able to effectively communicate ideas. This may be particularly helpful for people speaking different languages, people with communication disabilities, babies, and even the user, who may need to visually see their ideas to organize them. This product would help people better understand and have more empathy towards each other. 

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Week 4: Speculative Design – Jennifer Cheung

Elon Musk’s Boring Company has taken the first steps in creating an underground tunnel system. The tunnels are exclusive to auto piloted cars, used to evade and relieve urban traffic congestion, as seen in Los Angeles. Cars will be able to enter lifts on the street that will lower them into underground tunnels. Once in these tunnels, the cars will be auto piloted to avoid other cars at extremely high speeds.

These innovations have the capability to revolutionize city transportation in the future. The tunnel networks may expand throughout cities and suburbs. This may make commute between different counties and cities extremely efficient, which could lead more people to rely less on urban housing and move to nearby suburban areas. Cities would then be much less densely populated. However, since these tunnels are restricted to autopilot cars only, poorer demographics who cannot afford these cars would be excluded from this system. Thus, the people moving to the suburbs would be a wealthier demographic, leaving poorer people in the cities. This would create a divide in the city and suburb demographics, with the tunnels acting as a symbol of elite exclusivity. Conflicts between the wealthy and the poor would thus ensue.

A solution to this would be to make the tunnels accessible to all types of cars. Shown in the CBS feature video are platforms that send the cars throughout the tunnels, which makes cars’ autopilot function unnecessary. Thus, the tunnels would not be exclusive to only those who can afford autopiloted cars, and would make these new innovations openly accessible to anyone who needs to use them. This would foster more inclusivity and reduce the exclusivity of these powerful new systems.

In another scenario, autopilot cars become the norm in the future, and are cheaper and more accessible to most drivers. With everyone owning these kinds of cars, everyone would want to take an advantage of the fast tunnels. High popularity of the tunnels would cause traffic jams and delays within the tunnels, creating just what it sought to avoid on the surface of the ground. 

This could be solved be implementing a system in which these tunnels can only be used in times of desperate need. All cars are allowed to use the tunnels for a limited amount of times per week, and it is the driver’s decision of when to use them. A set limit would prevent drivers from always using the tunnels whenever they please, and would instead encourage them to think carefully of why they need to use the tunnels. The cars’ autopilot system would keep track of how many times the tunnels have been used and prevent drivers from abusing the tunnels, leaving them more open to drivers who actually need to make immediate use of the system.

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Week 3: Enchanted Objects Workshop Reflection – Jennifer Cheung

After learning about enchanted objects, we worked in teams to go through a design process intended to help cats. There were three stages for each step of the process. In the first stage, our group thought of problems that cats may face. Nobody in our group had much experience with cats, but we inferred that cats would have problems with communicating with their owners for needs they had, like food and affection. Cats cannot express their needs in words, which would make communicating with humans sometimes a challenge.

In the next stage, we sought to find a solution to a problem that another group brought up. They were concerned about how to feed and nourish stray cats. We started thinking of how stray cats behave in the winter, and discussed how they tend to go under cars and on top of car tires for warmth. With this knowledge, we came up with a detection system under cars and above tires to watch out for cats. Sensors would alert drivers before they restarted their car to prevent injuring the cat, and would also inform nearby animal shelters of the cat in the area. This would allow shelters to look out for the cat and be ready to feed and shelter it.

At the last stage, we moved to a different group to make a prototype of another solution. The problem brought up was the excessive amount of cat dishes needed to be cleaned, with some solutions including combining dry and wet food dishes together and a self cleaning bowl. We took these ideas and made a stacked bowl prototype out of modeling clay, with a dry food bowl above a water bowl. The dry food bowl would have small tubes going down the side of the bowl at the edges, so that when cats eat from the edge, their saliva would go down the tubes and end up in the bottom wet food bowl, decreasing the amount of cleaning owners would have to do. 

This process of brainstorming ideas, making solutions, and creating a prototype was a fun experience, since we were collaborating with other groups’ ideas at each stage. So, the resulting prototypes were the result of everyone’s contribution, which is much like how design in the real world is like.