Author: jf3760

Going back to my definition of interaction as I defined it during the group project, interaction is a conversation happening between two or more objects, through which they negotiate in order to give outcomes. Based on this initial definition and my experience of my midterm project, I feel my definition of interaction is becoming more specific. My midterm project was a game-box where people were able to decide how all the elements in the box would be combined in order to create a scene. On my way to achieve interaction in my project, I had the feeling that I was going to hand part of the job to the audience I would have. Specifically, I could not predict precisely how the audience would organize these elements and all I could do was to offer the options. Therefore, I was only the one who intended to provide a platform where people found inspiring and comfortable to share their creation.

Therefore, my definition of interaction has evolved into a more specific idea that exploring the possibility of creating a medium or platform where people have the freedom to use the tool provided to express themselves. During the process of constant re-creation, we get to know how other people’s views or even values deviate from ours. Besides, the designer of the interaction object may have an expectation of what the audience is going to do in the first place, just my partner and I did. However, our expectation was continuously modified by what the audience really did. For instance, we had two pieces of background music as the elements in the game-box and we expected that the audience should use either of them to create the scene they wanted. What we did not think of was that in the user test, one student played those two pieces of music alternatively with a certain rhythm and the effect was cool. All in all, during the interaction we intended to achieve, the expectations of both sides (the designer and the audience) were changing as interaction went on.

This thought resonates with the interactive object I have found inspiring. As shown, it basically is a portable mini printer. Its portability makes it more flexible to fit into people’s daily life. In the product description, people can send messages through the app and make that message printed out by this mini-printer. If you want to send a message to someone else and he/she has this printer, you can then send that to the app instead so that he/she can see a piece of physical paper printed out slowly with your words on it. Surely, communication through social media will be more efficient. But the physical form of the message, at least as I feel, is able to bring people closer. Also, this printer provides a platform for people to show their creativity. People can decide the shape of the paper and whatever to print, so it is now applied by students to printing homework questions and stick them onto to the textbook instead of hand copying, by people to printing recipe or to do list wherever they are as long as they think of it, by business people to printing their name cards instead of carrying them. It is a tool that amplifies people’s freedom to create instead of restricting it, which highly aligns with my definition of interaction.

Another project I have met, on the other hand, differs from my definition. It is an “interaction” movie called “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.” Unlike other normal movies, it provides choices while the audience is watching. Based on the choice the audience have made, they would view different storylines. That was actually a great idea of engaging the audience in film watching. I tried it online and found it fascinating at first. However, as I watched it again and made different choices, I felt that there was not much difference as if my choices did not matter that much. Perhaps it was because I expected too much, but I still felt the freedom of the audience to engage in and decide the plot was highly limited. The offered options which were claimed to have effects on the following plots were either not that effective or restricted. For instance, the audience might find none of the options was what they want to choose at all. Therefore, the feeling of being restricted large reduced the experience of interaction, which did not align with my definition of interaction.

I now perceive interaction as offering a medium for people to freely connect themselves with the world. Specifically, during the interaction, the freedom of people to create should be amplified. The designer should not inform the audience and tell them what to do. Just as what is stated in “Making Interactive Art: Set the Stage, Then Shut Up and Listen”, “Once you’ve made your initial statement by building the thing or the environment and designing its behaviors, shut up. Let the audience listen to your work by taking it in through their senses. “ Through the medium, which is the interaction designing, people are able to freely express their own views while coming across others’. As a result, our perception of a certain topic or even the world could change through interaction.

STEP 1: MOTIF

As I was browsing the provided sources, I found the The Art of Computer designing by Osamu Sato attractive to me. Basically, he uses repetitive lines and arcs to create sophisticated patterns. I was inspired by this form of art and decided to use similar method to draw my own artwork in processing.

(He uses arcs repeatedly to create an image of the tree.)

STEP2: DRAW IN PROCESSING

Using my motif as a starting point, I try to combine the image of an eye with the beauty of waves. I intend to use basic elements just as what Osamu Sato does, to reach this effect. during the process of drawing, I have made efforts to adjust the position and the radian of the arcs. It turns out slightly challenging for me to make clear what does each number in the code for creating an arc represents, but I have figured it out at last by experimenting and reading the information offered by the processing website. (https://processing.org/reference/)

To draw precisely, I sketched on paper first to make sure the parameters are correct. It makes drawing in processing easier. However, for each arc, I have to paste the code and make simple modifications. The repetitive work takes much time and I wonder if there is a more efficient way to achieve the effect I want. 

As shown above, the pattern I have created utilizes lines, circles, rectangles and arcs. Also, I have explored trying different colors. For future developemt, I would like to try thinking of a simpler way of coding repetitive elements, which can save lots of time.

CODE

size(600,600);
background(123);

fill(0);
ellipse(300,300,150,150);

noFill();
arc(300,300, 300, 200, PI+QUARTER_PI, TWO_PI-QUARTER_PI);
arc(300,300, 300, 200, QUARTER_PI,PI-QUARTER_PI);

stroke(5,57,43,255);
fill(5,57,43,255);
rect(273, 273, 55, 55, 7);

noFill();
arc(290,290, 300, 200, PI+QUARTER_PI, TWO_PI-QUARTER_PI);
arc(310,310, 300, 200, QUARTER_PI,PI-QUARTER_PI);

noFill();
arc(280,280, 300, 200, PI+QUARTER_PI, TWO_PI-QUARTER_PI);
arc(320,320, 300, 200, QUARTER_PI,PI-QUARTER_PI);

noFill();
arc(270,270, 300, 200, PI+QUARTER_PI, TWO_PI-QUARTER_PI);
arc(330,330, 300, 200, QUARTER_PI,PI-QUARTER_PI);

noFill();
arc(260,260, 300, 200, PI+QUARTER_PI, TWO_PI-QUARTER_PI);
arc(340,340, 300, 200, QUARTER_PI,PI-QUARTER_PI);

noFill();
arc(250,250, 300, 200, PI+QUARTER_PI, TWO_PI-QUARTER_PI);
arc(350,350, 300, 200, QUARTER_PI,PI-QUARTER_PI);

noFill();
arc(240,240, 300, 200, PI+QUARTER_PI, TWO_PI-QUARTER_PI);
arc(360,360, 300, 200, QUARTER_PI,PI-QUARTER_PI);

noFill();
arc(230,230, 300, 200, PI+QUARTER_PI, TWO_PI-QUARTER_PI);
arc(370,370, 300, 200, QUARTER_PI,PI-QUARTER_PI);

noFill();
arc(220,220, 300, 200, PI+QUARTER_PI, TWO_PI-QUARTER_PI);
arc(380,380, 300, 200, QUARTER_PI,PI-QUARTER_PI);

INDIVIDUAL REFLECTION

CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE

When my partner and I were making a specific plan of our project, we referred to the reading “The Art of Interactive Design”. As mentioned, to achieve interactive design, the product should involve the process of input, process and output for each object engaged. Therefore, we were informed that we should stimulate conversations between the audience and our project through our designing. Both sides should engage in the course of “input, process and output” just like in a conversation. The artist team called Time’s Up also offered me inspirations. Their artwork Gravitron aimed to “have people consider ‘their dependence upon biomechanics, control, perception’ and cultural and technological structures that attempt to regulate them”. The deep thought behind their design highly resonated with our intention to put thought-provoking indications into our project. Also, our attempts to have people reflect on what external influence they have long been experiencing but ignored.

I shaped my definition of interaction after obtaining these inspirations, which was to be capable of conveying a message while receiving a message at the same time. Another inspiration was a video (https://m.weibo.cn/5984336074/4311411788665983) edited by a Chinese vlogger named Yue Jing (井越). In his video, he first displayed three separated scenes of a breakfast store, two elderly men playing traditional music in the park and a night club. Then, he mixed them up by altering the background music from each scene. The prototype of our project was then triangulated between his video and Time’s Up’s Gravitron, which was to build up a stage on which people are able to alter the elements freely to create interesting, hilarious or even weird matches. By expansion, we planned to build up a physical product to stress on the interactive function and amplify the effect of mixing up the elements. Moreover, we make elements of music, light and characters more independent from each other to make the indication clearer. When the box is presented to the audience, it is conveying the message that they are able to freely organize the elements provided. After they build up the scene, they take the role of conveying a message of their expectation that how these elements should be arranged. There then exists the conversation between the game-box and the audience.

The purpose of our project is to extract the basic elements from a specific scene so that the audience are able to reorganize them in whatever way they want. Music represents way more than the feeling it can bring about. Same with all the other elements such as the light color and the movements of people around you. These elements are always connected to specific scenes in people’s daily life. For instance, the special ring in Family mart becomes a symbolic piece of music. Similarly, intense music reminds people of clubbing while certain Chinese traditional music makes people recall the parks in China, which are always filled with elderly people playing erhu in the morning. This stereotype of elements in daily life is what we are interested in. We intend to let the audience experience the process of choosing and combining the elements provided to build up the scene. Through this, we draw the attention of the audience to their stereotype of the supposed elements of daily scenes. Our project then provides an opportunity for the audience to explore the possibility of abnormal matches of different elements so that they may get inspiration of how to deal with the implanted stereotype of different objects or people they come across in daily life.

CONCEPTION AND DESIGN

To achieve the freedom of the users as much as possible, we set aside our previous intention to pack up all the elements in one scene and build them up with one single pushbutton. We were alerted to the result that the product might act as a superior informer instead of an equal participator in the interaction. The video about Norman Doors also gave us instructions of making at least the explicit purpose of our product clear to the audience. For example, the pushbuttons should be obvious so that the audience would know what they should do with the product. One specific change we made was about the position of the buttons. They were at the front side of the box before. To make them easier to push and let the audience focus on the stage instead of the buttons, we moved them to both sides of the box. I chose the pushbutton to activate all the circuits. The decision was highly influenced by the video about Norman Doors. I used the similar criteria of designing, which was to make it as clear as possible. Sensors could be another option to activate the circuits, but they would distract the audience from the purpose of the product. More importantly, I intended to give the audience a sense of turning on and off all the parts of the whole scene, so it would be more obvious for them that they were building a scene by adding or cancelling elements.

FABRICATION AND PRODUCTION

In our production process, there were several significant steps we went through.

We first expected to enable the character to orbit by using gears. However, the motor was too weak to run the gears. Therefore, we had to directly connect the motor to the character.

During the User Testing Session, we accepted many suggestions. The most useful suggestion we got was to change the position of our buttons to make them easier to push.

We also got advice on the movements of the characters. Specifically, many users suggested separating the switches for the characters, which means one button for each character. It would take more work, but we still accept this advice to meet the need of the users. We consider providing more buttons as offering more freedom to the users. On the other hand, for those advice we did not adopt, such as lifting up the LEDs to make them look fancier and adding a backdrop to the stage, we thought they less aligned with our basic purpose although they sounded attractive. Also, we modified our designing of the stage for several times, in order to make it bigger and for holding all the circuits and better-looking.

CONCLUSIONS

The goal of our project is to break the daily scene into several elements and give the audience an opportunity to reorganize them. By doing this, we intend to see what kind of stereotype people have regarding the music, different characters and the overall environment. When the users were trying our project, some of them combined the two piece of music we provided by turning on and off the buttons in certain sequence, which was out of our expectation and showed the users’ recreation of it. However, as I reflect on the project, I find that we ourselves have already pre-set the stereotype by providing these elements. Maybe we could give more freedom to the audience and let them decide the elements. Ultimately, there did exist interaction between our project and the audience. If we had more time, we would try to provide more freedom to the audience, maybe by giving them the tool of designing the elements themselves. One important lesson I have learned from the several setbacks that have motivated our modification of our project is that the designers should meet the balance of expressing themselves and putting themselves in the audience’s shoes. The ideal situation is after the audience get interested in the product, they are willing to explore more about the product such as the background story, the hidden meaning or the potential application. Also, through the process of building up our project, I taught myself basic skills of editing music, arranging the circuits in order and so on. I considered these skills as essential for future projects. After the course of designing and redesigning the circuits, I got more proficient in Arduino and the electronics.

When I was planning my project with my partner, I thought further than making a physical thing that would meet the requirement of the professor. I tried to assign deeper meaning to our project. We would be glad to see that our project is able to stimulate others’ thought, even slightly. Our purpose to extract independent elements from reality and motivate the audience to reorganize them can be generalized as an intention to facilitate recreation through creation and to draw people’s attention to the reflection of stereotypes in life.

                                              

Drawing Machines

Step 1–Build the Circuit

Components

1 * 42STH33-0404AC stepper motor
1 * SN754410NE ic chip
1 * power jack
1 * 12 VDC power supply
1 * Arduino kit and its contents

Diagram

Code

#include <Stepper.h>

const int stepsPerRevolution = 200;  // change this to fit the number of steps per revolution
// for your motor

// initialize the stepper library on pins 8 through 11:
Stepper myStepper(stepsPerRevolution, 8, 9, 10, 11);

void setup() {
  // set the speed at 60 rpm:
  myStepper.setSpeed(60);
  // initialize the serial port:
  Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
  // step one revolution  in one direction:
  Serial.println(“clockwise”);
  myStepper.step(stepsPerRevolution);
  delay(500);

  // step one revolution in the other direction:
  Serial.println(“counterclockwise”);
  myStepper.step(–stepsPerRevolution);
  delay(500);
}

Step 2–Control the rotation by adding a potentiometer

Components

1 * 42STH33-0404AC stepper motor
1 * SN754410NE ic chip
1 * power jack
1 * 12 VDC power supply
1 * Arduino kit and its contents

Code

#include <Stepper.h>

// change this to the number of steps on your motor
#define STEPS 100

// create an instance of the stepper class, specifying
// the number of steps of the motor and the pins it’s
// attached to
Stepper stepper(STEPS, 8, 9, 10, 11);

// the previous reading from the analog input
int previous = 0;

void setup() {
  // set the speed of the motor to 30 RPMs
  stepper.setSpeed(30);
}

void loop() {
  // get the sensor value
  int val = analogRead(0);

  // move a number of steps equal to the change in the
  // sensor reading
  stepper.step(val – previous);

  // remember the previous value of the sensor
  previous = val;
}

Step 3–Build a drawing machine

Components

2 * Laser-cut short arms
2 * Laser-cut long arms
1* Laser-cut motor holder
2 * 3D printed motor coupling
5 * Paper Fasteners
1 * Pen that fits the laser-cut mechanisms
Paper

Process

Step 1 and step 2 went on rather smoothly. My partner and I then tried to build up the drawing machine with our two circuits. At first, one of the circuits vibrated violently and was hard to control. We then found there was a connecting problem. After adjusting that, it then operated normally. However, when we attempted to complete certain pattern instead of just drawing meaningless lines, we hardly figured out how. The orbit of the laser-cut arms are restrained, but we had no time explore more about how to utilize that orbit rather than being limited by it. We saw other’s work of combination of perfect curves and would like to spent more time on studying how to make better use of the laser-cut arms later. 

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 am interested in building the machines that are able to intervene the process of human creation. In my view, the use of actuators in building machines is extremely flexible and highly depends on the purpose of the designer. Actuators can either help people complete certain task or provoke people’s thought on their own behaviors or relation with the outside world. What I have interest in is the latter function of actuators. It is this function that mediates the digital manipulation of art. With the intervention of actuators during the process of creating art, people are no longer the only subject in creation. Therefore, the product turns out to be not only a piece of pure art, but also the result of interaction between the machine and the human creator, which helps us reflect on the relation between machines and people.

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 like the work called Kobito: Virtual Brownies made by Aoki Takafumi et al. in 2005. This work makes a link between the physical and the virtual world, representing the convergence of these two. The interesting point is that the connection it has made is bidirectional. Both the physical and the virtual world can have influence on each other. I interpret it as the fact that the invented technology and the inventors (which are human beings generally) inevitably impact on each other and develop interdependently. 

Connecting this back to the work I did during the recitation, there is a similarity that the actuators act as mediators in both cases. In the work by Aoki Takafumi et al., the actuators are the magnets controlling the movement of the physical object. They mediate the intention of the little creatures in the computer screen into the physical world. In my work during the recitation, the motor has been used as the actuator of the laser-cut arms. It mediates the intention of the human creator to draw, along with the intervention of the constrained movement of the laser-cut arms. Through this kind of mediation, we are then able to reflect on our interaction with the designed technology.

The effect of mediation brought by actuators is also the purpose of selecting proper actuators. The artists Aoki Takafumi et al. selected those specific actuators with the aim of rather fluently displaying in the physical what is happening virtually. That is to say, the choice of actuators has to align with the principle of convenience and purposefulness. 

Based on my understanding, interaction is a conversation happening between two or more objects, through which they negotiate in order to give outcomes. As I am browsing the website http://www.creativeapplications.net/ , a design called 100% chair arouses my interest. The designing team builds up different chairs with leftover offcuts. The A.I. is going to predict the possibility of the chair emerging in the near future. I like this idea a lot and consider it highly interactive. It looks like there is a conversation between the A.I. and the team. The team has to make a chair according to their own imagination, and present it to the A.I., which analyzes the possibility of emergence using the database. The outcome, as the introduction of this project suggests, represents how the A.I. views this world. This design deepened my understanding of interaction. The outcome from this design is unpredictable and cannot be controlled. Both the team and the A.I. contributes to the outcome. What’s more, the number it gives, from 0% to 100%, shows the attempt of people trying to explore the field of A.I. in the human perspective instead of the technology perspective. It inspires me with the idea that interaction is more a process of creating and exploring with no definite end than a well-designed program with limited outputs. On the other hand, another designing of a smart-home counterspy agent on the same website is thought-provoking in the opposite way. As described in the introduction of this designing, this machine allows you to know whether your home devices send out private information illegally. Once suspicious activities are detected, you are then able to send a request for explanation via this machine. This, indeed, is a great idea of protecting personal privacy. The designing suggests convenience as well. However, I found it may not apply to interactive designing that much. It is sort of similar to the 100% chair idea, utilizing collection and analyzes of data. But it shows no active interaction between objects. It is more like a helpful and objective tool. People can read the signs about all the devices in their home, but what they can do as interacting with this smart-home agent is just to choose whether to press the button of sending the request. After comparing my feeling over these two designing, I develop my definition over interaction. The 100% chair project better aligns with my definition. It perfectly displays the conversation happening between the A.I. and human beings. Through collaborative exploration, certain outcome is produced.

My idea of describing interaction in term of communication derives from Introduction to Physical Computing by Igoe and O’sullivan. As they point out, the way people interact with their computers is highly restricted. People can only look at the screen and type on the keyboard. Therefore, from the view of computers, people are monsters made up of two eyes and ten fingers. This set limits on how people express themselves to the computers, which also set barriers to better interaction. To develop communications of a higher level, more human senses have to get involved. The communication, therefore, becomes more complex but contributes to more humanity in the outcome.

Now I am going to turn to the idea of “Bedman” in my group project. My group members (Amily Yang, Gloria Liu, Molly He and Ning Zhou) and I meant to come up with the prototype of a product in people’s daily life in 2119. We turned a bed into a combination of an alarm clock, an automatic kitchen, a basin and a vehicle with an artificial intelligence. To allow so many functions on a single product, we had to add flexibility to the bed. As we imagined, the bed consisted of several cubes of different sizes. They were independent from each other and free to move automatically in order to cater to the function. Some of the cubes were responsible for adjusting the appearance of the bed so that it could better function, while the others (the bigger ones) had the additional ability of storage. Made up of these cubes, the bed can offer both comfort and convenience. However, if our designing was just about imagining a versatile bed, the bed would remain to be a helpful but mechanic tool without any form of interaction. To apply our definitions of interaction to the designing, we decided to add a personality to the bed, allowing it to run conversations with its owners. Specifically, the owner could upload his/her schedule for the other day orally to the A.I. such as jogging at 6AM, taking a shower at 7AM and having breakfast at 8AM. Then, the A.I. would remind its owner of this schedule. What made it special was that the schedule could not be canceled easily without proper reason. After the schedule was uploaded, it would be analyzed by the A.I. immediately to assess the importance of each item. For instance, since jogging was a healthy option, the A.I. would insist on persuading its owner to finish this task. Even though the owner might want to cancel it for lack of motivation in the morning, the A.I. listed suggestive data and used encouraging language to persuade him/her. Only after negotiation or repletion of the command could this item be canceled, which meant the owner still had the right to choose. All in all, the bed collected its owner’s personal data, analyzed his/her living habits and gave persuasive advice of a healthier life. It would neither do what it was asked to (for example, cancel the morning jogging) immediately if the command deviated from the owner’s previous goals, nor become to forceful to push the owner to complete his/her tasks. It operated communications with its owner, aiming to achieve a better life of its owner through negotiation and collaboration.

(We combine the skateboards with the boxes to represent the vehicle)

(The overall look of our “bed”)

(Our poster showing all the functions of the “bedman”)

I think the interaction displayed by our designing aligns with my definition of it. the “bedman” allows conversation between its owner and the embedded A.I. system, through which they reached a balance of the attempt to live a healthier and better life and the freedom of making choices. As the two projects above suggest, interaction should be a both-sided activity. In the case of our “bedman” project, both the bed and its owner actively engage in the interaction by listening to each other, processing each other’s ideas and stating their own words.