Author: Jiayan Liu

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Raps week5 response: Thomas Wilfred—-Katie

When I first saw Wilfred’s Lumia, the moving light performance made me think of aurora. Different than what we have watched in last week’s class where the geometric shapes dance towards the music, Wilfred’s translucent lights set against the black background doesn’t have a fixed shape.  “imitating light effects on canvas or in marble could never replicate the innate character of luminosity.” (Orgeman 21). Wilfred’s images have more fluidity that can not easily captured in the canvas. I think to be the first to make light as a form of art work and influence many artists around that time and afterwards is the significance of his work.

I’m pretty interested in the color usage of Wilfred performance and wondered why he never changed his background color for each piece? And I found out the answer in Orgeman’s text: “for Wilfred, darkness was to lumia as silence was to music,”the point of departure, support, and return” for all compositions. “Darkness must be established” (Orgeman 32). And I then feel that this statement works for me as well. In my imagination, black is the color that can absorb and mute all the sounds but white can’t.

In his techniques, I see him played a lot around the mirror reflection and the different positions of lamps and different angles of filaments.

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Raps week4: Oscar Fischinger Allegretto response (Katie)

It’s like a ballet performance of those geometric shapes. These shapes are of primary and high saturation colors like red yellow blue and green, setting against a black background with two expanding circles. They move along the music and change the forms while the emotion changes. When the music grows slower and more melodic the small diamond shapes are swimming together like a group of fish. When there’s a big loud sound and the emotion get stronger, the shapes will expand and even seems to get out of the screen.

In my research, I found out that Fischinger was experimenting the colored liquids and three-dimensional modeling materials. So, I guess he got inspirations from those colored liquids and materials. The 3d modeling materials are solid, like the triangles and squares in the film, and the movement are like the flexible color liquids dancing with the rhythm.

These geometric ballet performance makes me relate to the Bauhaus stage performance I learned in another class. And they are around the same period of time where the industrial revolution influences the world a lot, including art. So, I guess there’s where the mechanical shapes and accurately calculated movement comes from.

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Group project 1 reflection Katie (Jiayan Liu)

Inspired by the definition of interaction given by Crawford (“a cyclic process in which two actors alternately listen, think, and speak” (1) ), I define interaction as a kind of conversation where two or more actors are involved. They listen (receive the information), think (process the information) and speak (give out the processed information).

The first project is two computers play rock paper scissor together. This project reshaped my definition of interaction in terms of the “actors”.  At first, I thought interaction must involve at least one human. but in this example, there is no human involvement, only two computers. But this project doesn’t align with my definition of interaction because there is no “thinking” process between the two devices: they give out the rock paper scissor gestures simultaneously. Each computer runs its own random algorithm, choosing one of the three possible items. The two results are random every time, no cyclic process within. To be more interactive, the two computers can analyze the results and choose the item based on the prediction of the other computer.

Another project is the intelligent personal home assistant called “Lauren”. According to the project description, “Lauren will remotely watch over the participants . Participants will be able to direct her via voice command, she can anticipate their needs and learn to accommodate their desires. She will control their home remotely using the installed networked devices.” This project better aligns with my definition of interaction. It “listens” (to the voice command), “thinks” (anticipate the owner’s needs and accommodate their desire) and “speaks” (give out actions).

Our group project aims to address some problems in daily life, the starting point is that many of us who have pets find it difficult to deal with them when the owner is on vacation. Much like the project “Lauren” in our research, this project is a pet assistant installed with cameras and sensors. It’s a wearable device wear by the dog and controlled by the owner’s phone. Inspired by the first project, the rock paper scissors, we decided to design a project not used by human. This device has the ability to “listen”, “think” and “speak”.

The “listen” process: there are multiple sensors on the dog’s collar to receive the dog’s barking and the blood pressure. The “thinking” process: it can analyze the frequency of the sound and the pressure of the blood and tell whether the dog is hungry. The “speaking process”: after the analyzing, it gives out food from the dispenser if the dog is hungry. When the owner is on vacation, he/she can view the dog’s actions by the camera on the collar and make some command on their phone to the connected collar. For example, if the dog urinate in the wrong place, the dispenser will not give it treats, vice versa.

this is our poster:

this is our prototype of the dispenser

references:

The Art of Interactive Design, Crawford 

https://www.creativeapplications.net/webapp/lauren-smart-human-home-intelligence/

https://www.creativeapplications.net/processing/rock-paper-scissors-virtual-ring-where-two-computers-endlessly-battle-algorithms/

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Raps assignment3 (Parren)—Katie

This is the link of my patch:

https://gist.github.com/JiayanLiu27/8f8c8c726e2d1193116b41c677276e38

The first thing to do is to create another sequence follow the order of Oscillator(s) -> (Mixer ->) Filter(s) -> Level Control -> Effect(s). Then mix the two sequence together by an audio mixer and then put a stereo to let it sound out.  After connecting all the modules, the next step is to modify the sound. I want to create an audio that is magic, enchanted and mysterious, something that can be used in the harry potter movie. I first try to adjust the tone color.  I mute all the modules except the  first Oscillator. The diagram on the top left corner is right for me. The diagram on the bottom sounds very electronic which I don’t want. Also the HPF filter makes the sound electronic no matter how I modify the rotary knob. And the comb filter makes the sound sounds like machine gun, which is not what I want, too. Finally I found that the classroom filter’s lowpass function fits my audio. Then I added a little delay to create the mysterious atmosphere. 

The next step is to create the melody and the rhythm. I choose the 1/16 dotted for the main melody and the 1/8 dotted for the accompanying music. and the melody is not too low or too high with a certain flow.

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Recitation3 Sensors Katie

the moist sensor: we made our hands wet to test how it works. 

The distance sensor:

     

 

The vibrance sensor: This is a little bit tricky since in the original diagram on the website, there’re two wires inserting into the same hole on the Arduino board. But it’s impossible for us to do this. So we need a bread board to help us. The resistor and the vibrance sensor are in parallel connection.

 

Q1:The moist sensor can be used in farming to text if the crops have enough water and be connected with a water sprinkler. The distance sensor can be used as measuring the height of a person. The vibration sensor can be used as measuring the pressure. 

Q2: Because computer has its own language, you first follow the tutorial and then make your own variations upon that.

Q3: Computer changes people’s way of thinking, way of learning and way of socializing. For example, we are thinking more about privacy. Since we are doing almost everything online: shopping, buy tickets, order food, posting blogs, sending emails etc, our personal information is exposed to the public. The way how we learns also changes. Children now can learn piano in on a computer app, there are also online courses for students of all ages. In terms of socializing, we are now talking to someone via online chatting even more than face to face.