Author: mvy211

Hello and welcome to another blog post reflection of mine!

This one follows week 4’s recitation, during which I managed to ruin an Arduino Uno Microchip. I felt pretty bad about that, but it only means I know what to watch for the next time I plug cables into my computer.

Question 1:
Personally, I would be interested in building all sorts of video game-related machines. If I had the knowledge to properly go into VR studies, I would love to. As a more simpler machine I would love to build, I’d love to try and re-create a version of Hasbro’s “Operation”. It’s a family game where family members take turns and try to pull out plastic objects out of an animated toon human body. The game interacts with sensors, I believe a Vibration Sensor in specific, which eliminates the family member who pulls out a plastic object too fast or isn’t careful enough not to hurt the toon patient. 

The use of Actuators is very interesting to me. It feels as if actuators are used as the motor “movers” in objects. I think they’re probably used in all forms of robots as their electrically-moving joints.  When in the recitation we created the drawing machine I was very interested in how “robotic” the end product felt. There was an input into the device, which came from us controlling it, but it also felt a little bit surreal (not in a bad way, I just never thought I would build something like this). I feel like there are a lot of actuators that we do not notice in our everyday lives and I’ll be looking around to see which ones I can spot. 

Being able to digitally manipulate art is awesome! I’ve always wondered how people managed to create good, interactive art on their computers, because Microsoft Paint isn’t what I would call good, and in class we studied Adobe Illustrator and Tinkercad. My preferred program is Tinkercad, because it allows you to create 3D objects online as you please as well as look through and get ideas from the large online library that it contains. The fact that one could bring digital designs to life with 3D printing is amazing and blows my mind. 

(above is my Tinkercad Design in class)

Question 2:

There are a lot of interesting installations in the ART+Science now reading done written by Stephen Wilson. My personal favourite installation that was shown in the article was “Nazarenos” by Michiel Van Overbeek, where four robots carry around a shrine of the Virgin Mary during Holy Week in Spain. I thought it was spectacular from an artist’s point of view to be able to express something as controversial and complicated as worship through a mix of technology and art.  I liked the idea a lot because, for one, Robots are creatures with no actual emotions integrated into them- they can be programmed to seem to have emotions, but debatably they aren’t actual living creatures. This, in a sense, can take away from the “fear of the unknown” that robots can give humans in general. The “Nazarenos” installation  involves robots with one purpose programmed into them, and even gives them a holy presence which happens due to the artist’s intention. This can be related to the Drawing Circuit we built in class.  Sure, the structure that we ended up building did feel robotic, but it functioned with the input of the creator only. 

I think, therefore, that mister Van Overbeek was brilliant in his selection of ways to represent Holy Week by picking robots, which contained a lot of actuators to function. The shrine which the robots were carrying around weighed around 2 tons, therefore the robots which were built needed to be extremely sturdy and with powerful motors. 

IMG_6713

Thank you!

Monika V. Yosifova

Goodness me…After working through the past three weeks with my group and trying to figure out the concepts of interaction and what a definition for the term would be, I came up with the idea that that “Interaction is the receiving, processing, expressing and therefore interchanging ideas by at least two or more parties.” The two projects that I wished to explore were from CreativeApplications.net and were called “Expressive Tactile Controls” and “Anti-Drawing Machine.” 

The “Anti-Drawing Machine” was a lot of fun for me to research and explore as a project.  I liked it a lot because it involved the user to interact with something that changed based on their own input: Depending on the user’s pen movements, he paper would move around differently and change the output that turns out at the end of the drawing. It works due to the computer vision camera inside of the desk that controls the paper and to me it is a form of interchanging of ideas between two individual parties.  The “Expressive Tactile Controls” project was fun to look at, but it didn’t fit my idea of what interaction is perfectly.  Everyday switches and buttons were given personalities and tended to react to their users differently based on their personality. In my humble opinion, the people and buttons in this project are simply “reacting” to each other rather than interacting. I do not think there’s a direct exchange of information. 

The idea for an interactive device that our group of five came up with, I give all positive credit to Kathy. Our group wanted to create an interactive project that provided blind children aged 8-12 to learn to read more complicated braille. The braille that we created would be laced with older, potentially no-longer existing materials from the past, such as M&Ms or Cardboard and therefore also give the children a brief history lesson and trivia about the Earth’s past. We though the project would be Interactive because it would involve Children talking to a device from the future which could process and respond to their ideas, helping to educate them on braille and world history all together. It would be a simple exchange of ideas. I was immediately on board with the idea because it sounded extremely wholesome.  I’m someone who hates to see people suffer and the entire team agreed that perhaps we could go for creating something that would make blind people’s lives easier. Although we received a lot of criticism on it, and compared to a lot of the other projects that we saw, ours was a lot more serious,  I’m happy that we touched on important ideas that definitely seem to need further study in the future. It was eye-opening to learn more from the comments that we received. 

The proposal for our project wasn’t given from me, but I definitely felt that it resonated with what I believe interaction should be.  Creating an educational product with the intention that people will learn from it while interacting with it fit my suggested definition above.  The project would receive information from the user, process it within its system(while picking out what older extinct historical products it could use to teach with), express the idea that the user wanted to learn about it braille and give them new information on historical references and trivia. 

I hope we handled the critique of our project well and I definitely learned a lot more about the progress of technology surrounding blind people and what they were in need of. I had a lot of fun working with my group members and writing the script for the little 5-minute presentation. Everyone worked hard on it and watching everyone else’s work on their own projects was a lot of fun as well!

Thank you!

Monika V. Yosifova

Recitation 3 was a lot of fun! I mean, all of them generally are.

This one started with the unfortunate accident that I was given a leaking cup, which was spilling all over the table, EVEN THOUGH I attempted to staunch it with napkins. *sighs* So I ended up having to throw my morning doze of caffeine and ran out trying to clean up the tea spill before it reached any of the cables. 

Question 1:

Anyways, in our recitation exercise, Tiana and I made three out of the six Arduino Sensor devices that were given as options. The ones that we made were the models for the Moisture Sensor, the Infrared Distance Sensor and the Vibration Sensor. 

We have diagrams for all of them:

IMG_6230

(I had a lot of fun drawing the diagrams :3)

If the sensor/ actuator would be used for pragmatic purposes, I could definitely see the Infrared Distance sensor being used in modern cars to help people park! It’s what it reminded me of when I saw it originally. The Vibration sensor, if done properly could probably measure Earthquakes? I don’t know how that would work, but it sound fun. On  a more simple note it could simply be connected to a lamp in a restaurant, that lights up whenever the door shifts. The Moisture sensor is the most complex for me to pinpoint. I feel like it would be put to good use measuring moisture in the soil after rain for biologists. 

Question 2:

Considering that our group made three circuits, I believe the one that I can identify using in my everyday life the most is the probably the Infrared Distance Sensor. I think there are a few implemented in the Iphone. When I’m talking to someone on my Iphone and pull it away from my ear, the screen tends to light up automatically. Perhaps, there is a programming within the Iphone that sets for the Iphone to darken when he/she is in a closer proximity to it when the user is in a call.  This feels like the most obvious one… 

Question 3:

Oh! I love cooking therefore this question made me smile. Coding to me, as someone who has only ever worked with Arduino and some forum-type of HTML, feels a lot like baking. If I forget a semi-colon at the end of an Arduino Line, it doesn’t work, similarly to how one shouldn’t mess with the flour and sugar ratio in a cake.  Coding is incredibly complex, but with a  lot of practice and memorization, similar to baking a difficult recipe in Masterchef, one could get it right. And I believe there is a magic that happens when you get it right, so it brings me a lot of joy.

Question 4:

This is a difficult question to answer. The only thing that I can think off of the top of my head when it comes to the influences of computers on human interactions is Ads. As a Marketing Major my mind drifts into Ads and the modular way that they bring people to purchase products. Ads, whether they are on Billboards, our phones or internet browsers, are created in intricate ways that are supposed to peak a consumers’ attention. With Digital Marketing, and Inbound Marketing in specific, now becoming  a big deal, it is much easier for marketers to create an ad that will attract a buyer of some product. The modularity comes in the many different pieces of the human body that react to Ads. Whether its the eyes that read them, the brain that processes them or the fingers that decide to click on the ad, this is an interactive process between buyers and sellers. 

Have a great day!

Week two of this wonderful class was a bit more nerve-wrecking, but I had fun with it nonetheless. The classes were fun and I feel I’m learning a lot about simple technologies!

Question 1:
I interact with technology a lot on a daily basis. I love technology and considering that in this modern age a person is pretty much required to have some knowledge in electronics and interacting with them, I’m happy. I know for a fact that I utilize my Laptop, iPhone and Apple ear-pods on a daily basis.

My laptop and IPhone have the similar qualities.

My Laptop is an Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop, and I tend to utilize it mostly for schoolwork, video games and typing up posts for the writing website that I’m on.  Its enjoyable to utilize because it has a good microphone and sound system and I could talk to my friends with.  The fact that it has a keyboard that lights up and has several USB ports makes it very versatile  for me to plug in a mouse, headphones, and whatever other devices that I could need to have a more comfortable experience working or spending time with my Online friends.

My IPhone is sort of similar to my laptop, I tend to use it to check up on homework, my schedule and generally chat with my friends when I’m free. I don’t spend as much time on Social Media as most other people too simply because I’m  a gamer and I prefer Discord, which is where the people that I care for are. My family generally uses Whatsapp and Viber to communicate with me overseas and that’s another function for my phone. 

Lastly, the other super important technological Item that I use are my Iphone Earbuds. I consider myself someone who needs her alone time and the earbuds help me isolate myself sometimes with just my thoughts and music. On  a different note they can also hype me up, depending on the music that I’m listening to, or can give a little bit of a skip in my walk when I’m talking to my friends using them 

Looking up at all of these forms of technology that I interact with, I’d say that my definition of interaction, specific to these items would be “The act of communicating ideas and intentions to other people or yourself through technological means.” I say “or yourself” because the utilization of headphones is  just  generally isolating, and while a lot of people don’t consider them social, I believe that a person cannot be social if they’re not stable with themselves, and music and just having a couple of minutes a day to yourself can aid with that. 

Also, all three of the devices listed above can transmit sounds between people and therefore allow for communication on a larger scale basis, which I like a lot.  

:3

Question 2: 

I’m assuming that in this question we’re talking about Arduino Circuits, so I’ll pray that I’m correct in this assumption as I answer. 

There were many electronic components that Tiana and I used when we worked on our Basic Arduino circuits on Friday.  The Arduino Genuino board, a breadboard and wires were present in all of these. 

For the first circuit that we worked, we could easily recognize the symbols for LED and Resistor because they were present in the last recitation’s graphs. Finding the proper resistor provided a bit of a challenge as my partner and I tried going by the color tags at first, before resorting to using the Multimeter. 

The first circuit was fortunately really simple and the use of Ground, Power and the Arduino board as well as the app felt very nice and polite. 

The Second circuit felt pretty kind to work with. The only thing that Tiana and I needed was a buzzer, the already plugged in Arduino Board and a couple of wires. We ran the Tone Melody basic test which turned out to be a success. I liked the tune that the buzzer played, I thought it was cute.

 IMG_6010

The Third Circuit which we prepared was very difficult for me. There were a lot of cables and electronic components.  Tiana and I went for creating the two-player Speed Game and it took us a bit longer than all of the other circuits. 

There were a lot more cables and components to watch and try to place comfortably on the breadboard, which suddenly seemed very small. There were two switches which were supposed to be used for the game as buttons which two competitors were supposed to press as fast as possible. Tiana and I had the issue of not placing them around the breadboard properly- We barely had space for the second one once we fit in all of the resistors, LED’s and cables!  

IMG_6015

We didn’t really have any problems recognizing any of the technological components though, so I’m content!

Question 3:

Oh Wow, this is very random but I’m really in to it…Hmm…

If I had 100000 LEDs of any brightness and color at my disposal I would love to use them to decorate a cave.  I’m Bulgarian and I adore mountain climbing and hiking. I’ve gone into several caves but generally a lot people get frightened a the though of experiencing sudden dimming darkness. 

Caves are beautiful, especially when they have stalactites, stalagmites or Ice in them and if I could light those up the cave walls with LEDs to either create or enhance people’s awe of Mother Earth’s creations, I really would. I am a very visual person who tries to find the positives in anything so, this seems like a fun idea to do. 

Question 4: 

I find that the reading on Physical Computing was very interesting!  I agree that “Computing is like Human Thinking,” as said by Igoe and O’sullivan. I think that the human brain is a much more complicated machine that a computer is, but I think that they have similar functions of reacting to inputs and expressing outputs as responses. 

Computers and other such technologies can indeed provide a medium of expression for humans with images and sounds that they are unable to produce by themselves. All that we need are our fingers, eyes and ears ( and maybe mouth if there is a microphone involves) and we can input information into a technological machine such as the computer. 

I think that the ideas expressed behind Input, Output, Processing and Transduction are interesting and important and the example with the microphone changing the energy in the air into electrical input is amazing. I never thought of it this way! 

Lastly, for me the best part of the whole article that made me reflect on the nature of interaction is the idea that “You need to know what you want to do in order to make it happen.” If you don’t know what to input, then you can’t input it (a.k.a. one needs to know what they want if they want to make something at all). It’s accurate and actually resonates with me. I need to understand what the circuit wants to accomplish with its functions before making it, otherwise I will simply get lost somewhere along the way. 

I don’t know what else I can say, I hope my response is satisfactory and I thank you for reading it! It’s always a pleasure to study how technology works; Considering I grew up playing videogames and going to an arcade, getting to build a mini-button-pressing game was awesome

Thank you and Have a Nice day! 

Monika V. Yosifova

My experience in my first ever Interaction Lab Recitation was not what I expected. I didn’t know that there were so many people taking that class and it was truly exciting to actually get to meet new people. The girl that I was working with on the electric circuits project is called Tiana, and we both worked really hard to understand how both soldering and building circuits operated!

Circuit 1:

For the first circuit we used a Breadboard to help us organise our electric circuit. We connected this breadboard to a 12 V power cable which was the source of electricity for this circuit. We connected the red cable from that 12 V Power supply to the positive charged slots on the breadboard and the black cable we connected to the Negatively marked slots on the breadboard. This made everything that was connected to the Negatively charged slots ground. Then Tiana and I plugged in the Voltage regulator in the breadboard, it controlled the amount of power output throughout the breadboard. We connected sections 1 and 2 of the Voltage regulator together with a 100 nF Capacitor which condensed and stored some of the energy throughout the circuit. I then used a black cable to connect section 2 of the voltage generator to ground. Managing to get the Switch Button to work was more difficult as we had to watch the placement for it more carefully. We made a few mistakes with it’s placement and needed help figuring it out. Lastly, we put in the Speaker, plugging it in with energy from the 3rd slot of the Voltage Regulator. When we pressed the Switch Button after we plugged the circuit into the power, we heard a rather loud “WOOOM” sound and we celebrated.

Note: We originally hadn’t plugged the Voltage Regulator in and were wondering why it wasn’t working. We were being too careful with it cause we though we’d break it.

Circuit 2:

Circuit 2 personally gave me the most satisfaction to make. I love lights and as someone who never studied physics before, it was always amazing for me to see how people made a light turn on. When Tiana and I managed to get Circuit two done correctly, with no help, I felt like a Air-bender or a wizard (only for electricity). 

Similarly to circuit 1, our group utilized the Breadboard, the 12V power source, the Voltage Regulator and the capacitor  in a  way similiar to before. Section two of the Regulator was plugged into ground while section one was plugged into  power. The Capacitator was again used to connect Sections 1 and 2.  It got more interesting once Tiana and I had to figure out which resistor to use. We had been provided with two and had a difficult time finding out which one was the best. Professor Cossovich came over and explained the color-coding on the little resistor to us and we were good to go. This 220 Ω  resistor reduced the flow of electricity along the circuit and we connected it to one end of the little yellow LED light bulb that we were supposed to turn on.  Tiana then put in the Switch button, connecting one of the ends of it to ground while the other one was connected to the LED. Once we pressed the Switch, the little light turned on.

Circuit 3: 

Circuit three was by far the most complicated, but after being able to successfully make the previous two circuits, Tiana and I were really excited and just got on with the job. Class had already ended, but we were so curious about what the next little challenge was that we just wanted to construct it.

Similarly to the last two circuits, we utilized the Breadboard, the 12V power input, the Voltage regulator and the Capacitor, connecting Section two with the Capacitor to ground. Section 1 of the Voltage Regulator was connected to Power. Section three we connected to the 220 Ω Resistor again, with red cables, and then we connected it to section two of the Potentiometer. The potentiometer allowed for more control around the circuit as we connected its third section to the Led light. The LED light we then connected to the Switch Button again. There was a black cable that connected ground to the Switch on the other end. When we connected the circuit to the power, the LED automatically switched on, which was a mistake. Professor Cossovich then told us that we had, again, plugged in the Switch Button wrong.  After fixing that, the circuit worked!

Responding to Question 1:

I really had a laugh with some of my friends after reading “The Art of Interactive Design” article.  I though it was an engaging read. 

The circuits that we build in the Friday Recitation class were highly interactive as they created a level of concentration among the pairs that were building them. I had never worked with Tiana before, but the two of us were listening to each other, thinking about how to make the circuits work and communicating what we though was the correct way. It was a good project that brought me closer to someone I never honestly thought I’d work with, and I enjoyed it a lot! 

Responding to Question 2:

Interaction Design and Physical Computing be used to create Interactive Art in many ways. People get shocked and impressed by little things, an example for that would be the “Open Mouth” idea that Zach Lieberman explains to us when he presented his interactive music art to other people. Physical computing and Interaction design, if used correctly and coded properly can revolutionize art and expand people’s imagination and belief of the possible. I know it sounds cheesy, but I like to make people happy, and art that is produced in a way that the audience can interact with it always pleases people. 

Thank you for an awesome first week!

Monika V. Yosifova