Statement of Purpose:
I feel particularly drawn towards installations put in public space (in the middle of the street for example). There is one installation that caught my attention which made me ask myself how interaction comes to be: ‘Marbles’ by Daan Roosegaarde. ‘Marbles’ consisted of a series of irregularly shaped ‘rocks’ set in the street that would light up and emit different sounds when people touched them, got close to them, or simply passed by them. In my final project, I want to explore how the interaction comes to be when a user finds a device in the middle of space, be it the street, a room or a table.
Project Plan:
I plan to make a device that explores touch input and two outputs: sound and light. The device should ideally be of an irregular 3-d printed shape, which would give it a smooth texture and would ideally be white, almost transparent. The device will be fitted with an Arduino and 4 to 5 sensors that detect the distance between one’s hand and the surface of the device. This distance will then affect the color of either an RGB LED or an LED Strip, which means that the device will change color depending on the distance between the surface of the device and the user’s hand. The device will communicate with a processing sketch that uses those values to play different sounds. Ideally, during user testing the device will just be powered up and left there for users to discover how it works, allowing me to see how the interaction between the user and the device comes to be. I have chosen to define interaction as the exchange of information between one or more humans and/or devices in the form of inputs and outputs that are processed in either end.
Context and Significance:
Two installations by Daan Roosegaarde (Marbles and Dune) and one by Super Nature (New Angles) serve as the inspiration for my project, all of them have an input that is processed and produces an output that looks like what I want to achieve in my project. ‘Dune’ turns a light on when the user passes by and turns it of once the user is no longer in front of it, the lights are arranged in a path, which makes the user feel like the installation is lighting their way. ‘New Angles’, on the other hand, is an interactive mirror that changes the color of different LEDs fitted to it based on input from a camera. ‘Marbles’ incorporates the touch element and uses it to play with the device’s color as well as producing a sound. I plan to create a device that can get multiple touch/distance inputs and produce multiple light and sound outputs. It would be, in the end, similar to a scaled-down version of ‘marbles’, but with all the interaction happening in one ‘stone’ that can produce different outputs. The idea of this project is that, if it were to be done in a larger context, any person that passes by it could explore their sensations by interacting with it and discovering its different outputs.