In this group project, my partners Sarah, Yiting and I had the initial idea to create an installation that captures and pixelates pictures depending on the user’s distance.
Concept
Our concept is to simulate a scenario narrating how computers perceive its users. So as the user approaches, the pixels get smaller, meaning the resolution increasing, and hence a clearer picture. And as the user come closer, passes certain threshold, the camera takes another picture and display it. So the person in the portrait changes, as different people approach the computer.
Prototyping
I. Coding
This week we tried to write the code of the ultrasonic sensor in Arduino IDE, sending the sensor’s data to p5.js, and connect with the computer’s camera. The code in IDE is simple, it’s only reading the value of sensor and sending it out. The tricky part is in p5 – to not to crash it, when reading data, capturing from live camera, and pixelating the captured image are all happening at the same time.
II. Play test prep
Despite that we haven’t figured out the entire code yet, we would use our partially working code, together with the sensor, to indicate the idea of the changing pixels. We also planned to mark the threshold distance by taping on the floor, indicating something might happen in this distance. In order to encourage the participants to approach the installation, we will use tape on the floor indicating a large ‘X’ for where to stand in order to direct our participants to the laptop.
III. What are we testing?
For this round we are primarily interested in if a participant will move away from the laptop and/or what their expectations are once their photo has been taken. In order to understand those expectations, we will cover the laptop camera for a moment and ask a few questions: “What do you think will happen next?” “What would you do next?” “What are your expectations for the piece based on what you have done up until this point?” We will then remove the camera cover and then ask the participant to proceed and see what they do next.
Sarah also wrote a very detailed script for our concept and the process of our play test this week – click here(might need to login NYU)