Month: November 2023

These articles reminded me of something my dad always used to say, “The things that separate us from every other animal are our tongues and thumbs. They can’t speak to each other like we do. They can’t hold hammers like we do.” Try going a day without using your thumbs and you’ll realize how incapacitated we’d be without them. Thanks to our tongues and thumbs, we’ve penned symphonies and raised sky scrapers. Hallelujah.

I’ve also been reading this book called Steal Like An Artist. Here’s an excerpt that parallels the reading:

“While I love my computer, I think computers have robbed us of the feeling that we’re actually making things. Instead, we’re just typing keys and clicking mouse buttons…artist Stanley Donwood, who’s made all the album artwork for the band Radiohead, says computers are alienating because they put a sheet of glass between you and whatever is happening…Just watch someone at their computer. They’re so still, so immobile. You don’t need a scientific study (of which there are a few) to tell you that sitting in front of a computer all day is killing you, and killing your work. We need to move, to feel like we’re making something with our bodies, not just our heads. Work that only comes from the head isn’t any good. Watch a great musician play a show. Watch a great leader give a speech. You’ll see what I mean. You need to find a way to bring your body into your work. Our nerves aren’t a one-way street—our bodies can tell our brains as much as our brains tell our bodies. You know that phrase, “going through the motions”? That’s what’s so great about creative work: If we just start going through the motions, if we strum a guitar, or shove sticky notes around a conference table, or start kneading clay, the motion kickstarts our brain into thinking.”

Every generation has a distinct zeitgeist. And while I don’t think this is our only characteristic, I believe we suffer from apathy. We are an apathetic generation. And I attribute a lot of that to the time we spend on our phones. In 2016, a study found that the average person in the UK scrolls 5 miles on their phone! And that number has definitely only increased since. We spend all day absorbing information about life, but never actually live ourselves. Even when we’re off our phones, we think in the paradigms of the online-world, and bring that into our real-life interactions and conversations. It’s like using our technology the way we do has inserted a real glass wall into our lives. A lot of people feel constantly disassociated from themselves. And I think how we use technology today has something to do with that. We watch so many movies and TV shows but have lost sight of living the movie ourselves. Not watching ourselves through an audience’s eyes.

It’s like the reading said:

“We share the blood of cavemen who pushed spears into mammoths and drew pictures of them in the living room.” I was talking to my dad about this and he said, “Right? That was what it was all for? So we could jerk off to Instagram reels today.” And we had a laugh, but operating behind glass screens so much, we lose sight of who we really are as magical, living humans. My dad always says the two things to feeling the real magic of life again are sweat and breath. Sweat and breath. We can’t lose that if we’re going to keep our souls intact.

That’s another thing I remembered reading these articles. The disassociation I experience when involved in VR installations. Because I can see all of these incredible things happening, but I stumble out, wanting to feel. Wanting to touch this exciting world around me. Wanting to feel this new ground beneath my feet. But I don’t, and it’s incredibly disconcerting. I think as a culture, we’ve inundated ourselves to this. But I agree with the author, it can’t be that way forever. And if we’re going to make real art and real devices that amplify our capabilities of LIVING, something’s gonna have to give.

“A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design” reading:

The author of the article “A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design” discusses some of the most important aspect that is not as much talked about in our current age. He addresses how the world is shifting from the usage of hands to feeling things and performing tasks with just a fingertip. We have shifted from relying on the sensations we get through our hands to just touching fingers on a flat screen to move around different applications and tasks. Why this shift though? This is mainly because of human laziness. Humans are lazy, and there’s nothing to deny there. We have tried every means possible to automate previous tedious tasks, and what did that cost us? It costs us to overthrow the tool that is the most necessary to us, and without it, we wouldn’t have come this far. Now of course we still use our hands and we have it completely intact, but we aren’t using it to their full potential. Hands as the author said, have very dense sensors on them, which means we can utilize them the best to feel what’s around us, nature, the objects, etc. With technological advancements, we are moving more towards a world with much less use of hands and ultimately we are being disconnected from our everyday world. In art and interactive media, interacting with users is a great thing and which the industry mainly focuses on, but much more interaction and experience can be gained through the implementation of physical objects instead of devices or as the author called it, “pictures under glass”. This article misses one point though, which is how the interactive arts are slowly progressing in this digitalized world. While technological advancements are leading more individuals towards a less sensory-felt future, the interactive arts do a great job at maintaining and bringing back this solid element of touch and expressions felt through it. Many projects nowadays, within interactive art, incorporate the use of hands to produce an aesthetic picture, sound, etc. This is because these creators have realized the power of hands, and through the implementation of these hands towards their physical projects, users can connect on a much deeper level with the art piece. This means that humans are still capable of bringing forth the usage of hands and feeling nature, it’s just that this time, it’s in a very new form.

In the follow-up of the author to the public criticism, the author answers many of the comments left by the audience. I liked how he mentioned about the question “My child can’t tie his shoelaces, but can use the iPad”, and I would like to add more to his response. Let’s compare a world where a child, called child A, swipes left and right on an iPad to play games, and another world where a child, called child B, plays normal, physical toys. Child A would gain more knowledge than child B since they have access to a vast number of games and probably some educational content. One thing that child A will miss greatly though are the reflexes, feelings, and the overall growth of the body. Child A’s mind will greatly grow, but it can not surpass child B’s body growth. By body growth, I do not mean it in terms of height or physical features, but more towards the feelings of touch, balance of body and getting used to it, understanding and feeling different elements, learning about what’s harmful and what’s not. Experiences make a person much stronger and they can learn much faster than just consuming information. Child B will get hurt from time to time from playing physical games and doing other activities that require movement, but at least their body will get used to it, and they will learn about how to handle situations that are dangerous to them in a much effective manner compared to child A who is sitting in one place swiping left and right. In the long run, child A will suffer a lot in the real world since his foundations and reflexes are much weaker than Child B’s; which is why individuals should not discard this important tool of using hands to feel what’s around us rather than learning what’s dangerous and what is not through textbooks.

This week’s reading has given me a lot to think about regarding the position of interactive artwork. In a way, I agree with Tigoe that interactive artworks are more like performances. The artist sets up a stage for the interactors, who essentially become the performers in this theater. This reminds me of another class I am taking on installation art, where most successful interactive pieces do not explicitly explain what the piece is about. Instead, they focus on evoking sensory reactions and exploring them in depth, aiming to elicit an emotional response from the performer or “viewers” that prompts further contemplation of the interaction and its significance. Even Andrew Schnieder’s piece, though it may seem like a fixed narrative from a distance, offers different interactions in each group setting, which I find more rewarding than a singular interpretation of paintings in a museum.

The reading on the greatest hits and misses adds another layer to this. Even a seemingly simple and commonly used interaction, such as an LED lighting up when approached, has the potential for further development. It is not an unoriginal idea if the context in which this system is set up provides a feeling that is more contextualized and open to interpretation, which I find appealing. I kinda wanna make a more contextualized theremin now if that’s possible.

Concept: After seeing what my peers had already done with the assignment guidelines, I wanted to try something different that I hadn’t seen before. Initially, I had the idea of using a color-changing crossroads with an ultrasonic proximity sensor. However, since someone had already done that, I attempted to replicate it using a potentiometer instead. The prototype includes a button that turns on an LED light, and the potentiometer determines the color.

Prototype: During the prototyping phase, I tried to find the most efficient way to minimize the amount of wiring for the three LEDs I wanted. However, I realized that in order to have different LEDs light up for different scenarios, I needed to create separate digital output circuits.

To visualize this, I mapped out the design on TinkerCad, as shown in the following image:

After completing the circuit, I proceeded to the coding part. It took me some trial and error to create a nested loop that worked with the button and potentiometer setup I desired. Since the potentiometer values range from 0 to 1023, I implemented if-else statements for the Red, Yellow, and Green colors based on approximate ranges of 0-300, 300-700, and 700-1000, respectively.

The following is the code:

int buttonState = 0;  // variable for reading the pushbutton status


// the setup routine runs once when you press reset:
void setup() {
  // initialize serial communication at 9600 bits per second:
  Serial.begin(9600);
  pinMode(10, OUTPUT); //Green
  pinMode(11, OUTPUT); //Yellow
  pinMode(12, OUTPUT); //Red
  pinMode(3, INPUT_PULLUP); //Button
}

// the loop routine runs over and over again forever:
void loop() {

  buttonState = digitalRead(3);


  int sensorValue = analogRead(A2);
  Serial.println(sensorValue);

if (buttonState == LOW) {
  if (sensorValue < 300) {
    digitalWrite(12, HIGH);
    digitalWrite(11, LOW);
    digitalWrite(10, LOW);

  } else if (sensorValue < 700) {
    digitalWrite(12, LOW);
    digitalWrite(11, HIGH);
    digitalWrite(10, LOW);

  } else if (sensorValue < 1023){
    digitalWrite(12, LOW);
    digitalWrite(11, LOW);
    digitalWrite(10, HIGH);
  }
} else if (buttonState == HIGH) {
   digitalWrite(12, LOW);
    digitalWrite(11, LOW);
    digitalWrite(10, LOW);
}

  delay(30);  // delay in between reads for stability
}