Author: Jiwon Shin

Computational Media in Context of Contemporary Art

Before I answer the question whether computational media is important, we need to look at what “computational media” is. When you type in “computational media definition” to Google search, you can find a link to an ITP course called Introduction to Computational Media that defines what computational media is in their first week of classes. The professor of this class tries to break the word down into “computation” and “media”. Wikipedia defines computation as “finding a solution to a problem from given inputs by means of an algorithm” and media as “plural form of medium” and “a truncation of the term media of communication, referring to those organized means of dissemination of fact, opinion, entertainment and other information.” By definition, computational media doesn’t necessarily need to involve computers, as long as you derive a result using some sort of predefined steps of action from a given set of input. To me, computational media seems very much like what generative art is. Generative art refers to “art that in whole or in part has been created with the use of an autonomous system” which is generally “one that is non-human and can independently determine features of an artwork that would otherwise require decisions made directly by the artist”.

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Diverse use of the pulse sensor

I did a simple example of getting data from the pulse sensor and then using the value of the heartbeat value as the size of the radius of the ellipses. The color is also determined using the heartbeat value. I thought it was a little funny when I jokingly put the pulse sensor against my speakers. It was creating a visual representation of the beat of the music.

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Turn ALL the lights on

I’ve created a mini game. The challenge here is to figure out which 2 of the 4 switches you have to press to turn all 4 lights one. It’s a simple guessing game, with not a lot of possibilities, but things could get a little more interesting by increasing the number of switches and introducing logical hints to the players.

The correct two switches are coded in, and here is the source code to the program being used for this game (if arrays were introduced here, it would have made the code more efficient and short):

void setup() {
  //green light
  pinMode(2, INPUT);
  pinMode(3, OUTPUT);
  //red light
  pinMode(4, INPUT);
  pinMode(5, OUTPUT);
  //blue light
  pinMode(6, INPUT);
  pinMode(7, OUTPUT);
  //yellow light
  pinMode(8, INPUT);
  pinMode(9, OUTPUT);
}

void loop() {
  if(digitalRead(2) == HIGH && digitalRead(4) == HIGH){
    digitalWrite(7, HIGH);
  }

  if(digitalRead (4) == HIGH && digitalRead(6) == HIGH){
    digitalWrite(3, HIGH);
    digitalWrite(9, HIGH);
  }
  if(digitalRead (6) == HIGH && digitalRead(8) == HIGH){
    digitalWrite(3, HIGH);
  }
  if(digitalRead (2) == HIGH && digitalRead(8) == HIGH){
    digitalWrite(5, HIGH);
  }
  if (digitalRead(2) == HIGH){
    digitalWrite(3, HIGH);
  }
  if (digitalRead(4) == HIGH){
    digitalWrite(5, HIGH);
  }
  if (digitalRead(6) == HIGH){
    digitalWrite(7, HIGH);
  }
  if (digitalRead(8) == HIGH){
    digitalWrite(9, HIGH);
  }
  if (digitalRead(2) == LOW){
    digitalWrite(3, LOW);
  }
  if (digitalRead(4) == LOW){
    digitalWrite(5, LOW);
  }
  if (digitalRead(6) == LOW){
    digitalWrite(7, LOW);
  }
  if (digitalRead(8) == LOW){
    digitalWrite(9, LOW);
  }
}

And here is a diagram of how the connections are made:

logical_switch

 

If you press the two middle switches, you can turn all the lights on:

20150914_004040

 

Cheers!

20150904_143206

With the task of turning on LED lights without physically pushing the switch with my finger, I chose to extend out the two wires that connect the two LED lights. When the two ends of the wires touch, both of the LEDs light up, like seen in the picture above.

I applied this very simple concept to the act of “cheering” of two people bumping their glasses together. I connected the two ends of the wires to conductive tape and covered two plastic cups with it. Thus electricity flows all around the surface of the two cups and when the tow cups are in contact, the two LEDs light up.

20150904_165820

One challenge I faced was figuring out how to connect the LEDs in parallel so that they light up brighter than they do when they are connected in serial.  I haven’t been able to figure out how to do so, thus the lights are half as bright as it could be when they are connected in parallel.