Category: Spring 2019

In this reading, the author shows various ways of already established methods of Physical Computing. They encourage the reader that instead of dismissing working on ideas that were already done, they should work on improving them and developing them more than the original creator of the concept. What I like about this, in particular, is that it hints on the idea of innovation not being “brand new” but rather “new elements in existing things”.

For my midterm assignment, I decided to build a machine able to automatically play the piano at the same time that the user is playing the guitar. I called this machine” The Force Piano”.  This machine functions in the following way. The guitar functions as a switch, so when the user plays it activate three servos and each servo moves a stylus able to touch the touchscreen of an Ipad. In the iPad, an application that simulates a piano was downloaded. Through this application, the stylus interacts with the piano application.

The building process of this machine was the following. First, an Ipad Mini and Arduino breadboards were stuck with tape to a big piece of wood. Then the three servos were connected to the breadboards and a code was created that allows the servos to move once from angle 90 to 180 and vice-versa every time that a switch is turned on(The code was attached at the end of this post). Next, three stylus were created using aluminum, cotton swabs, and water. The plastic stick of the cotton swabs was surrounded with aluminum and the aluminum was positioned to slightly touch the cotton tip, then, the cotton tip was submerged into water (water allows electricity to flow electricity to the touchscreen of the iPad) and  each one was connected to an alligator cable coming from Power from the breadboard. After building the stylus, these were attached to the servos using hot glue and then the servos were stuck to the piece of wood, considering the position of the notes F4, A4 and C5 in the piano app of the iPad. The switches to activate the servos were build using the metal strings of the guitars. Three alligators cables were attached to the 5th, 4th and 3rd string of the guitar and these alligators were connected to ground in the breadboard. Then an alligator cable coming from power was connected to a metal pick (every time the pick touches the string the circuit is closed). And finally, the guitar was played to test that the servo moved with the angle needed to touch the correct note of the piano.

The biggest challenges in this assignment were figuring out how to create a stylus. My original idea was made a drum with wood and hit it  with drumsticks to create sound, but then, I thought it was going to be cooler to make the servo to play the song with me, and as It was impossible to use a real piano, I improvised and decided to use my old IPad mini. The challenge was that I thought that I was going to be able to interact with the touchscreen with any material. But, It did not take long until I realized that it was not that simple. So, after doing some research, I learned that, in order to interact with a touchscreen,  I needed to make electricity flow through the material. Hence, my first prototype of a stylus it only had aluminum, but when I did the testing I realize that it only interacted with the touch screen 1 out 3 times, that’s why  I decided to use softer material pour water on it.. The other challenge was positioning and finding the angles for the servos by trial and error. To finally, figure it out I needed to rebuild several times the servos-stylus prototypes.

 

#include <Servo.h>

Servo myServo5F;
Servo myServo10A;
Servo myServo9C;
bool prevStringFState2 = LOW;
bool prevStringAState3 = LOW;
bool prevStringCState4 = LOW; 
int StringFPin2 = 2;
int StringAPin3 = 3;
int StringCPin4 = 4;


void setup() {


  pinMode(StringFPin2, INPUT);
  pinMode(StringAPin3, INPUT);
  pinMode(StringCPin4,INPUT);
  Serial.begin(9600);
  myServo5F.attach(5);
  myServo10A.attach(10);
  myServo9C.attach(9);

}

void loop() {

  int currentStringFState2 = digitalRead(StringFPin2);
  int currenStringAState3 = digitalRead(StringAPin3);
  int currentStringCState4 = digitalRead(StringCPin4);
  if (prevStringFState2  == LOW && currentStringFState2 == HIGH) 
  {
    myServo5F.write(180);
    delay(100);
    myServo5F.write(90);
    delay(100); 
  } 
  else if (prevStringAState3 == LOW && currenStringAState3  == HIGH)
  {
     myServo10A.write(180);
    delay(150);
    myServo10A.write(90);
    delay(150); 
  } 
  else if ( prevStringCState4 == LOW && currentStringCState4 == HIGH)
  {
    myServo9C.write(0);
    delay(150);
    myServo9C.write(90);
    delay(150); 
    
 }
  prevStringFState2 = currentStringFState2;
  prevStringAState3 = currenStringAState3;
  prevStringCState4 = currentStringCState4;
}

This reading (and I won’t be anything less than honest) is what I didn’t want to hear. It’s a hard pill to swallow, especially as I am trying to transition more into making interactive art and leaving more room for the extraordinary rather than the (people would call them mundane) paintings I’m used to.  I’ve come across this concept before and I got really defensive when I was being told to not let people know about my intentions and my emotions, about my motive, which is something that needs to be clear when you’re writing an essay- but not when making an interactive art piece (according to this reading). I agree with this reading on a lot of the point the author makes, one of them is to not impose and annotate every single part of the experience for the user. Trying to leave more room for the imagination and for the user to actually “converse” properly with the interface/piece you’re creating is really important for feedback and for the whole overall artwork to be more satisfying for the user. Besides, some would say that imposing one opinion on what a piece means (even if it is your own ) would be some form of propaganda, would it now?

 

 

For my midterm project, I am going to make a spinning wheel using a servo and a sound sensor. According to the pitch it detects, the servo will turn and reveal a different piece of art. I think the code aspect of this is going to be more complicated than the visual/design aspect of it as I have a very clear idea on what I want it to look like at this point. I have not used a sound sensor before so this should be an interesting challenge, to say the least.

I’m still not quite sure what my midterm project is going to be. After having seen Simon’s work, I feel very inspired by him, and might incorporate some element inspired by his work. Also, I’m thinking of doing more of an interactive art project, so I’m exploring the ideas of working with sculpture, paint, laser, or some other form of creating something creative.

The writer is very defensive in this one. He completely goes against each comment very directly. To me, his tone and choice of words makes me take him less seriously. I understand his point of view, but I dont fully agree with his comment about voice not being explorable. Especially having seen the way the artist Zimoun explored sound. Also, the comment about the kid being able to use the ipad but not tie their shoelaces is very superficial. A child will know how to use something they practice at. If the child spent as much time practicing tying their laces, they would know how to do that, instead of how to use the ipad. Generally he seemed to be overreacting and illogical in the way he responded to the comments, which almost discredited his article for me…

What I plan to do for my midterm project is a tilt maze.  I plan to make a wooden maze which will be tilted by servos which will be controlled in a very uncommon way. For example to tilt the X axis clockwise breathe on this sensor. And so on 🙂 I came up with this idea during the discussions yesterday and I really liked it how it turned out. Rick gave me some ideas about the controls, and Steve gave me some feedback on the idea in general. Mostly they liked the idea.

So, after reading the response, I still stick to what I have said.

First off, yes, he did not provide a solution. And technically, everyone can rant about everything. But if you rant about something, without providing a potential solution or a plausible counter-argument, I believe that your ‘rant’ loses a lot of credibility.

As for my main response to his argument, it did not change at all. I firmly believe that his way. of changing interaction design will remain inefficient unless he can provide an actual solution that will, indeed increase the sentiment of using our hands as tools yet simultaneously keep or improve the efficiency that touching and swiping provides.

He probably wasn’t the first one to ask, “Hey, but isn’t touching and swiping giving less sentimental values?” But the reason it hasn’t been heard, or has been but haven’t been implemented yet is because there are maybe significant drawbacks to doing so. If it was a beneficial argument, I think that people would have incorporated that and tried to actually come up with a solution that is the best of every problem, but efficiency and additional actions do not go hand in hand.

“Let’s start using our hands”

The article written by Victor was an inspiring one that allowed me to take a step back in all the wild technologic advancements. Recently, we have been extremely indulged in creating technologies that do not require any touch using our hands – and, we call that the technologic advancement.

Take virtual reality (VR) as an example. In a virtual reality experience, we are given a controller (or controllers) held by our hands to manipulate what we see. VR has been regarded as one of the technologic innovation that people believe it has extended our experience in the virtual world. However, in the experience, our hands are not actually “feeling” the feedback that we manipulate in the VR experience. And, the myriads of tricks that the hands do are limited to pressing the button and moving/rotating your arm/wrist. So, the VR experience maybe a new insight for our visual and auditory senses, but at the cost of limiting some physical senses.

… we’ve just created a future where people can and will spend their lives completely immobile.

The reason why I brought up the example above is to provide an additional example to the direction that Victor indicates from the statement above. It is for a fact that the advancement of our technology continues simplify the interactions that use our physical body and disconnects the natural feedback that we used to get from a medium. And, by “channeling all interaction through a single finger“, we will slowly become more dependent on machines do perform different tasks – and when the moment comes to do all these tasks that the machine does for us by ourselves, I afraid that we will not be able to or rather we do not remember how. Thus, I strongly believe, as partakers of the technologic innovations and crafters of dynamic media, people should be wary of this issue when they are developing a new medium.

Bret makes some really valid arguments regarding the inevitable numbing of human senses, due to people’s excessive reliance on technology. His brief rant made me consider the innate intricacy of my hand movements, and how I often underestimate how powerful of a tool the body is. I also admired how Bret defined his article as a simple acknowledgement of a problem, rather than a grand vision for the future.

There is some merit in Bret’s argument about our immense capability to manipulate object through a wide range of hand and body movements, and that we shouldn’t opt for an increasing use of “Picture Under Glass” – which Bret deems a “visual facade”.  However, in an increasingly industrialized world, technology is dominant in shaping our interactions with our environment and with one another. Hence, it is ambitious to assume that people will forgo the use of technologies that facilitate and make their lives much easier.

Bret’s suggestion to invest more research and funding into developing a more dynamic medium – such as haptic technology – is also an interesting premise; as he doesn’t completely rule out the importance of technology to any future developments.