Debuting: Intellipods!
So, I’d rather use this time not to dive deep into what living art is, because one could make a case for and infinite number of applications and examples of what living art is. Besides, we are still grappling with that definition and somehow I feel we, by the end of the semester, will not have settled on anything. It is with relief then that I am temporarily sidelining this topic, saving it for my final thoughts on the class and on living, or generative, art.
Our assignment for last week was to create a finite state machine. For those of you not in the know, let me explain and exemplify precisely what a finite state machine is. Almost everything. More clearly, it’s “a model of behavior composed of a finite number of states, transitions between those states, and actions,” so states Wikipedia. Basically, if you can graph or chart something out in which every possible state and actions leading into those states is accounted for, it’s a finite state machine. Ice, an ATM machine, a door even, I am sure you get the picture.
It was apparent from the get go that I’d be stuck in a seemingly limitless ocean of possibilities. I swam in that ocean for a few days before spotting three islands named Shahar Zaks, Adib Dada, and Tamar Ziv.
Together, since we were four, we decided to conceive of four separate machines that all interacted with each other on distinct levels, each having its own personality, much as we each have our own personality…well, except for Adib.
Needs More Time – a somatic time piece
This past week, for the class Time, our assignment was to create a time piece based on or measuring one of the various bodily cycles: digestion, hair growth, skin renewal, menstruation, etc.
As always, my viscera nudged me into a clean concept suffused with humor. I immediately thought of a nondescript box with one long, heavy flagellum rising out of the top, flopping over from its weight, and slowly inching forward in conjunction to one’s own rate of growth. It’s hair.
Time. Throwing Up Theory. Oooof!
So, it has so been assigned that I somewhat loosely expound on Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity and how it relates to time. Trying to boil this material down to a simplified essence a five year old would be able to understand proved to be most difficult. For one, my knowledge of the subject, even after rereading various entries (and other simplified abstracts deemed more “accessible”) is still shaky, but that which i can glean form the text is utterly fascinating.
The generic definition and entry for general relativity includes this statement in some manifestation: the observed gravitational attraction between masses results from the warping of space and time by those masses.
Basically, matter causes space and time to curve and that a uniform gravity feels much the same as a uniform acceleration. For the sake of this class, Time, let’s focus on the time aspect of general relativity called gravitational time dilation.
Gravitational time dilation is a product of this curvature of space and time and, in essence, appears to slow down or “dilate” it. In the presence of massive gravity associated with a massive object, like a black hole, time dilation becomes more apparent than with traditional bodies experienced throughout the universe. I found a decent hypothetical example of this in action, though, I am not sure how anyone would ever be able to observe such a thing beyond computer generation: an observer far from a black hole would observe time passing extremely slowly for an astronaut falling through the hole’s boundary and would actually never quite see the astronaut fall in. As far as what the astronaut would be feeling, well, I guess we can’t ask him now can we.
But actually, the astronaut would probably think that time was passing normally. But to him, if he could see his observer, it might seem as if he/she were moving pretty darn fast or time was passing much more quickly.
However, within each persons frame of reference, they are in perfect agreement with the clock. If thirty minutes has passed on the clock, each person has aged thirty minutes.
The difference is exposed when the clocks are compared by separate observers. And that is THE FINAL WORD on general relativity and time.
Computational Media Final: ALPHABET SOUP!
Talk about a labor of love. I think out of all the projects I did over the course of this semester, this one was my favorite. It turned out to be the closest to my original conception. Admittedly, I put a decent amount of work into it, perhaps not as much as I would have liked to but, considering the amount of time physical computation takes up, I’d say I did an ok job.
As the title says, I was working on a fun emulation of alphabet soup. I thought of the idea for my midterm. I wanted something I could play with, that would be modular, additive, and equally trying for my coding level. For the midterm, I was not happy at all at the way I executed the sketch. I knew, from the get go, that I would probably have to turn the letters into a particle array out of a particle system. However, I did not want to jump into that so fast. So I figured that I would cheat it, as we always do, and use characters from a font and initialize an array out of those. I didn’t realize how ornery letters created in this way could be. There was a lot of jittering in movement and poor rendering. I could not make the letters move freely, nor could I program interactivity with them. So I decided to make them move within their own spheres. It still didn’t look great but I had a midterm at least.
Pretty ugly. So with the final, I kept the same idea. Only this time I devoted a lot more time to creating the particle system I so desired. I admit that I scouted around for some example code and took little snippets from a few places. One problem with that is making everything fluid and referential. It took me a good while to map out all of the steps in pseudo-code, mark it up, annotate, and try, debug, try, debug. I consulted with residents a few times who taught me how to cheat with success. I met with Shiffman when I really needed some help, who also taught me to cheat, for now. And surprisingly, I came up with solutions of my own, which was one of the more amazing feelings. This is the fruit of those labors and I am damn proud!
The applet is a bit squirrelly, and I think it’s messing up some of the interactivity (Yes! You can play with the letters and move them around and shoot them across the screen!). But if you keep pressing around, you’ll eventually pick up a letter. I will try and diagnose and fix it, but for now, deal with the annoyance.
Physical Computation Final! ThumpCities
So last time I updated, I had displayed the rough schematics for how the newly christened ThumpCities worked. Nothing changed in that department. But with some testing, we came to the conclusion that piezo’s can suck.
Piezo’s make for unruly sensors. Depending upon the application, you may or may not need to temper the voltage output and as a result, the reading. But having the analog values of these sensors results in simply too erratic a value to work with, so taming them is an advantage and proves to be very useful. The circuit we had at the time was a 5.1V Zener diode and a 1MΩ resistor. The Zener diode caps the output at a fixed value no matter what the voltage output of the piezo is. The resistor further tamed the reading.
Unfortunately when we tried this circuit, the readings in Max were still unpredictable and very noisy, setting off masks at unexpected times-activate and deactivate and possibly activate again. Even with thresholds given in Max, we wanted to finesse the the sensory output so we wouldn’t have to worry about overly erratic and possibly debilitating readings.
So to further minimize the unpredictability and smooth out the readings, we added a Schottky diode to make the readings more positive, and added a capacitor with the resistor to create a RC cell that further filters the spiking signal by storing up extra voltage.
Thus, our switch becomes smoother and we have mitigated the piezo aftershock, thus allowing us to fire our masks with each bang.
This is what the final circuit looked like when we had it down.
Here is what the circuit looks like for those of you who actually know how to read electronics. For those who do not, no worries, I can barely do it.
I cleaned the circuit up a bit and trimmed the components.
This is the setup in its entirety!
The visual part of our project actually proved to be equally as difficult. We struggled to decide how our video, appropriately titled Endless Cities by D-fuse, should be revealed: in bits, pixels, lines. Since each drum would control a portion of the screen, we felt it necessary to research the hotspots of the video and determine the design subsequently. Adib handled most of this with the following cogent assessment of our undertaking.
But the true villain in this whole scenario was MAX/Jitter. I do say that something learned from this experience is that having no prior knowledge of a specific program (that is executed in a totally different way than any program I have ever used) is a significant handicap when it comes to keeping a time schedule. We consistently ran into walls throughout the duration of this project. It’s no one’s fault, for not even some experts could really answer our questions. More than anything, they helped us cheat what we actually wanted to do- which was just a fading of a mask after its materialized. How hard is that?
We have not given up on the project, for Adib, Lucas, and I are heavily invested in making this a great performance piece, especially with a more experienced drummer, since that was who it was designed for. I estimate it would take a while before we get back to it, but I think we are all steeped in performance of some kind, so it may sit in the recess of our minds for now.
Mediated Intimacy Final Project: The Vulcan Mind Meld
If you have been reading my blog regularly (besides Mr. Whey Protein and Mrs. Ringtones, my two loyal spamming followers) you may have noticed or not, the heavy tendency to post on two of my four classes, Physical Computation and Computational Media. My reticence about one of my other classes, Mediated Intimacy, is due in part because that blogging was not required protocol for the class and because it is primarily a seminar class with little physical output. The subjects we cover are so incisive and omni-relevant that the pressure to blog them was/is incredibly difficult. I am ruing that choice to not blog about them because we covered some amazing artists’, authors’, and scientists’ work associated with, well, mediating intimacy. I promise to write more about it later! But for now, let me focus on our final project in three parts:
1. Dream up a future technology of intimacy and connection over distance. Write a User’s Manual to accompany it including a drawing with parts labeled, a detailed description of how it is used, warnings, etc.
2. Write a story about a person or people who are using your technology. You will need to express the invented ‘physics’ of the world in which your invention exists. In other words, where you rely on new general capacities available in the future world, you will need to describe those things, in order to situate your invention. The point here is to think through and express what the technology might do from an emotional and social perspective, based on what you know about existing technologies and ideas about intimacy, as well as your ability to imagine consequences of not-yet-possible devices.
3. Present your invention, its context, its function, and its potential or known emotional and social effects on users.
This final was a pure joy to execute. In conceiving of ideas, I cheated myself out of dreaming up a whole new world for this product and focused really on something that I new and that I could construct easily, but still was humorous and cohesive. I came up with, borrowing from Star Trek, the Vulcan Mind Meld.
I had worked on a presentation a week prior and used the mask that you see in the photos for this project; a decent example of cross-curricular projects. I spent most of the time working on the MANUAL and designing the packaging. I actually searched everywhere for some cheap plastic encasing besides the stupid plastic I ended up using. No big deal as prototyping was not required for this assignment. The project went over well! I often tell people that since I hate to present, my main objective is not necessarily to inform or engage but to make people laugh. I could be in the wrong business!
Physical Computation Final – Progress
So I await my dozen Piezo sensors that, I assume, are stuck somewhere in the postal system as they have not reached me yet.
I mention this for two reasons: 1. I have not been able to progress beyond a two drum setup 2. I am getting weird and different readings from both piezos. One seems to be ultra sensitive while the other is a bit harder to read, like a married couple. I am, so far, attributing this quirk to the horrible, horrible soldering job I did with the piezos. I only learned how to properly solder them afterward. Which makes this new shipment of piezos all the more important.
Take a look at this atrocity!
Here is my setup from afar. Two buckets (so far) with piezos doubletaped inside. I made small canals in the lip of the bucket for the wires.
These are the guts of the bucket.
The breadboard is set up for the two buckets with readings coming in from the piezo, tamed by a 1M ohm resistor and protected with a 5.1V Zener diode, since the piezos generate electricity (and shoot it back into the arduino).
More to come!
Physical Computation Final Project Proposal
Once again, I am teaming up with Lucas, and this time Adib, to make a project that is performance based and video based – two areas I have little experience in. This should be refreshing.
Below is the schematic for what will, hopefully transpire.
The mechanics of this project are fairly straightforward. The coding is pretty simple, invoking a switch for video control. As far as I can see, the aspects to concentrate on involve the video software and performance.
Using Arduino, we will code somewhere around six switches which receive information from the sensors, in this case Piezo sensors. Piezos sense vibration by creating small amounts of electricity upon disturbance. This electricity is read by the Arduino and translated into serial communication for the program we will use to show the video, maybe Puredata, Max, Isadora, or Processing. Any vibration with a reading above a specific amount (revealed through thorough testing) will fire the video clips, which will be projected above the drummer. We hope to perform this in some very public square, perhaps even across the street from Tisch central.
Our initial idea was to enlist the help of an actual street performer who tends to perform across the street on fair days. Wwe have not seen this bucket drummer since our idea’s conception, so our plan B is to channel the inner beat of Lucas and his mother country, Brazil, for an all out South American percussive extravaganza.
While I have excused myself from the video software side of things (that is, afterall, Lucas’s domain), I will still try and learn as much about that program as I can. Besides, I will need to know something about it since I will be sending it serial information. We have yet to determine what video will be played, how it will be arranged, and what relevance the video will have to the drummer and the audience. We explored the idea of abstraction and narratives, but have not nailed anything down.
Once again, because of the simplicity of the mechanics, we must focus on the performance for this project for it to really be spectacular. I have complete faith that we will do so.
Stay tuned!
Physical Computation Mid-Term
For our midterm, I teamed up with Lucas and David to create a project that defies all conventional notions of the possible: A chic and sexy time traveling radio!
She is quite stunning if I do say so myself.
Lucas contributing.
David fine “tuning” the knobs.
For more on the process and to access videos of the process, click below. Also check out Lucas’s blog for his interpretation.
Hot or Not? Gertrude Never Made it to the Party.
I built this beauty for her debut at the ITP Haunted House on the Thursday before Halloween. She never quite made it though.
