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.
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.
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.
Video Throw Up #2 featuring Serial Communication and Two Pots!
This weeks lab started off a little subdued, but finished strong. We inch closer and closer towards controlling objects on the screen, which, for the diversionary type, means VIDEO GAMES! Ok, for the interactive designer, it means something less pointed. I partnered with Lucas to make this lab happen, and you will here is clear and cogent explanations of what is exactly transpiring.
Without further ado:
Of course I’m serial.
Another successful lab, this time dealing with serial communication between a micro-controller (my cheap Seeeduino board) and Processing. The outcome is surprisingly game-like, though I admit I did not tweak the screen elements as much as I should have, but I did alter the background color and give it a nice serial dependent, gray scale gradient. I’m sure to fool around with this a little more.
