3.1: snow week

This week it miraculously snowed in Florida and an entire week of class was canceled; this blog will be brief!

On Thursday, though, we were able to zoom with Jean-Michael Celerier, the creator of the Ossia software we will be using. He showed us some basic examples of what you can do in Ossia, which is helpful to see before we get started with it. I haven't used the software by myself yet, but it reminds me of chataigne, a similar software that I do have experience with.

My ideas for project one are progressing. As I have used the ideas of body and interactivity as drivers for my ideation, the theme I return to most frequently is the experience of shopping as related to sensory pleasure. What makes a sellable/buyable plastic object "satisfying" to touch, see, hear, etc.? What does this experience of satisfaction feel like and cause? I have a lot more development to do of the idea before our class on Tuesday, but my general plan is to create a sculptural spinner rack. Spinner racks are those turnable displays in gift shops. I am imagining fabricated little objects on this spinner rack, each the size of cosmetic/decorative consumables that are abstract representations of aspects of product design meant to be pleasing to the senses. There will also be a projected output that has a similar layout to an ecommerce site. Interacting with the consumables on the spinner rack causes videos, sounds, text, etc. on the "site," and spinning of the rack will correspond with scrolling on the site. 

My focus between now and Tuesday is to hash out some specifics on what this idea might look and feel like in much more detail. Here are a few of my early sketches:

2.1: labs 1-3 electricity basics and simple programs

 A. Lab 1: Electricity Basics

electricity

There are two types of voltage: AC (alternating current) and DC (direct current). 

    AC is the type of power that comes out of our wall sockets; its power output resembles a sign wave in that it undulates back and forth between positive and negative voltage. Hertz (Hz) is one measurement of the properties of AC power; it is how many cycles between positive and negative the power undergoes every second. For example, all US outlets run at 110 Hz.

    DC is the type of power that batteries create, and it outputs a consistent voltage instead of cycling like AC does.

There are several main measurements for aspects of electricity:

    Volts (V)

    Current (amps - a)

    Resistance (Ohms - Ω)

    Ohm's law is an equation that represents the relationships between these three aspects: 

        V = I*R (where V is volts, I is current, and R is resistance)

    An analogy to a water hose makes what each value describes more clear: volts are like the force with which water comes out, the amount of water that flows out at an instantaneous cross-section is the amps, and pinching the hose is like resistance. 

    Another useful equation, about power: P = I*E (where P is power, I is current, E is volts)

how a breadboard works

    Using a breadboard helps us to avoid soldering for now, and it works by grasping pins stuck into the board between a metal clasp to create electrical connections. "Lanes" on the breadboard are each labeled by numbers and can make electrical connections. 

    It's a good idea to shorten things as you place them in the breadboard so that they don't get knocked around.

schematics and diagrams

    A schematic is a 2D, technical drawing that uses symbols and lines to represent electrical relationships between the components of an object. A diagram is more representational, and may show how the physical objects themselves relate to each other in space.

components in a flashlight circuit

LEDs must go in a specific direction because they are polarized. A larger piece of metal inside the bulb, a shorter pin, and a flattened edge indicate the negative side of the LED. Meanwhile, resistors are not polarized.

The colored bands on a resistor, read from the one furthest from the metallic band on the resistor to the nearest, indicate the value in ohms of the resistor. the first two bands indicate the first two numbers of the resistor and the third band indicates how many zeroes to add to the end of the first two numbers.

    Here is the meaning of the numbers:

    Black 0

    Brown 1

    Red 2 

    Orange 3

    Yellow 4

    Green 5

    Blue 6

    Violet 7

    Grey 8

    White 9

the flashlight circuit

B. Lab 2: voltage dividing and using a multimeter

    Using two resistors can help reduce the voltage in a certain part of the circuit. The ratio of the values of the two resistors to one another determines how much the voltage is reduced. If the resistors are of equal strength, then the voltage will be divided in half. Connecting a lower-level resistor to ground and a higher-level one to the positive column will reduce the voltage to a small fraction of the original; doing the opposite allows most of the voltage through. 

    This technique is not really for customizing voltage, though. In the future, we'll be using it to send signals.

    We also learned how to use a multimeter; by placing the ground probe on a wire connected directly to ground of the power source (with no resistor between that wire and the power source) and the positive probe to a positive wire that has a resistor between it and the power source, it will read as the new voltage.

C. Lab 3: digital input

For this lab, I created this wiring setup to use with code that makes an on and off button system for an led: 

A pin reading as "LOW" means that it is connected to ground. Perhaps the Low state triggers an action because a button press electrically connects the wire that's in the pin to ground?

This code, meanwhile, sends a serial message when the button changes from being pressed to not, or vice-versa:

Some notes:

    -we can't just simplify what's in the loop section to just print the current button state because what we are trying to capture is a change in the button state, not the state itself. 

    -sometimes multiple messages come through even though the button was only pressed once. maybe this has something to do with  the presence of a loop?

    -you could change the message to send only when the state goes from high to low by adding an "and" component to the conditional.

1.2: first microcontroller use

This week we also tried out using a microcontroller for the first time (an Adafruit circuit playground, though we'll be using Arduinos hereafter), and performed some simple programming tasks in the Arduino software with the board.

Some steps we followed:

1. Add device to IDE (integrated development environment) by searching the Adafruit board and adding it on the "board" tab of the menu bar.

2. Use the libraries tab of the menu bar to add extra language specific to the additional features of the circuit playground.

3. Every library comes with simple examples, so we tried out the led light and accelerometer ones to get used to uploading programs to the microcontroller.

Other misc. notes:

    void: a function that doesn't give you anything back

        other function types do return data

    baud rate (low end is 9600): the speed at which the microcontroller communicates through the USB

    we are working with Asynchronous Serial Connections when we use the microcontroller

1.1: electronic art history, meaning of interactivity

A. Electronic art history

During our first full class, we began by discussing some historical uses (in the last century) of technology in art that were particularly rich in concept.

Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T), a large-scale, organized collaboration between artists and engineers during the 60s and 70s, led to some of the most innovative and exciting tech+art projects to date.  Through E.A.T, artists worked with large companies such as Bell labs to be given access to incredible funding and resources, as well as the opportunity to collaborate with engineers. Instead of engineering knowledge serving the creation of art or vice versa, the artists and engineers worked through all aspects of their processes together to generate projects informed by a shared knowledge.

Main themes explored in E.A.T were: wireless connectivity, mapping the human body, interactivity, and creating immersive environments.

A few exemplary artists/works we discussed:

    Deborah Hay (choreography/mechatronics)  
    John Cage (electronics and music)
    Fujiko Nakaya (cloud creation)
    Jean Tinguely (destruction machine)  

The range of these outcomes illustrates that the goal of working with tech and art together can sometimes be a critique of new technologies and our relationship of it, or to simply use invented tools to create magical, beautiful experiences.

B. Meaning of Interactivity

We also discussed potential meanings of interactivity, because the goal for the artworks we'll produce this semester is for them to richly involve participants with interactive elements.

There is a difference between interactivity and reactivity; experiences/projects/objects that are conversation-like, unexpected, and involving are our desired kind of interactivity. Reactivity is a simple cause and effect relationship between a person and a device, which we want to avoid in our pursuit of more thought-provoking projects. 

For project generation, it's useful to think of some specific types of inputs and outputs we might use.

Inputs might be:

    sensing the body (voice, gestures, breathing)

    computer-based (mouse click, button press, stylus)

    computer vision

    light and color (can be used in unexpected ways, like when something has been picked up)

    distance, pressure, etc.

    anything that happens in the world can be seen as an input!    

Outputs might be:

    screen/projection/DMX lights

    water fountain etc.

    anything that can be turned on or off

    sound

    motors (an important and versatile one)

first week introductions

★ This week we're getting acquainted with some software/sites we'll be using during the semester.

Ossia: a sequencer for interactive events

Arduino: our electronics ecosystem (hardware and coding)

Blogger: the means for recording learned techniques, experiments, ideas, mistakes, and progress