Pictures of Austria & ARS

(control click or right click for download, is in AVI format)
and a dancing robot

Phantasy Device

My fantasy device would be to listen to the radio station of another person’s brain. Like if my friend’s brains were hooked up to some NamJune Paik sculptures. The sculptures being in my house and my friends being all over the world.

PhysComp 3

Ran the analogue sample example from arduino, link.

Here is the result.

Then I finally worked out the kinks for running the vibe motors on the puppet costume for this project.

So that when the user goes from left to right, their pulsating decreases towards the middle. So the more left the user turns the knob, the stronger the leftmost vibe motors will pulsate, as the knob is moved towards the middle the leftmost vibe motors pulsate less, until they grind to a halt and the right most ones start grinding to a start, the more to the right the knob is turned the more the rightmost ones will pulsate. Yay! Since vibe motors and led’s are both digital out that depend only on the presence of current for their pulsating, I used leds for the test. Link to video.

What I don’t understand is why I had to have the led’s pulse HIGH to keep them from turning on?


int sensorPin = 0; // select the input pin for the potentiometer
int pinOut1 = 2;
int pinOut2 = 3; // select the pin for the LED
int sensorValue = 0; // variable to store the value coming from the sensor

void setup() {
// declare the ledPin as an OUTPUT:
pinMode(pinOut1, OUTPUT);
pinMode(pinOut2, OUTPUT);

Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
// read the value from the sensor:
sensorValue = analogRead(sensorPin);
Serial.println(sensorValue);
// turn the ledPin on
if(sensorValue < 512){
digitalWrite(pinOut1, HIGH);
digitalWrite(pinOut2, HIGH);
delay((sensorValue)*2);
digitalWrite(pinOut1, LOW);
digitalWrite(pinOut2, HIGH);

}
if(sensorValue > 512){

digitalWrite(pinOut1, HIGH);
digitalWrite(pinOut2, HIGH);
delay(abs((sensorValue-1023)*2));
digitalWrite(pinOut1, HIGH);
digitalWrite(pinOut2, LOW);
}
}

PComp 2 Get Creative

Here is the fun part.

I am extending this project! Finally! With a user interface, including hardware.

The radar shell is in New York. I added a foot switch (creative switches?) from one of those effect boxes for electric guitar.

video

currently housing an AM radio, I can’t decide, should it be composed of internet broadcasting and receiving or radio?

The idea was world wide wave so you could hear everything happening on the planet at the same time. But I love the radio sphere… sigh.

to be continued

Nothing in my life ever changes

Here is the first lab from ITP’s physical computing class. I won’t document it in detail as it is something that is thoroughly documented here. All I can say is my life is so consistently a mess of electronic guts on a table dangerously close to a coffee cup.

video

Research: AT&T, EHarmony

AT&T “Connecting People”

It supports an R&D lab http://www.research.att.com/

History:

http://www.corp.att.com/history/

http://www.corp.att.com/history/nethistory/

And Image:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNh9LOQNLMc

EHarmony

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EHarmony

to be continued

Mediated Intimacy Zeitgeist 1

Intimacy is a process, an ever shifting dynamic of presence and absence

PComp Week One

Sensor Walk for ITP PComp Class.

On my sensor walk, the first thing that came to my mind is “what is a sensor?” exactly, because the more I looked around, the more everything seemed like it could be a sensor.

So without getting too much into Cyborg theory here, I would say that a sensor is anything that triggers or generates a signal, that can be sent over a carrier, interpreted by a communicating system, and reacted to with feedback by that or another comminicating system.

In our case I would say that we are most interested in sensors that can trigger or generate an electrical signal that we can interpret with hardware and software, but this:

and this:

also contain sensors, carriers and feedback.

The thing that makes sensors interesting for us too, I think, is that they imply an interpretation, and vice versa, a signal, implies a sensor. I heard somewhere once, that we should not create for an audience but create an audience with our designs. For example this:

actually says “don’t litter please!” but we read (when on site) “please!” [image] “don’t litter”. If I was a giant or looking at it from a window, it would read differently. Since I don’t litter anyway, I am actually uncertain about what the sign is trying to achieve. Humans don’t make for very reliable sensors. More over, they get terribly offended when they are expected to respond in a predictable way (ie feminists are not too happy about the whole male gaze as implied in traditional painting etc), or when they have to behave in a predetermined way (something which is also a characteristic of a good sensor).

Is a sensor attached to nothing, no longer a sensor?

The inability for the signal to get anywhere is tragic, because we have these sensors too.

I guess that’s why this is such a famous example in cyber culture:

and not so much this:

only one of them is explicitly about sensors, signals and feedback.

this is why (although both are hard to swallow) this:

is so much more compelling than this:

one has feedback, the other is transposition of signal.

Apologies for images culled from internet, some will be replaced by actual images from the walk as soon as I get to a scanner.

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  amsterdam Architecture arduino ARS bank of common knowledge berlin bottle cap breakfast construction of identity conveyance of meaning creation of meaning cyborganism dance machine ghostwriter Hello World! I ain't got no body icm interpretation of meaning itp mediated intimacy meSofy modularizing the human new york nyu pcomp PD performance phantasy device physcomp poetry presentation project development radar radio robot rotterdam sensors sound sound art sound in the city telepresence typewriter Typography world wide wave worm