Digital World and Image studio blog

1. Set up Processing application that maps sound pitch, volume, pan, and timing to motion detection (video camera delta will work for this).

2. Point the camera at the performance.

3. Start the Processing application.

4. Offer the resulting real-time audio as a new way to experience the show’s fast and slow bursts, follow shifts of energy locations on-stage, and types of movements by dancers.

Iteration would be required to achieve the types of tones and timings desired by the team. The present pre-alpha version of the software is for demonstration purposes only, and at this time mostly reflects that tone, pitch, and amplitude can be made a function of total motion detected (frame differences) within different areas of the camera.

Experimentation with how to “play” any given motion-to-audio mapping could promote different types of exploratory movements. In addition to providing an optional audio dimension to the movements, conceivably with enough improvement this design could provide a way for visitors with severe vision disabilities to enjoy the pacing and stage action of the performance – roughly similar in principle to the aquarium research across the hall from DWIG.

Guide: Text Page

Guide: Images Page

Ecological System: Georgia Tech Library, “performance zone” (tables on the first floor near where there used to be a coffeeshop, across the glass)

Actors/Entities:
• Students that have lots of work to do (majority here are male, average age ~21)
• Laptops, turned on, most presumably with internet connection
• Security camera pointed at the big screen+speakers presentation system

Nonentities:
• 13 tables
• Outlets all along the wall
• Outlets hanging from the ceiling in 4 places
• About 3 dozen chairs
• Vending machine drinks, snacks
• Pens, pencils, paper
• Presentation screen with large screen and speakers
• 5 overhead hanging speakers

Notable Conditions:
• Consistently chilly air
• Consistently bright fluorescent tube lighting
• A looming sense of focus and/or despair

Performance Interventions:
1. The aim of this intervention is to affect relations between entities, by getting strangers to sit at the same table. A simple Arduino device is attached to the underside of the centermost table, with switches wired to the edges where nearby tables can be pulled to hold the switches in. When any switches depress, a signal notifies the performer to return to this area and return the tables to formation.

2. The aim of this intervention is to confirm that the ecological system’s strength in asserting its identity as an entity having its own PRA. The performer’s task in this case is to see whether he or she will be rejected by the space, rather than accepted by the people in it. This is done by doing something that the people would not object to, if it were not being done in this ecological system. The performer brings a laptop with an obviously 2-player game, classic Street Fighter 2, plus 2 USB gamepads. Volume turned off (blaring audio annoyance would be too obviously a violation), the performer plays the game in single player, until A New Challenger Approaches. They play a round or a few, but when that person leaves to work, the person continues playing, with controller 2 laying out again as bait. If/when someone asks the performer to leave, the space has asserted its identity as separate from that of its individual entities.

3. The aim of this intervention is to extend the ecological system by scattering its entities into alternative contexts. As set up, the performer creates a php file that will recommend another specific study location on campus, selected at random, and direct the student to go study there. Ideally, some navigation information or map should be provided as well. Below that should be links to these articles from LifeHacker and Lawyerist, which both suggest that changing study/work location yields improved results. A QR code directing to this URL can then be printed and taped to the corner of each table in the room. If people get curious to check the QR Code, they may be persuaded to try studying at one of the other recommended locations. The performers role in this case is to hang out working at the table, periodically taking pictures of the QR code then leaving for a bit, later returning and repeating, to entice people to try it. If this proves effective, it may help those students discover a new favorite study location to alternate, and it also makes this otherwise popular section less crowded, creating a partial vacuum which may inspire more students to wander over and try it (first studying there, then being coaxed into trying some other location as well).

Guide: Text Page

Guide: Images Page

Our third challenge was for us to find a way to use digital media to propagate play as an expressive form. This had to be built atop a common skill or play property, and produce something in the process.

One very common skill, which quickly takes on play qualities when performed within the safe boundaries of friends, is the ability to balance attack and defense. To strike while minimizing our own vulnerability is at the root of our survival reflexes, a skill so ordinary that it can be observed in untrained animals. This behavior occurs when neither fight nor flight wins out in full, and a person or animal is then pressed to engage in both at once.

For humans, tools are employed to increase the effectiveness of attack or to reduce the need to defend. Such tools include, even among ancient and primitive humankind: stones, knives, spears, and swords.

Truly inflicting bodily injury is certainly not a playful activity. Instead, I’m focusing on sparring, by substituting fabric markers in the place of weapons, and competing to mark up one another’s t-shirts.

The game’s intersection with digital is in how the scoring occurs. A simple Processing application takes a before and after photo of each player facing the camera, then compares the end shots to the beginning versions to highlight changes made by marker contact. The number and thickness of lines drawn to each shirt can then be totaled for each player as the opposite partner’s score. The program is then able to declare a winner based on which player’s score is greater.

In the process, a one-of-a-kind artifact is created: a t-shirt design dynamically generated by the successful strikes of our playful sparring partners. The length, number, and intensity of strokes on each player’s shirt speaks to the battles they have been through.

Detailed instructions are available on the Guide: Text Page.

For more photos and details check out the Guide: Images Page.

For this week, we were challenged to re-imagine a way for user and design time to get closer together on a digital device, by enabling users to redesign the object. Plenty of opportunities for user redesign come to mind for software, in which accessible tools can be designed for arbitrary levels of content creation and experience customization, but in line with the challenge’s specification of “device” I aimed to come up with a hardware example.

The overall concept I pitched was that of a modular pinball table, wired with an Arduino microcontroller to enable customization of playfield scoring and gating rules.

I built a crude, playable concept model to illustrate the intended scale and form:

Playable, though all-analog, concept model

The low half of the table is fixed firmly to the table, so the inlane/outlane divider, slingshots (triangles above the flippers), flippers, and plunger are positioned in their standard arrangement. The top half of the playfield however is perforated with holes, each providing a potential connection point for a bumper, spinner, stand-up target, ramp, or other playfield element. In the fully wired version, rather than using small holes with wires poking through, a more secure and flush electrical connection might be established by instead using screw sockets, filled with plugs for those not in use. Such a design would also enable arbitrary positioning of lights in/under the playfield, to also be orchestrated via the Arduino controller.

Guide: Text Page

Guide: Images Page

The notion of “messing about” from Papert (1998) and Hawkins (1965) is about embracing unintended effects during crafting as a source of learning and ideation. This helps interactors “overcome the ‘rigid style of work’ typically associated with [electronics]” (Ratto 2011).

Another type of object that we commonly associate with a rigid style of work, especially as adults, is everyday paper. In this case I’m specifically setting my sights on index cards, which for me evoke memories of studying flash cards, browsing library card catalogs, preparing bibliography entries, and generally taking care of schoolwork or business the old fashioned way. For my concept today, I’m be introducing a way to mess about with index cards to, hopefully, help us overcome the rigid style of work typically associated with office/school paper products.

There’s another theory that we need to account for, however: in writing about knitting for her MA Thesis, Betsy Greer (2004) highlights how, “A space for conversation opens up somehow, with this simple act.” Greer’s words immediately before that statement better explains the meaning:

We don’t just need to rethink our relationship to paper supplies. We need a conversation starter.

There are so many ways to design and decorate your Facecards

I’m pleased to report that while working on these crafts, within a period of only a few hours I had nearly a half dozen classmates stop to talk and ask me what I was up to. After I finished crafting, and just had them sitting around on my desk, I still drew in an unusual amount of attention and discussion with acquaintances that I ordinarily only speak with at most a few times each semester.

I arrived at this concept after discarding a multiplayer electronic game idea – for fear that competition would get in the way of casual conversation – and a stairstep paper folding maze I made multiple prototypes for. Inspired by Greer’s ideas, I was searching for a solution that fit as many of these criteria as possible from the domain of hobbyist knitting:

• Non-competitive. There’s no winner or loser. People of varying skill can all participate together without anyone feeling shut down by it.

• Range for skill. More experienced participants are able to challenge themselves, while people newer to the activity are able to still complete projects and achieve output meaningful to other people. This also means that someone practicing the skill has room to improve at it, achieving new and different results with time.

• One artifact produced per individual, ready to be saved or gifted. This untangling from one another’s production makes it easier for the group to be flexible, welcoming in new members at any time and experience level. Everyone can be at different phases on projects of different complexity. This also works better for fitting the task into everyday life, since participants can miss or come late to a meeting and not be “behind” thereafter. This quality reduces stress and logistical overhead.

• Conversation enabler while making. The craft needs to occupy enough of each maker’s attention to take pressure off the intensity of eye contact or meeting just to talk, while leaving enough attention free to engage in full and meaningful conversation with others.

• Conversation starter when done. Like the knitting needles hanging out of Greer’s handbag, the craft needs to be something which can spark conversation with others even when it’s not being actively done.

• The goal of each artifact can be made open or kept personal. Everyone’s producing a unique artifact, which they are welcome to either share details of with the group (ex. “Oh, this is for my nephew Jacob”) or keep those intentions to themselves (“Today I’m making a scarf”). The separation between artifact and who it is being made for is left ambiguous, in a way that say, writing letters or making gift cards, would easily reveal.

• Not pretentious. These artifacts make no claim to be high art, or aren’t concerned with conceptual and theoretical posturing. They get made primarily because they are enjoyable or relaxing to make, and they get saved or shared primarily because everyday people like the results.

• Within anyone’s price range. This isn’t an activity just for people with major financial means. It’s an activity for anyone and everyone.

In the mid-1990’s, I learned basic paper pop-up craft from Paul Jackon’s The Pop-Up Book: Step-by-Step Instructions for Creating Over 100 Original Paper Projects. One of the simplest designs included, which produced appealing and playful output from comparatively little effort or skill, was a frog face that opens and closes its eyes and mouth as a page is folded or unfolded. Since this is so simple to learn and do, and creates room for skilled customization through painting or more advanced cutting, it seemed to me a suitable craft to adapt and elaborate upon.

I’ve incorporated watercolor paints as the decoration method of choice, in part because for many of us it evokes elementary art class, which was one of our first and few courses in life where freely socializing while working with our hands was the norm. As a minor modification to the folding, I added side flaps, which makes it easier to open and close the mouth to play with the artifact like a puppet. I changed the plans from full-size pages to index cards because they’re stronger than regular paper–so they hold up better to the watercolors–plus they’re small enough to be easily stored, and it’s possible to buy hundreds of them for only a few dollars. Since this cutting pattern is simple enough to work with scissors, no X-Acto blade is really needed, conceivably hundreds of these can be made for only $5-$10 spent on watercolors and index cards.

Lastly, because the final artifacts lay flat when finished, it would be trivial to scan these, at which point they could be e-mailed as patterns, shared via a database, or textured to a 3D model in-browser (for previewing customization ideas by others… or even for mapping on a character within a game). People could share their Facecard Friend designs not only with the people around them, but with the whole world, creating a potential audience for those interested in taking Facecard crafting to the next level.

For more information, here are my two one-sided pages:

Guide: Text Page

Guide: Images Page