Digital World and Image studio blog

For my submission, I want to explore the somewhat inexact craft/practice of circuit bending. Circuit bending is a process by which anybody can open up a simple noise-making circuit (as in a child’s toy), and begin playing with it to make new noises. A lot of the process of circuit bending is about experimentation and playing with the circuit in a manner the is both fearless and exploratory. In practice, circuit bending can do a lot to make the physicality of a circuit real. Those who see all machine and computer inner workings as a black box guided by mystical electronic forces may learn a lot through a simple act like placing your finger on a circuit board and changing the pitch of the resulting sound.

I propose a sort of bend-by numbers approach to a circuit bending station for Flux. Here, any number of pre-opened toys will be arranged on a table. Each toy will have its circuit exposed and come with things like alligator clips, potentiometers, switches, and resistors. Depending on the nature of each toy, some may have a few wires pre-soldered to them if it enables an easier or more enjoyable experience in bending for the participants. Each circuit will be labeled or marked in some way with either some permanent marker or colored electrical tape. These markings will indicate places to attach alligator clips, or a pontentiometer, or to rub your finger over. Each will hopefully result in the creation of a sound since these spots will be pre-determined in the first place.

For this first assignment, I suggested a combination of noodle-based sculpture and simple machines. To do this activity, you need macaroni (and various other pastas), a glue gun, and if you’re going the mechanical route, some simple motors, levers, and other moving parts.

Build your own noodle sculpture, and then make parts of it mobile by working in these automatic machines. The possibilities are limitless!

Digital Historical Reenactments

Premise:
Student-created theatrical settings are constructed in a digital environment, and the students control puppets to create reenactments of notable historical events.

Details:
We will use Unity3D to make an engine for digital theatrical stage creation. This engine will have the capability to add a limited number of actors, an arbitrary number of image plane backdrops, and additional prop items. These items may be represented as image planes, or possibly created in a 3D environment. The actors will be created from additional image planes, and controlled using either the Microsoft Kinect or DWIG’s Android puppet controllers. Prop items may also be linked to controllers and moved throughout the scene. Scene changes will be programmed in, and will occur by sliding one scene’s backdrop offstage while sliding another in.

Assignment For Students:
1. Go out into the world and gather photographs at a historical location. Frame these photographs as if they were backdrops or scenery items on a stage.
2. Using the photographs, create a number of scenes in our digital stage around this re-enactment.
3. Design digital actors using photographs as well.
4. Create a story or historical re-enactment around these designed scenes/actors.
5. Perform it live in front of your classmates?

DWIG’s Role:
We must create the engine for the construction of these settings. The current “puppet theater” interface already allows for puppet control using an Android phone. We would need to create ways for students to bring in an image file into a Unity application and apply it as a texture to a plane or other primitive 3D object. Additional tools for image positioning, resizing, and cropping may also be useful in this endeavor. We would also need to create an interface for constructing the puppets. If we went the KInect route, we would also have to create a way for linking motion as detected by Kinect into puppet movement. Finally, we would need to devise a means for arranging these backdrops on a stage. We could do this by having fixed backdrop positions, or by allowing the students to move them through the scene on their own. Also, a means for automatically saving and retrieving these custom scenes would be needed so that the students could work on them over time and keep them for future use. Finally, we would need to spend time instructing and helping the students in the use of this software, an inevitable task no matter what we go with.

Division of Work:

Nick: Unity Programming
Andy: More Programming?
Friedrich: Additional Programming?
Christine: UI Design
Ashton: UI Design
Xiao: UI Design
Some Combination of Us: Student Instruction

I came up with two ideas for digital intervention based on placement of objects and music.

Below are two possible augmented reality games which are suited towards playing in a parking deck. Players would experience these games through special headgear or through mobile devices like smart phones.

Dots and Squares

To break the boredom of the Atlantic Station Parking Deck, we could create an augmented reality version of the dots and boxes game. Players would use the columns as dots, and connect each column using a line of their color. Players win points by completing the fourth side of a square.

Pacman

Players could navigate the parking deck as if they were Pacman. They would collect virtual speheres and dodge ghosts while running around the parking deck. Or, some players could take on the role of ghosts and attempt to cut off pac-men.

The purpose of my idea is to create a method for making people think more about what they eat by altering the space in which they eat.  Customers would pay at specific registers based on the caloric content of their order. Above the registers, a light up led grid would display the number of transactions on that register. By the end of the day, or week, the grids would form a bar graph showing the average caloric intake of the Georgia Tech community. Over time, changes in the bar graph would show changes in eating habits.