Electromagnets!

Photo

Met with Joel Murphy the other day to discuss how to implement some of my interactive sculptural garment ideas.  I told him about my googly-eye dress idea and as I had expected, he said it would involve creating electromagnets on the fly.  This would be done by sending a current through a microcontroller connected through Arduino to a series of electromagnets made from tightly coiled magnetic wire.  As seen in my Thing-a-Day Flash app, viewing certain parts of an image would cause different ports of the microcontroller to fire according to what part of the dress they were hooked up to.  Joel advised me to use Processing instead of Flash, as it has a much more robust Arduino library.  Because I was snowed in today and couldn't get out to go buy some magnetic wire, my project for today will instead be describing what my work tomorrow will entail.

Once I get a hold of some magnetic wire (basically just super light gauge wire, around 36g), I'm just going to test how difficult it is to create an electromagnet that my googly-eyes will respond to on the fly (see diagram above).  Basically, I'll be connecting the coiled magnetic wire to a 9v battery, then testing it with a multimeter so see what (if anything) happens. I'll have to recreate my googly-eye setup, this time cutting up flat sheets of magnet into circles rather than painting the plastic pupils with magnetic paint (if I get that to work, I'll try the paint again). If the electromagnet is able to make the pupils react, then I'll have to dive into Arduino for reals to figure out how to control multiple electromagnets.

T-shirt foundation

So, I created three different "building blocks" of Delaunay triangulated panels. These were designed to be more wearable than the ones I previously created using cardboard inserts. They are triangles of some raincoat-y fabric placed with glue then sewed down onto muslin. The three were all in different scales, 1x, 2x, and 3x in size, so that they'd fit together. I used this vile-fitting t-shirt as a base because I had a hard time piecing together without any concept of body guiding me. I had originally intended to sew a matrix of female-side snaps on the front of the t-shirt, but I didn't give very logical thought to where I put the male-side snaps on the "blocks," so it didn't work out so well. In the end, these are only pinned on, but I need to figure out a system for placing snaps. It's not very intuitive where to put them to get what sorts of shapes. It is aesthetically challenging to have a network of snaps on the front, as well...

(download)

"Highlander" Logic Flow Chart

Highlander-chart

Here's a logic flow chart I've been working on for my "Highlander" ("THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE!") prototype, which is the website only 1 person can access at a time. I'm going to work on building it tomorrow and hopefully have this basic form up and running to evaluate with my Web Ecology peers and decide where I want to take it from there. I need to flesh out the argument for it a bit more to define whether *actually* having someone control the site is important, or whether the message of being told someone else is using the site is strong enough on its own. We'll see, but I think this will be the most efficient approach towards making this so I am excited to get cranking on it tomorrow!

droning crowd v2.

(download)

here is a new version of the droning crowd twitter audio thing.
It's different than the old one in that ~10 people with 6 different voices speak at the same time, and it reads a large percentage more of the tweets.
I dont know if it's interesting or not, but as sort of ambient noise it's neat in that it really sounds like a crowd, which I think is what twitter probably sounds like as literal audio

-zach

Weekend Update

Just checking in while I know I have steady access to Internet for the day, I'll attempt to update again late tonight once I'm home. I've had a productive day with the Web Ecology folks and fellow Internet researchers. Heard a lot of interesting presentations and work that hopefully I will get to talk about after the weekend is over. With regards to my own work, I pitched my overall thesis concept and ideas for prototypes. It's amazing how succint you can be about your presentation and ideas when you have to put something together very quickly. Here's the gist of my presentation straight from my written notes:

  • Study done last year that avg. American consumes 12 hrs of media a day, a growing portion of which is online
  • We're taking a machine-centered view of technology, building things with immediacy and efficiency in mind - but is this a good thing?
  • So I'm not focusing on the content, because we know people are ridiculous in their own ways
  • Examining how we're ceding control of our interactions to the machines of the Internet, we trust them too much
    • We trust Google to give us all the answers, what books to read, where to buy from, etc.
    • Captcha systems are designed to make machines smarter while treating us like idiots
    • URL shortening services turn something cryptic beacuse we've arbitrarily decided we can only write 140 characters - we have no idea where we're going!
    • We don't need to write anything down because we assume we can always look it up online, that content is always available
  • I'm looking at what happens when we introduce irrational behavior into our interactions?
  • Make things that challenge how we're engaging the medium
  • Create unexpected or unpredictable outcomes that change our perception of how the Internet can be built
  • Ideas / Prototypes:
    • Google Search that makes the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button a serendipitous event - generates a fortune that's stored as a browser cookie (I'm Feeling Lucky button)
    • A captcha system that asks rhetorical questions (What's your favorite color? Pick a number from 1 to 30. What is the meaning of life?)
    • URL shortener that returns back the URL the previous person entered (Japanese cafe inspiration)
    • URL shortener that assigns users a single short permalink whose unpacked address constantly changes (what would the indication be? tie into delicious)
    • Create a website that only one person can access at a time

So I ran through those points and wrapped it in the context of a software company looking to introduce our irrational behavior online. The prototypes were met with a positive, and mostly humorous response, which is good because I think the overall tone is tongue-in-cheek even if all the prototypes are not. There was a lot of good discussion around the last idea in particular, about the website that only one person can access at a time. I've added some of my notes from the resulting discussion, granted most of those in attendance are social media researchers, programmers, and non-artists so they're able to offer a different perspective. On the other hand, a lot of their specific suggestions add on a lot of weight that may not be conceptually necessary as a critical design piece:

  • Biggest mind nugget to consider was the idea of the queue - what happens to people who don't get access to the site? (could the queueing experience be more engaging than landing on the site?)
  • While they're waiting, could they see the name / email address / IP address of the person currently "in control" of the site? (is IP address too abstract?)
  • Someone mentioned being able to track the site "ownership" as an RSS feed (could be an interesting subversion of RSS as an owner log rather than content log)
  • Perhaps linking it to Facebook via Facebook Connect to establish firm identities for users? (bit too heavy)
  • Have the site just display a countdown (or count-up) of how long the user has remaining in their ownership time (or how long they have been there)
  • The functionality of the site could be (and I've been thinking) would be shallow and inane on purpose - what about like a Flash banner game or something we'd normally avoid completely - when you lose the game you lose your ownership of the site (coincidentally enough someone brought up Lose/Lose)
  • There's an interesting dynamic online between wanting to be seen & observed versus our fear of our data getting out of our control, this could play on that

Given the feedback/discussion here really gravitated towards that idea, I'm working on figuring out the technical aspects of it now and hope to get a prototype up and running by tomorrow to get some further feedback from my peers while I have their attention. I tentatively decided to call it "The Highlander" for now, for (hopefully) obvious reasons.

Day 4: Social Interaction! Updates / Goals

Unintended Audience / Panel at Ellen Levy's Studio (Artists + Scientists):

Tonight I attended a very interesting and philosophical panel discussion organized by Victoria Vesna and led by Ellen Levy at her amazing studio near school. Levy discussed an essay and her PhD research into bio-art as it affects human, animal, environment and food. There were discussions of how the artist and the scientist can really reach new levels of thinking and innovation when their minds are open to it.

I introduced myself as a cyborg and pitched Hanky Pancreas to a couple of women who are interested in the space between science, medicine and art. They were interested in the empowerment aspect of it and one posed the question - - "So what would you do with colonoscopy bags?" -- (I'm not sure how I feel about that being the second time someone has asked me that...)

Anyway, it was a great group of people and while they were not my intended audience, it's always good to get in the practice of pitching the concept without people staring at you like you have 5 eyes (although, it would be welcome in that crowd).

Intended Audience / Conceptual Framework:

"Myth unites a people, sanctifies the social order and gives individuals a map of life's path"

Top priority of this semester is actually engaging with my target audience. While I began this project targeting teens, from further research in both psychology for diabetes care and mythical stories, I'm starting to re-think that idea. I'm beginning to see the project as way to tap into various psychological burdens that happen at different stages of a diabetic's life. The way I see it manifesting is through connecting with individuals that represent a certain milestone or time-period that can be psychologically trying in a diabetics life (such as pregnancy, adolescence, childhood etc) and develop an object for them (personal yet universal) that has a visual metaphor incorporated. The visual metaphor chosen would be influenced by their personal story and abstracted using existing mythological symbols. The goal is to help individuals share their story and overcome the burden - - in doing so, they can help others going through the same experience. In this way a kind of "diabetic mythology" could start to develop. I'm continuing my study of mythology and keep finding parallels in what I'm interested in regarding psychological and social benefits of both clothing and story-telling.

Steps forward:

"Each person is a repository of many stories, old and new"


1. Beth:

I have a meeting with a woman named Beth tomorrow who works at JDRF and has Type 1 Diabetes. She wears this insulin pump, which is the one I used to have before. During her undergrad in business she was thinking of a similar idea to Hanky Pancreas, and is super excited to meet and inspire some designs, model, tell her story, etc.

Goals for meeting:

  • Listen to her personal myths / stories (diagnosis story, etc)
  • Evaluate if she has any socio-psychologcial burdens
  • Evaluate relationship to pump / medical tech
  • Evaluate relationship to diabetes
  • Evaluate personal style / fashion sense
  • What kind of message would she send a past self
  • Evaluate involvement with diabetes community / social needs
  • Verify that she wants to be a part of the website / user testing / photographed, etc
  • Specs on her pump / where she wears it on her body / issues?
  • Ask more about her undergrad project in business

Plan:

  • Draft a series of questions that get at the heart of these inquiries
  • Record the interview session (audio / photo / video) if that is okay with her
  • Think of some preliminary designs to discuss (based on past experience and ideas)


2. Kerri:


Kerri (from this post) responded to my email! yay!

I'm happy to help out with your thesis project however I can.  What can I do to help you get started?

- Kerri.

p.s.  "Hanky Pancreas" has to be the best title for any diabetes-related project I've ever heard.  Love it!
Goals:
  • Figure out her personal myth / story
  • Find out how pregnancy affects location of pump
  • Explore psychological issues of pregnancy + diabetes
  • Explore more about the continuous glucose monitor (where does she wear it?)
  • Feedback on mythological interpretation (she has a background in English / professional writer)
  • Feedback on concept sketches (would she wear it?)
  • Ask if she would be willing to be part of the website, etc

Plan:

  • Draft an email with similar inquiries (initial email addresses the first three goals / follow up emails seek the remaining questions)

  

Day 4: More pants + etc.

Today I sketched out version three of my suit pants that prevent people from crossing their legs, and the answer was velcro. Like the magnet socks prototype, this wearable functions by sticking the wearer's legs together, but instead of using positive reenforcement like the socks, these pants demonstrate negative reenforcement. One would be able to uncross his/her legs after the velcro sticks, but not without drawing unwanted attention (from the action and the resulting noise). 

I also started thinking about how I might build out a physical device that detects leg bouncing (which I wasn't very successful at last semester). I drew out a diagram of a small tube containing two metal probes and a metal washer that completes the circuit if it comes into contact with the probes. Not sure, but this might work. The rest of the day was spent nursing my cold...

(download)

The Exhibitionist

Click here to download:
exAnimatedWeb.zip (391 KB)

Woohoo!
This is getting exciting! :)
Trying out the idea of hidden anomic scene within the touristic crowd.
So I photoshopped myself in 3D into one of the Times Square 3D pictures as an exhibitionist.
The entire movie is 7 frames corresponding to the 7 frames of the view master reel.
It is made to loop so that when a person leaves the view master at any frame after interacting, it will always make sense and look coherent.
It looks great in 3D, I will show everyone in class soon! :)

-Grace