DOCUMENTATION
Document your work individually. Make sure to include a video of your drawing machine, a drawing you made with it, and the code you used.
- What kind of machines would you be interested in building?
I am interested in building machines that are human-centered, intuitive and smart. The drawing machine we have done today is more of an expressive type which react to human’s hand movements and replace human hands to make expressive paints and lines. It is able to save our energy yet it does not enhance human experiences. To make it smarter, I think we can adapt it to our social media to detect users’ mood recently, or gain certain awareness of what the users are reading and thinking. For example, if the drawing machine can link to my Pinterest account to know my favour in art, they can produce a similar one especially for my taste. By doing that, the drawing machine can produce relevant art that are catered to the users’ needs, fulfilling their interests. That can be considered a smart machine.
- Find a kinetic art installation. Post your thoughts on it and make a comparison with the work you did during this lab. Explain why you like this specific project and how interactive you think this is. If it is not, what would you add to the project to make it interactive?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCst6Zlodlk
The sculpture they created is called “Breaking Wave,” which is a massive piece featuring 804 metallic balls, suspended from a motorized mechanism that puts them in motion in a wave-like formation. When the wave reaches its crest, and then breaks, the balls hover in a cloud-like mess–and from most perspectives in the room, it’s pure chaos. From two hidden spots in the room, though, the patterns become clear: a labyrinth within the circle, or a spiral pattern (inspired by the Fibonacci sequence, naturally).
The kinetic art is more 3D than what we did today which is 2D drawing. It has one more dimension and can do much more than on a flat plane.
The reason why I like it is because it is simple-looking, but has the power to do many things. The balls are like atoms that make up all kinds of things in the world. It has the potential to construct shape and rebuild forms. The nature of “breaking wave” is more from the point of aesthetic and mathematical shapes and forms created by different heights. In that way, it does not interact with human as much. However, if I am to reimagine and reconstruct this installation, I would make it more interactive by 2 ways:
- utilizing its forms to send a message.
When a person wants to send a message to another person. It gives an input to the installation, which process it and forms a shape that conveys the message. Let’s have a scenario of a couple who are apart. The boy sends a message: hug; and the breaking wave, which is situated in front of the girl, forms a shape to hug the girl.
- making it a visualization tool for social good.
if is can be place in a metro station. It can be an installation placed at the entrance to indicate the flow of people. the more people moving quickly in the metro station, the faster it moves, conveying the amount of people and the speed of the human flow. How cool is that?
interesting sculpture, Arya. Also the adds on you would like to implement sound great. Utilizing it to send messages or for social good are great features for HCI.
The only thing I would say is to copy and paste the arduino code next time, it is better for testing than a screenshot.