Last post...

Hey there people,

I don't think that you will read this post, but I had to say some final words. It were an awesome 2 weeks, and I really liked working with you. Georg for the hard work in the prototype, Onur for the clear minded and good ideas, and of course Katrina for the ideas for the room and great sketches.

I think that we as a group made a solid concept and presentation. I have to say that I'm quite proud of it (especially the work we done in just the two weeks).

I really hope to see you somewhere in the future!

Greets from a cold and cloudy Holland.

Preparations

We are about to have our final presentation in a few hours, so I tried to check if everything worked out perfectly. Well, it turns out that even the best preparation won't garantuee a successful setup for the real thing.

Someone shows up, and just takes the audio cable. He promises to return them in a few minutes; in the end, he doesn't return the cable even after an hour, and some of us are quite upset about the issue. Later we got the cable back, thanks to Tarcan, but it still didn't work, because something happened to the mixer settings. Yay. No tech could be fetched at first, but after waiting long enough, we got everything working again.

Still I'm asking, what's the point in preparing your presentation, when it can change at someone elses whim in just a second?

I will never know.

- Georg

Poster

We have the poster ready and handed it for printing.




Now getting the installation ready for tomorrow's final presentation.

Evaluation == Concept

Evaluation Concept: Finding Connections

The visitors of the exhibition generate statistical values by touching different objects. These are then evaluated to create a synesthetic experience for the visitors: light, sound and finally a piece of Calligraphy.

Environment: Colours and Soundscape

Depending on the Softness and the Temperature the system will pick one of nine environments. These are used for the colours and could also be used as basis for visuals or distinct soundscapes.

Music

The Roughness and Temperature decide which music is played. Temperature decides the pace and rythm, whereas Roughness translates to the roughness of the music: is it smooth and mellow or rough and aggressive?

Calligraphy

These are the words and concepts to be displayed in a variety of styles, depending on the Softness and Roughness values. A low Softness means rigidity, structure, hardness, whereas a low Roughness is connected with mellowness, tolerance and peace. Going from there I came up with ideas that could be associated with each of the groups.

Things to Consider

We still have to work on the music and find Calligraphy that we can use. Coming up with the exact Concept/Calligraphy-combination is practically impossible in this short time. For the presentation we will probably use examples of Calligraphy we could find on the web, but that approach poses another problem: they are not really suitable for our idea.

- Georg

a more solid concept about the room

Kristina and I had a long talk about the set-up of the room and the placing of the objects. Additionally, we thought about the placing of the lights and the relevance of the music. At the bottom of this post is a picture of the sketches we made, but I will explain later what it exactly means, because we have to leave.



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - UPDATE SCHMUPDATE - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Again it was a long day, and I went right after the meeting to the good old Pizza Hut to eat, of course, a pizza. After that I went to the hotel and noticed that everyone was already gone (or working...), so i have to do it with a borrowed laptop and this blog, instead of beer and good company :(. At least I have some time to work things out.

as promised, some more info. At first I have to say that we are developing two aspects of the project; the first one is a 3d model and charts how the project would function and look like. The second one is a narrowed down prototype that consists of a Wizzard of Oz combined with a simple physical interface.
Kristina and I worked today on the concept, while George and Onur worked on the basics of the Wizzoz (abbreviation of Wizzard of Oz, because it's a long word and the short word sounds more hip-hop. Fo shizzle, yo).

Instead of a square kind of room, we wanted a more organic, more sphere-like set up. Also, we thought about integrating the objects more in the environment.
There are 3 things people can influence: This things are light, sound and the most important, the graphic on the screen.
We started with dividing the room more in different parts, but it is still a single room. There's only one entrance, so the user is in a closed environment. Every part has relating objects to it. We want the more "bad" objects (the properties people experience as bad, but that is relative to the person) easier available to the group. The warm and comfortable objects are in more hard places, so people have to do more their best to make the room more pleasurable (just look and the post Georg had made for more info about this).

The materials
Here a short (but not definitive) list which materials we gonna use.

glass --> cold, smooth
rusty metal --> cold, rough
stone --> rough
wood --> warm, rough
paper --> warm, smooth
plastic --> smooth, warm
fabric --> soft, warm
cotton --> soft, warm, light

Instead of objects of the same size, we are going to use different shapes and places. The objects in the room are on a table, so the findability is on an very low level. Other objects are integrated in the wall, like a stroke with relief. The last ones are hanging from the ceiling.
I think were gonna work this out tomorrow, because I'm a bit out of steam.

For tommorow

• We have to start at the site (what is going in it?).
• Looking for materials for the objects
• graphics (symbols or calligraphy?)
• linking arduino with flash
• Flash thing
• which sounds?
• 3d sketch
• and more...

additionally, a picture of flying dogs.

workshop2.start();

Hey there!

Arduino meets Touch: Success!

We've been busy with work. Nikki, Onur and Kristina experimented, and actually got the Touch Sensor to work with Arduino on a Mac. Hopefully, Arduino will be working with Flash, so we are are probably going to do a little Wizard of OZ prototype with a bunch of people touching objects and some (secretely operated) sliders to control our demo application.

3 Dimensions

I'm currently thinking about the three dimensions that are used in influencing the room, and how they relate to each other: Roughness, Softness and Temperature. They are arranged in three pairs, to change various aspects of the room. 

Roughness and Softness => Symbolic Association (like Harmony, Peace, Evolution, ...)

Roughness and Temperature => Music (from calm & slow to rough & fast)

Softness and Temperature => Atmosphere (like colors, lighting, maybe even some imagery)

Premise / Philosophy

I also was thinking about a kind of premise behind our project. What story do we want to tell? Since our project is focused on touching objects and thereby influencing the surrounding, the three points of our premise are thus: 

1) You may influence the world with your own two hands. 

2) Everyone can influence the world, because we are not alone in the world. You can interact with other visitors.

3) Since you don't know what to expect beforehand, you will have to learn through your own experience.

Looking forward to quite some interesting work to do!

- Georg

To do list

Here a list of the things we have to do, so we can start working as soon as possible.

- Environment and set-up, are we going to use tables, objects on the wall or hanging from the roof?
- More research about the context of the installation
- What kind of materials are we going to use? Find out which materials are best for the prototype.
- Improve the sketch-up 3d model. Maybe we make a simple 3d movie and animate the lights.
- What kind of art are we going to display on the screen? Are we going to use common symbols or the calligraphy?
- What influence do the materials have for the screen and the environment?
- What techniques are we going to use. Find out what is possible and what not.
- Are we going to use sounds? Are we going to use Sufi music or mainstream music, like techno, classic, new age etc?
- What spectrum are we going to use for the color of the room? Research about the spectrum and what collors envoke which emotions.
- and of course prepare the presentation.

to do for tomorrow:
Onur is going to research how to link arduino with flash. Kristina is researching the collor spectrum. Nikki will do some research about the music.

We want to be ready somewhere in the afternoon, so wa can work the entire day, and the rest of the week at the project.

And to make this post more interesting, here a picture.


Posted by Kristina, Nikki and Onur