The idea Is Born

So for the majority of last week we were working on confirming the plans for our texture reading rig. The point of it being reading a part of the city that is not usually explored and one that played a big part in the development of humankind as a species. Our sense of touch is a much under appreciated component in our daily lives. The whole point of the bot is to use the flex sensors to effectively feel the city and turn the data it collects into some sort of physical output. In this way we can create a kinetic display that represents a part of the world that was lost.

So now that I have a purpose I spent the day working on getting our newly acquired Arduino board wired up and working with Max. A collaboration between myself and Nick led to us getting the sensors working and inputing their data.

At the end of the day we went up to the 3D labs to check out the processes that we will need when we start producing tomorrow and everything seems strait forward. The 6mm bar did seem kind of flimsy but we will find out soon enough if we will need to swap it out for a more solid material.

Racking The Brains

Today when we came together we realized that theidea we had settled on last week was not going to work. The day was spent trying to come up with a new idea that was still interesting and to the brief. Our first idea was a curb runner sort of robot that would move along the curb capturing all it saw as in went. Talking to James he asked how we could push the idea of using pre existing structures as the platform for our rig. The idea of returning to our original ideas of an up  high shot had us turning towards the idea of having it run round the edge of the building. 

We decided to head out into the street to look at the structures there were. Checking out the curbs we quickly saw the difficulties in its motion once it reached the end and also also how uniform the shot would be We would like some variance. This made me think that if we could get a more mobile shot from that angle it might provide a more interesting display. Nick came up with the idea of exploring the more seedy/ filthy side of the city using a low angle point if view of a rat. This would be achieved with a remote control car and a camera. The simplicity of this idea did not go down well with the set of the group though so it was pushed to the back of the mind. 

The rest of the day was spent developing the idea I hope to be able to use which is one that works around the idea of emulating the gramophone needle as it reads the vinyl record by reading the textures of the city. We would like to be able to amplify these and create a physical representation. I'd like to make some large scale vinyl replica's that could be used as hanging art. We could use a medium such as clay to record it. At the end of the day James suggested a flex sensor and i saw the logic behind that. Its something new to think about tomorrow. 

The Camera Rig

Brief:

Two Elements

1.       To conceive, design and fabricate a piece of auxiliary equipment for video and audio that:

·         Captures content in a way that you otherwise couldn’t

·         Provides audio/ video content for data analysis\

2.       To create a time based “visualization” of the city from the audio/ video content that is both:

·         Displayed or presented live during the operation of the equipment

·         Developed subsequently as a stand-alone representation

When we first got this project my first thought was that I wanted to get up in the air. I want to make a camera rig that could fly and get above the city. I joined a group of likeminded people and we set about brainstorming and researching ideas on how we could make a flying camera rig. We came up with an idea of emulating the Chinese paper lanterns but when taking safety considerations into mind a flying flammable paper rig would not be practical and could cause injury or harm to both people and equipment. This made us think about other options such as a helium balloon, but after talking to some 2^nd years that produced the same idea I realised that costs and practicality would cause some serious issues further down the production line. 1 meter cubed of helium can only carry l kilogram so we would be having weight issues cropping up all the time. Putting the flying balloon idea to the back of my mind I made my way home one night stopping in the park to have a thinking session there I brainstormed some more ideas such as a bridging the gap robot which would crawl the underside of the harbour bridge and an idea of up scaling natures machines, an example of this being the helicopter seed.  

In the end everyone decided they liked the idea of a one way mirror orb that would record people’s interaction with it without them knowing. This was aimed at exploring the curiosity and vanity of the human nature. Talking to other groups they suggested just using a cube rather than an orb as the housing so that the manufacturing would be easier. I had to agree with this. As a group we have started to build around the idea of Pandora’s Box and how her curiosity got the better of her and she had to look inside.

Talking to my boss I found out some issues that may occur with our design. First, wireless camera’s usually only have 4 frequencies so we would not be able to attach one on each face of the cube. Second, on such a close and small space there is a large possibility of their signals interfering with each other and affecting the quality of the image.  This may cause issues

Bullet Time

For the first activity of our new project we had to recreate the motion of created when Neo dodges a bullet in the Matrix. The first thought that popped into my mind was how stop motion animation could be used to recreate the effect completely.  We also thought of using the green room to hide an actor that would carry a bullet. After talking to Kim about our ideas he explained to us how literally we had been answering all of the questions posed to us in our projects. This got me thinking about how we had approached the other projects and I did see the sense in what he said. From seeing this flaw our group decided to try and branch out and find a new way to create the motion that hopefully had no relation to the actual scene of the movie. We decided the best way to create the effects with what we had was to use a lazy susan turn table combined with the chromakey room and get some cool rotational effects going. Thinking on how to make it different from everybody else’s we decided to create a little story line to go with any actions we had. We came up with a passing the Chinese whispers/ passing the note kind of story line that would link all our short videos and even though the quality of our videos won’t be very good this should hopefully add another aspect to our outcome.

The end outcome turned out better than we thought. The flow we managed to create with our little story line seemed to be the key to turning crappy video into something that was at least a little bitt interesting and amusing

Visual Interface and the Key Board Hack

The Key Board hack and trace was surprisingly easy to do. By plugging it in and using a patch that printed the key number I was quickly able to determine which input was given from each of my connections. This took far less time then if I had actually traced the keys. Over the holidays I thought on the idea of the wearable interface. I did some research into Max and watched a movie called the Transcendent Man. My original idea for Max was to create a 3D space in which the user could control objects with the motions of the body.Gesture Control of Sounds in 3D Space

After some research it seemed that it would be incredibly difficult to put a 3D space into Max or to find one that had already been made. This sort of put a stop to any plans leading in that direction. At this point I started thinking about the switches i would like to use and what would be best for detecting motion. I came up with the idea of spring loaded switches. When pulled the connection would break and when the connection is remade it would create a bang and the input from these would control components. This worked well with the joints of the body and since I had to change from the 3D world idea it could apply to many different possibilities.

At the start of the week back I had an idea for my interface and my switches. I set to work on these. I began thinking about what i could make my switch out of. Pretty quickly I figured out that the best way to make these would be using the end of a pen and the spring that belongs in it. Once i had this component I needed a way to keep the wire attached to the spring so it wouldn't pull through. At first i tried just using a wad of cellotape on the end. This worked for a short period of time but then began to pull itself off the wire. This connection would never be sustainable for a longer period of time. My next attempt used a flat head nail. This was the perfect fit and i knew i could solder the wire onto it. When I tested the nail for conductivity I realized it was galvanized. This meant i had to file the top layer off to expose the metal underneath. Having sussed this I soldered the wire onto the nail. However when i did this I increased the size of the nail and it would no longer fit inside the spring. This would make it difficult if this was used. My final outcome for a switch was cast some solder balls with the wire inside. This was easy enough to do and created a strong connection between the two points. One problem that did occur was that when then balls were cast the outside layer oxidized. This meant that i had to file the top layer off to get a current to flow. This would become a long term problem for the product as the connecting areas could re-oxidise and not allow the current to flow. After the parts were put together I glued the open end so that it was an enclosed piece.

The idea behind the interface was basically a human remote. The userwould wear a exoskeleton like outfit with switches at the joints. I wanted to be able to emulate the control KARL had in his dreams. In one scene he used is arms to control various objects and i wanted to copy these motions and have them affect the video.

It came time eventually to start the Max Patch. I had not been looking forward to this because although I had been searching the internet for help I still could not quite get my head around Max. I managed to piece together a program that read the inputs from my hack first. This was the easy part as it only required assigning key numbers to objects and adding bangs.

After this I once again delved into the resources of the internet and found some effects I could use in conjunction with my video. (Effects sourced from http://001.vade.info/). From the resources I pulled the effects that created the most drastic changes to the video. I set it up so that as the bangs went off it would switch between the effects. At this point I hit several issues with my program. I intended to display for or more screens in a display together but when I tried to edit my downloaded effects I couldn't edit the windows as the source file was specific to the number code.

As all the effects displayed in the same window there were problems with overlapping. I had no way to fix this problem so I just had to deal with it. In future though I would find out how to make the effects myself rather then sourcing them. With a patch the way it was I was left with just enough time to mount these switches in a holders so that they could be attached at the joints of the body.

Coming in early in the morning I discovered that when I tried to add the last switches into the hack the new switches would stop the old ones from working. I tried for the hour before the presentation but to no avail. The logic behind my connections was correct but for some reason no current would pass. This meant that I lost half of the inputs I needed.

Overall the final product was nowhere near my initial ideas. This came about through a lack of understanding of the program and the time constraints that were put in place. There are many things I wold change if I was to do this project again. The first being to start off with a wireless keyboard but also about having a more definite plan of action about what i was attempting to create. With the lack of a good idea to start with I had to build it as I went. I believe this to be a very inefficient way to work and it will be something that affects any future projects I have.