Ooo - blingy!

This release from CultureMob.com is exactly what I’ve been waiting for. In addition to expanding from Seattle into Denver and Portland with it’s event-finding magics (with, of course, the world to follow), this release includes the fruits of my labors: editability!

We’ve released this with an experimental ability for anyone with an account to make edits to the data. This should make my wife Keely very happy, since the poor categorizations of dance performances have bugged her.

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Audio Ping Pong

I recently put together a fun little project using an arduino, headphones and an accellerometer.

Audio Ping Pong

When you put on the headphones, you hear a sound that is cycling through a sequence indicating its approach. The sound is somewhere on the left-right axis in the headphones. If the sound is to your left, you have to tilt your head to the left until the sound is centered. If you tilt your head (the paddle) to the right position in time, you hit the ball an continue, the ball’s approach speeding up each time. If you fail to hit the ball a buzzer and light go off to punish you and the game is over.

I am interested in using senses differently and getting people to focus on their senses in novel, interesting and engaging ways.

My first implementation is very rudimentary. My sound generation capabilities are limited to square waves at full volume so there isn’t true panning - just left, right and centered. In addition to real panning, I would like volume control to indicate the ball’s approach rather than the tone sequence I have now. I need to figure out what kind of RC circuit would smooth the PWM output to act like volume control, or use a digital potentiometer.

I also hope to build a transceiver into the game so that it can be multiplayer. Potentially there could be a number of players and it would be like audio hackey sack.

Another thought for extension is to use the other axis on the accelerometer so that one could use forward and backward motion in competitive play. A violent motion forward ’spikes’ the ball at the other player - just like in real ping pong.

I used the Protoshield, which is a handy way to consolidate a small arduino project.

This project was inspired by an exhibit at Disneyland The Exploratorium.

Posted in Dorkus, Art | 9 Comments »
Audible Avatar

This post is a bit belated, as will the next one be, but I wanted to put up a little about the piece that I put up in the People Doing Strange Things with Electricity show. It’s called Audible Avatar, for lack of a better name.

The installation consists of an overhead camera (with a fish-eye lens) that is connected to a computer running MAX/MSP/Jitter/CV monitoring the video input. The system monitors the input for movement and attaches trackpoints that follow the movement in the video around. This will, to a large degree, give the system handles on people moving through the space. MAX then sends OSC commands that report the position and idleness of the trackpoints to SuperCollider (running warp). SuperCollider is playing back a set of samples, each of which correlates to a trackpoint. But instead of just playing the samples back, it uses the position and idle time data to scrub to a particular position in the sample, pitch shift it, and adjust the volume. As participants move through the space, they are scrubbing and pitch shifting the samples the system has assigned to them. If a trackpoint winds up not attached to someone moving in the space, it’s idleness causes it to fade away and eventually be retired.


Hmm, this embed doesn’t seem to be working for me, but you can see the video here.

The audio samples are contributed into the system by people at a kiosk where you push and hold a doorbell button to record. The button and the recording light interface with the computer using an arduino. The light goes off after ten seconds as that is the maximum recording length. The microphone is connected directly to the computer and the button signal is detected by MAX and relayed to SuperCollider.

Audible Avatar - kiosk

I intend to record more audio from it and include that.

Posted in Art | 1 Comment »
Autonomous Art

With the assignment being to create autonomous art, I wanted to set up a system that would exhibit emergence. I wanted to make a whole bunch of light fearing robots that would become increasingly light adverse the more exposed they were. This would set up a cluster of robots that would churn and move around, as well as congregate around people that would come in to their space and cast a shadow. After it became clear that the cost would be prohibitive, I opted to make a single robot and a simulation of the group.

Here is the robot that I made by lathing aluminum (freehand - with no time for finishing work):

My Robot

Not shown is its base of two DC motors and a swiveling wheel, and inside were batteries, light sensors (in the holes) and an arduino and h-bridge.

The simulation is available here (pardon the messy auto-generated page). You can pick them up by clicking, or turn off the lights by clicking not on one of them.

It was fun to build and I learned a lot, but the project is admittedly weak on artistic merits. Prof summed it up during the critique with the brutal but fair question, “how is this different from Furby?”. Ouch.

My concept for the next project is better. But you’ll just have to wait.

Posted in Art | No Comments »
Site Specific Art

In my very excellent mechatronics class, our first assignment was to make a piece of site specific art. That was the whole assignment. However, it being a mechatronics class in the dXArts program, it is naturally expected to be systems art incorporating electronic sensing and control apparatuses.

My piece was, in my opinion, based on a very nice concept, but it wasn’t really a systems art concept as it hinged on an emotive aesthetic (which, unfortunately, I basically failed to summon with my final product). I also foolishly didn’t begin the critique with an elaborate explanation of the concepts and intentions of the piece (and disclaimers regarding it’s incompleteness). I will probably continue to make that mistake.

Here is some video of my project at a site that was “close enough” to the site it was designed for.

Several people said it was phallic. I didn’t lob any assertions as to the state of cleanliness in their mind. Many people asked what it was, and apparently “art” was an insufficient answer. One person did say it looked kind of like a tree.

The intended effect was for the audience to think of the sculpture as a plant that is struggling to grow, and for the audience to want it to grow. That empathy would be in conflict with more literal aspects of the sculpture: it is made of garbage, traffic makes it grow. I wanted to create dissonance between an innate sense of care for this seemingly living entity, and repulsion from the ugliness of nearly every aspect of it.

The actual effect was simply a homemade looking unidentifiable thing that goes up and down. Oh well.

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Big Push

I’m in the middle of this crazy deference of decision making. I really want to go to burningman, but I told myself that I would only go if I could bring my project (currently referred to as ‘Avatar’, but looking for a better name). So, I am scrambling to see if I can get it in shape for burningman over the course of the coming week.

There’s about an 18% chance that it will happen, because there are a lot of logistics to work out: how will I power it, how will I get down there, what will I use to get four channels of audio out of supercollider (and will my old laptop support it) and what will I use to get button signals into MAX (hey, a really cheap solution might just be a disassembled mouse!), how will I keep the whole thing 30 feet off the ground?

Whether or not I go, it is good to be focusing like this on it, as I still plan on bringing it to robodock.

Posted in Dorkus, Events | 2 Comments »
Robodock, here I come

Just bought the ticket to go to Robodock in Amsterdam. Hooray! I hope to bring my yet-unnamed soundscape installation doohickey that needs a ton of work.

Posted in Events | No Comments »
Wow, Al Gore just got way cooler.

From this freakonomics blog post, I discovered a story where, in a speech of Al Gore’s that was closed to the press (but a member of the press came in as a civilian, and reported on it), he describes the behavior corporations exhibit, in which they pursue short term profits at the expense of keeping our world livable with a healthy population as “functionally insane, but that is the dominant reality in the world today”.

This is not a new concept. In Grunch of Giants, Buckminster Fuller speaks of an army of invisible giants girding the planet earth. More recently, the movie “The Corporation” does a psychological analysis on the corporations (which is legally a person), determining it (/ them) to be psychopathic. (Obviously it’s a blanket statement toward a type of entity, but the point is well made.)

But Bucky and the makers of The Corporation are intelligent people at liberty to call out a horrendous (and steadily growing over recent decades) flaw in our system. Politicians don’t have this liberty. There are too many organizations that are too powerful that provide too much support (or crippling blows) to any politician that stands a chance.

I’ve been a long time Edwards supporter because I see him as the most viable candidate who has actually brought up issues that subvert the standard corporate-placation that is typical of most candidates. Remember in 2004 (before he was on the Kerry ticket, of course) when he said in a debate that we need to break down the wall of money around Washington? Beautiful. But with this, and especially if Gore stands by this (which he might almost have enough credibility to do… maybe?) he is my new hero.

Freakonomics points out that his statement does not sound like something that a presidential candidate (or someone thinking of becoming one) would say, but the sentiment may be describing the biggest thing wrong with America today (beyond just environmentally: socially, culturally and in other ways as well). Capitalism (which helped this country become as great as it is, and certainly has plenty more value to offer) has run amok at the expense of democracy and many other ideals that are also responsible for the greatness our country has achieved.

Posted in Misc | No Comments »
Mike’s Tips for Productivity

I am constantly cultivating my capacity for productivity, so I have decided to put my ideas down for future reference. Since I am doing that, I might as well share them. Please feel free to put any important points you think I have missed in the comments.

Clean Environment

While working, being in a clean environment can be incredible important for maintaining the focus you need for maximum productivity. If your environment is too messy, leave and go to a coffee shop where you’ll be surrounded by people having loud, often inane conversations. If for some reason you can’t do that (say, you are having a war against your stupid laptop) try really hard to ignore your mess.

Think About What You’re Doing

Even if you’re working really hard, it doesn’t count as productivity if you’re doing something wrong, or something that will ultimately be usless. Yeah, what can I say, this list isn’t intended to be any fun. Speaking of that…

No Blogs

Blogs are a huge time sink and seldom render any actual benefit beyond a mere chuckle. They are only to be approached when you have 4 or more hours in which you are ok with a complete lack of productivity, and if that’s the case, you should really go to a bar. Hey. What are you doing reading this?

No Email Lists

See above. Email lists are essentially blogs that people are less discriminate about posting to.

Get Wasted Early

If you’re going to get hammered, start immediately after work and get into it quickly. The goal is to pass out by 9:00 so that you’ll get plenty of sleep and be bright and perky the next day.

Pants

I know, I know, no one likes pants, but I’ve found (much to my chagrin) that wearing pants improves productivity. Dresses are ok if you are a woman, but they are certainly NOT ok if you are a man. It is very easy to get distracted if you are a man wearing a dress trying to work.

Posted in Dorkus | 1 Comment »
Us or Them Dogma

“I know what side of the line in the sand I drew I’m on; what side are you on?”

Posted in Misc | No Comments »

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