GETTING INSPIRATIONS
A Week of Observations (some making too)
This week, we had consultations for our RPO to help us refine our topic better. Other than that, we also had a sharing by Ashley Hi from Feelers for us to understand her approach towards designing interactive experiences with technology and art. Lastly, I had some hands-on making with Bare Conductive technology from Andreas CiD elective.
Ashley Hi from Feelers shared with us her thinking and approaches
Sharing by Feelers
Ashley Hi is the tech lead from a Research Lab called Feelers. Feelers runs educational tech workshops and performances that encourages us to reflect and think deeper with the way we interact with technology. Below are some things that I found interesting.
I really admire Feelers' approach towards educating people about technology. I notice that they would
host educational workshops that teaches participants on how to build functional or aesthetic outcomes
with technology and at the same time, it is grounded in context that encourages reflections about our
relationship with tech. For example, Ashley hosted a workshop titled
The set of Rain Check, created with Kinetic Sculptures and Sensor Choreography.
Ashley shared that within the workshops she organised, she would often have participants from varying disciplines. She view it as a learning opportunity for herself as well to understand how other creatives from other fields work. Sometimes, this leads to collaborations between creative technology and performance art. This example can be seen from her project "Rain Check", which is a speculative performance that dives into the aftermath of a world where Sunlight determines internet access. It was interesting to see how within that project she manages to merge performance art and creative technology together by using technology to create the stage for the performance!
Notes written by Andreas + me during Consult
RPO Consultations
The main point of concern for my RPO progress was to keep the focus of my writing on the design of Multisensory Interfaces instead of its application that is currently set in a Exhibiton/Museum setting. Like my previous group consultation, I should look to expand my options on what other possible applications can my Multisensory Interface design be applied to. A suggestion to kickstart my imagination was to perhaps reimagine how people interact with family photos (photos also is a form of visual art). In that context, my interface design can then be positioned within households, and that can change up the outcome to something else.
In my mind, I was perhaps overly fixated on the application to be within Museums and Exhibitions as the context I was basing it on (Visual Arts) are typically shown in such settings. However, I believe that I was blindsided to other settings in which visual arts can be found, such as within our homes when we decide to hang photos or paintings. So the solution here for me is to really pay more attention and research more into the possible places visual arts can be found, then ideate my applications/experiments.
Mini Experiment - Trying Conductivity
During the CiD elective lesson, Andreas brought in some cool arduino sensors and components for us to try out. For me, I wanted to try out the bare conductive touchboard as I wanted to explore conductivity as the technology to further my interface interactions.
The Bare Conductive Touchboard
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Attached crocodile clip and copper tape. Touching tape sends signal
To test and practice linking up the Bare Conductive Touchboard to TouchDesigner, I came up with a quick idea to create this Touch-Reveal image of fruits. Basically, there are two pieces of copper tape. Touching one reveals the image of an apple, while touching the other reveals a image of a pear.
Two seperate copper tape linked to crocodile clips
Left tape triggers Apple, Right tape triggers Pear
A TouchDesigner Template to link Bareconductive to TD
Andreas shared with us a template file that he had that can get the data input from the Bare Conductive Touchboard mapped into TouchDesigner. Since I am using two trigger buttons (2 copper tapes), I needed the data from two pins. I noted which channels that responded to the touches of the copper tape and selected them out with the select node. Then, I just mapped the data to the visuals of the pear and apple and have it reveal itself when its corresponding trigger tape is touched.
Using conductivity as the technology for my future experiment interaction is definitely a huge potential. Through today's elective, I have learnt some technicalities regarding this technology, allowing me to have a easier time to apply it the next time I need it. Although I have some concerns with its feasibility when I am applying it to organic, non conductive materials. The question I have is, If I need a non-conductive material to be a interface, can I still use this Bare Conductive method? Definitely a issue to contemplate in future, but for now, conductive materials works excellently.