Interactive Device Project2: Skitzie the Cat

Skitzie the Cat is just your average black cat that likes to hang out on your shoulder. They are curious and like to people watch while you do your stuff. But Skitzie is very shy, hence pretends to be a scarf when anyone comes too close.

(insert hooman wearable sketch)

About Skitzie the Cat

Skitzie is a guardian for those who are not to aware of their surroundings. In a sense Skitzie’s ‘hasty retreat’ to become a scarf is a warning that there are on coming people approaching.

For this project, I had imagined Skitzie to be able to move their head and their ears to see the world. Skitzie is also envisioned to be able to ‘blink’ through LEDs and hum through a speaker. I wanted there to be sound or light as an indicator to the person who is wearing Skitzie to know very clearly when Skitzie is a cat and when they are pretending to be a scarf. The Warning has to be distinct enough to catch people’s notice.

Skitzie’s hardware

Skitzis is a combination of servo motors and a sharp

  1. Testing the Servo Motor:

Website Reference: https://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Servo-Motors/

2. Testing the Proximity sensor

Sharp ir arduino 0

Website Reference: https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/jenniferchen/distance-measuring-sensor-900520

I combine the circuits and then made a head.

Testing out the Eyes circuit, it works. Turns off and on depending on the closeness.

For Some odd reason though when i add the ears, the eyes disappeared.

Then it got fixed (connections are problematic, check everythingggg).

This is the body, that I made around the head servo motor.

All Assembled.

Reflections:

Honestly the aesthetic of Skitzie didnt come out right, which I am a little bit disappointed by. Subsequently the head keeps falling off if left for too long, so I need to fix that in future. Hopefully we will see the return f a better Skitzie in future.

 

 

Refernces:

  • https://www.google.com/search?q=code+servo+motor+with+sensor&oq=code+servo+motor+with+sensor&aqs=chrome..69i57j0.11575j1j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#kpvalbx=_VbKEXdWDPNjc9QPCsoCIBA25

Playing Stranger Things

The Final Project

For our final project for Experimental interaction we are asked to create a social project that will allow us to interact with others. We formed small groups and began brainstorming what we could do for the interaction portion. Mostly our project revolves around ‘playing games’ with strangers that we meet on the streets, in a way to see how willing people are to interact with other strangers. The end result is ‘Play Stranger Things’.

Play Stranger Things

‘Play Stranger Things’ is a collaborative art piece where strangers become the artist and is tasked to draw a human face. The only catch is that each stranger can only draw a single feature of the human face, and each feature is dictated by the coloured sheet that they draw from our ‘box of features’.

The point of the game is to get as many people to play as possible, and document the developement of the image on an instgram page, @letsplaystrangerthings (https://www.instagram.com/letsplaystrangerthings/). Also each time we are rejected by a stranger we record it in the form of a black screen, indicating a glitch our collaborative work which referenced Glitch art. Subsequently, the final picture is placed side by side by a character or person a stranger said it looks like.

 

(Screenshot taken from our instagram)

(Screenshot taken from our instagram)

Creating the project

Initially, the project took the direction of drawing a well known person, for example ‘Amos Yee’. However after a quick test run, we realised that even as art students, interpreting a facial feature like ‘long curly hair’ would take form in many different ways, and the resulting image will not look exactly like the human.

Hence, we scrapped the idea of creating a known person, and researched variations of each facial features, example ‘eyes’, ‘nose’ and ‘ears’ and have someone guess who they are at the end of the drawing.

The features colour coded:

Yellow: face shape

Red: Eyebrows

Purple: Ears

Green: Hair

Pink: Mouth

Orange: Nose

Blue: Eyes

We then put them in box and went out to Northspine NTU to conduct our project.

Reviewing the project

The point of the game is as mentioned before, the test the willingness of strangers to play and interact with other strangers, and so far, most of the people we approach are quite willing to be approached and contribute to the art.

Of course there was quite a fair bit of rejection as well, and we were intimidated by how busy everyone seemed to look, and sometimes did not want to intrude in their time. We also approached a lot of groups of people after awhile, as they seem more keen to play the game with their friends. Overall the interaction seemed to be more positive when in the presence of their friends.

We also ran into a group of sponsers at the Humanties and Social sciences building, which we had a trade with. We do their survey and they played games with us.

In Conclusion

I feel that our project is like Blast Theory in the way that we let pur audience take control of the project, and we let them interpret the instructions that we give them and react in the way that they want.

Travel Easy

Micro-Project 9

So we were asked to make a video for our alter ego. Mine is kind of a wizard of some sort, the detail are ‘hush hush’ so we are not allowed to talk about it. So this video is about my alter ego travelling home every few minutes because it is that easy to do what ever it is she needs to do and come back within a few seconds.

Click Here for the video

‘Uh, so I forgot to mention that every room has a few portals that one can travel by. I promise not to use them when I visit unannounced….. Don’t tell my roommate.’

 

Together, a story of many

Week 3 Essay

Hello World! Or: How I Learned to Stop Listening and Love the Noise

Artwork title: Hello World! or: How I Learned to Stop Listening and Love the Noise

Artist: Christopher Baker

Medium: Multi-channel multimedia installation

Year created: 2008

The Review

Hello world is a video installation where 5,000 video diaries of various individuals are played along a wall. The people in the videos can be seen speaking in their rooms, kitchens, a space of comfort.

Walking into the gallery space, one is instantly immersed in layers of voices, overlapping to the point that the words blend and become noise. It is as though you are listening to them talk about something intimate, nd at the same time, their personal issues are made public. You hear everything but at the same time you hear nothing in a sea of voices.

His works is a visual representation of the modern lifestyle of being constantly interconnected despite being far apart.

The concept is similar to that mentioned in Randall Packer’s writing ‘The Third Space’ in regards to the art work ‘Hole in Space’. He mentions the idea of a ‘third space’ being created, or a virtual identity being transimitted from one party to another through technology.

Image result for hole in space art

(source taken from: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/hole-in-space/)

In this case the works differ in the the sense that ‘Hole in Space’ is a live broadcast, which is ephemeral, it is ever changing depending on the people and how they interact. On the other hand, ‘Hello World!’ is a collection of pre-recorded videos, hence the interaction becomes one-way. That means that there would be a distinctive lack of communication between the people whose videos are put up.

When we were in class, we talk about how communication is important when working as a collective whole to make a work cohesive. So it is amazing to see the images contrast with each despite the lack negotiation.

Credits

  • Christopher Baker: Hello World! (n.d.). Retrieved February 07, 2018, from http://www.huhmagazine.co.uk/3200/christopher-baker-hello-world!
  • Gallery, S. (n.d.). Christopher Baker. Retrieved February 07, 2018, from http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/artpages/christopher_baker_hello_world2.htm
  • Packer, Randall, Open Source Studio, IEEE Spectrum, 2015

A guide to Intimacy for Asexuals

Image result for Annie Abrahams the big kiss

(Source taken from: https://thirdspacenetwork.com/annie-abrahams/)

Title: The Big Kiss

Artist: Annie Abrahams

Medium: Webcam performance installation art

Year: 2008

The Review

On October 10 2008, Annie Abrahams set up a live video shoot of her and Mark River sitting on opposite ends of a partition, simulating a kiss over a split video screen.

(Source is a screen shot from: https://vimeo.com/2070207)

From the image we can see the two artists manuvering their faces in front of the camera while looking towards the screen to see if their faces were match up forming a ‘kiss’. The live video consist of the both of them sticking their tongues out and pressing kisses againgst each other as though they are making out with each other physically.

According to the website thirdspacenetwork, Abrahams’ works explores the ‘intimacy’ and even ‘sexuality’ of humans ‘in the “telematic embrace”‘ which is the internet, and the idea of ‘being alone but together’. It draws parallels to how the millenials of the 21st century have used their technology like snapchat, skype, etc to have real time conversations with each other despite being in different locations. It is almost as if conversing with an object and not an actual person.

As mentioned by Randall Parker in his writing ‘the third space’, people can assume their internet identities in a ‘reinvented world of their choosing’. They can take walks with each other, converse with each other, initate acts of intimacy, etc without actually touching. It becomes this invisible barrier between two people that keep them apart, but still together at the same time. As a result, this ‘portal’ which allows us to see each other in different locations has the potential to become surreal or fantasy like because it does not show the ‘utimate truth’.

If we cross reference this work, with Nam June Paik’s ‘Egg Grows’ we can see a similarity with this idea of the third space being ‘decieving’.

Image result for egg grows nam june paik (Source taken from: http://kmccarth.umwblogs.org/2015/01/26/nam-june-paik/)

From above we see an egg being broadcasted in real time ov various Tvs placed in different positions and of different sizes. As a result the images of the egg become distorted to fit the TV screens, making them bigger then usual, or positioned weirdly.

In conclusion this becomes an alternate reality that conincides with the actual reality we exist in, however, it has far more potential to be manipulated into something that we want to see of want others to see.

Sources:

  • http://bram.org/toucher/TBK.html
  • https://thirdspacenetwork.com/annie-abrahams/
  • Paker R. ,The third Space, http://www.randallpacker.com/third-space/
  • Video recording of ‘The Big Kiss’: https://vimeo.com/2070207

Micro-project 2: Tele-stroll

Micro-Project 2: Tele-Stroll

This project was supposed to be a reflection of how two artists would collaborate to create an almost telepathic walk with both parties walking in two different areas.

In this project I paired up with Farzana to create just that.

The Plan

The initial idea is for the video to reflect the more personal use for technology, and how we use it in our everyday lives. Hence we used it to simulate a study session.

The locations we chose was a library setting and a home setting, which are common areas that students choose to study for thir projects. However in both scenarios one would act rather differently when studying. In this case Farzana is ‘studying’ in the library and I am ‘studying’ in hall.

We also planned to synchronised our actions from a certain time and attempt to join up our actions in others. It kind of reflect the kind of studious mentality that every singaporean has growing up in this rat race environment.  Subsequently, there is a change in action for the at ‘home’ set up, showing a more distractable nature when you are in a place of comfort rather then outside. This results in more movement and a change in evironment, to want to break free from studying and just wander about (procrastination).

The Outcome

The outcome was a little haphazadous. Due to the poor internet connection, some of the video got buffered on my end, due to the more obscure locations I wandered to.

Posted by Ros Farzana on Wednesday, 24 January 2018

The Reflection

I find this form of video taping quite personal, almost like walking and talking with your friend in real life. Even for something as simple as studying, one does not need to leave the comforts of their home any more to find company.