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The Sarotis Project explores how people interact with the world around them using an experimental soft prosthesis that can sense its surroundings.  It focuses on how spatial awareness is formulated through the procedure of binding spatial information in the body.

In brief, Sarotis is a tactile sensory amplifier prosthetic – a piece of wearable technology designed to expand perception by adding a physical second skin layer. This is imagined using fluidic hydrogel coursing through the soft robotic wearable’s chambers, inflating and deflating sections to recreate physical feedback. Fluids can squeeze chambers to simulate pressure, and theoretically even be heated or cooled to simulate different temperature conditions.

Designers Ava Aghakouchak and Maria Paneta at Interactive Architecture Lab at UCL want us to experience virtual worlds with the additional sensation of the tactile sitting directly over our largest organ: our skin. A partial or full body outfit designed to work in collaboration with a VR head unit, providing tactile feedback of a greater degree than the simple touchscreen haptic feedback offered today.

 

By interconnecting what we see with what we feel, Sarotis aims to improve the immersion factor of virtual reality by coordinated spatial sensation, taking advantage of the human propensity to fill-in the dots of what we experience by the sum of what we sense beyond simply sight.

Soon, we won’t just see imaginary worlds, but we’ll actually know what they feel like through some similar soft interface iteration of Sarotis interacting directly with our skin.

PROS:

1. Prosthesis so far involves hard materials in structures that incorporate special sensing equipment. These materials are hard and thus impede the devices’ functionality and the user’s adaptation to the prosthesis. Soft Wearable Prosthesis actuated by Soft Robotics is proposed so as to create an effect on skin that resembles that of human touch. It is better than vibration used currently by the majority of prosthetic devices and its elasticity provides the best fitting on the skin.

2.  As it was investigated by experiments users could become more aware of their surroundings and could also translate inflation patterns into spatial data. They could intensify their spatial experience or even construct a spatial reality without the need to be in a physical space.

CONS:

1. Sarotis uses soft robotics combined with depth sensors to create a prosthetic technology that works in tandem with Google’s Project Tango technology.  However Google’s Tango shut down in March this year. Hence, we are unsure of the changes and direction of this project since it is still in development.

2 . Unable to gauge the durability of the soft prosthetic wearable.

 

Potential Applications:  

Health:

1. It can be useful for the impaired, example the blind and deaf as an alternative form of sensory replacement.

2. It can be used as a sensory enhancement for the elderly when their reactions are slower.  For instance, prewarning them about

Gaming:

1 . With the ability to heighten our senses via our skin, it can be a useful feature for future games (such as VR). Games can be made more engaging and realistic.

 

References:

Binding Softness

The Sartoris Project Explores Amplifying Virtual Reality

https://drivenxdesign.com/now/project.asp?ID=16838

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CONCEPT / IDEA

 

The Internet is a wonderful place. It brings us unlimited connectivity, unlimited history storage, and unlimited sharing of information, amongst many other great advantages, for the good of living beings.

However, we cannot ignore the fact that the Internet, too, allows for unlimited access to all sorts of data, which sparks debate about privacy, access to open-sourced terrorism, and blurs the line between the ethics and responsibility of actions taken over the Internet.

The format of our final project will be a scripted live broadcast (unknown to the audience) that revolves around surveillance and cyber security. We will be using hacking (data transmission) and authenticity over the internet as our main focus in the broadcast. A virtual space creates a social situation without traditional rules of etiquette. The lack of immediate or physical consequences emboldens people to engage in behaviour unlikely seen in real life.

 

Our final project aims to act as a prompt for the audience to analyse / think of these issues deeper, about the existence of these malicious intentions and how they can protect themselves from it, be it by simply covering their cameras on their devices when unused, or being more aware of cyber security and being more responsible for their own privacy over the internet, at the very least.

 

POTENTIAL STORYLINE / CONTENT

Clarita’s Facebook is hacked by a mysterious person. The hacker uses the live stream function on her phone, and proceeds to access Clarita’s friend list, asking viewers to choose someone, which ends up being Ling Ern. The hacker reveals that he/she will prank Ling Ern and shows the process of hacking into Ling Ern’s phone and accessing her phone camera.

Ling Ern, on the other hand, is broadcasted on Clarita’s Facebook live stream without her knowledge. To draw Ling Ern’s attention to her phone, the hacker sent a notification which prompts her to look at her phone, giving the live audience a view of Ling Ern’s face. The hacker proceeds to carry out a couple of pranks (may or may not be decided by audience) that might end up devastating for Ling Ern (like hacking her bank account or something serious).

 

REFERENCES / INSPIRATION

  • The Pirate Cinema (Nicolas Maigret)   

Link: https://vimeo.com/67518774

This work depicts the idea of surveillance and cyber security where everyone viewing the art piece is actually indirectly spying on the activities of the community torrenting different types of videos online. This makes the audience forced/unintentional voyeurs.

 

  • Bold3RRR (Jon Cates)

Link: https://player.vimeo.com/video/49110316

Jon Cates: http://www.saic.edu/profiles/faculty/jon-cates

Website: http://systemsapproach.net/innerindex.html

In this work, Jon Cates shares his work processes on live streaming. This allows the audience to openly view his artistic processes. In our final project, we want this sharing of real-time work processes over the third space to be depicted too.

 

  • Open Source Studio (Randall Packer)

       

 

http://zakros.com/open-source-studio/#way

https://thirdspacenetwork.com/collective-narrative/

Interactive collective narrative where the audience can have the opportunity to decide what happens to target, being involved in constructing this narrative.

Third space and open source network allows us to rethink broadcasting and artist’s studio then and now. We are shifting towards peer-to-peer broadcasted art that creatively joins virtual and physical spaces with technical imagination, conceptual thinking, social sensibilities with live media art made by “artist-broadcasters” exploring a collective approach to Internet streaming.

 

 LING ERN – POV OF VICTIM

  1. Explores the vulnerability of users and factors that lead users to fall prey to hackers:  Through identifying reasons for data breaches, theft of personal information and invasion of privacy.
  2. Invoke audience to rethink about their own actions- whether they take responsible steps to protect themselves on the internet. For instance: Not reading the terms and agreement on social media websites fully and agree to them right away.
  3. Ways in which PDPA (Personal Data Protection Act) play a part in protecting users.
  4. Identify potential dangers of technology and devices nowadays where tracking user’s activity on devices, pictures, messages is prevalent as well as selling information on activities to third parties.
  5. Raise awareness about cyber security and highlight the possibility that anonymity will prob­a­bly be a lux­ury com­mod­ity one day. It will be lux­ury that one’s own tracks will not be recorded.

 

CLARITA – POV OF HACKER

  1. Explores motivation for hackers in terms of: anonymity, fun, monetary gain, power play, voyeurism
  2. Identify the kind of loopholes that allow hackers to make use of people’s accounts online.
  3. Intention of hackers changing their identity (identity transformation) as well as the characteristics of the internet that allows that to do so.
  4. Invoking the audience to think about ethical boundaries when third parties are only accessing data through parameters that are technically allowed by the victims through agreeing to the terms and agreements.
  5. Drawing parallels between hackers going through personal data and companies selling data of their users.

LINK TO PRESENTATION SLIDES:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/10yI1oJFNKdUql-KE5xLDQVz-k7jXSSCN9DTlf6wZ1gc/edit?usp=sharing

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This is the original image:

Concept: Anonymity and hidden identities && Changing Personas on the Internet (Identity transformation)

Much like the chameleon, when we try to be anonymous by hiding our identity on the internet, we are attempting to camouflage ourselves by blending into the environment.   With this attempt to blend according to our surroundings, we may alter our reactions and perhaps even personas depending on the situation or the people we are communicating with. This is reflected with the colour changing characteristic of the chameleon. In turn, the glitch effect also represents this characteristic with the unpredictability of every change, especially the colours and patterns.

Glitch Attempt:

 

 

 

 

Process:

Initially, I used WordPad and Notepad to glitch my images. However, that did not work for me at all as with any small edit, the image will be broken. I referred to several tutorials online which mentioned that jpg and png images will easily be broken and that I have to convert them to TIFF or BMP for the images to work on WordPad and NotePad. Despite doing so, there was still no improvement.

I researched further and found that notepad++ may be a better platform for glitch art. Thankfully it worked!!

I begin with copying and pasting a few lines here and there and that resulted in the first image: fuzzy effect. I continued doing so for some time but did not see any significant changes in the image. I then tried a different approach and referred to the hex editor method recommended online.

This is the original text:

After changing it to HEX:

I replaced some alphabets and phrases here and there, in chunks first then followed by fewer lines. Tutorials also recommended that the effective replacement will be alphabets a-f and number 0-9.

 

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After discussing and figuring out what we needed, we eventually bought the round disc vibration motor from Sim Lim Tower. Comparing both kinds of vibration motors, we felt that the round disc will work better for our wristband as there is a higher surface area of contact on the user than the cylinder one.

   

Firstly, we tried connecting the motors to the Arduino to make sure they work.

At this point, when we run the sketch, all 4 started vibrating at once. As the motors were loosely fixed onto the breadboard, some of the motors flew out of the breadboard after about 2 seconds.

We then tried a few methods on how to programme the motors so that they will only vibrate when activated.

1) Assigning a data call variable to each haptic motor:

Somehow, the data input method did not work. When “a” was pressed, nothing happens and yet the 4 motors continue to vibrate vigorously.

Hence, we revised this version.

2) Making designated keypad functions:

We tried using the keyboard to activate the motors but it seemed to get a little complicated so we opted for a simpler one.

Eventually, we used the SwitchCase method :

However, we realised that when we run the code, with ‘a’ as an input, the code continued to run and activate ‘s’ and ‘z’ as well. It does not stop at ‘a’ alone. After researching for a quite a bit, we added a ‘Break’ function after each call section and it worked!

This is our final code:

 

Simplifying our connections and making of the wristband:

   

  

  

This will be the final look of our wristband: [you can also wear it on your ankle]

Putting on our band:

References:

https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/SwitchCase2

https://www.instructables.com/id/Interfacing-Buzzer-to-Arduino/

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What is Monbaby?

Monbaby is a smart breathing and movement monitor for babies. It consists of a smart button attached to the baby’s clothing couple with a mobile application to monitor the baby. 

Why is Monbaby invented? 

Many infants deaths are sudden and unexpected due to accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed. Experts agree that the most important thing that a parent can do to reduce the risk is to place the baby on their back to sleep. 

With traditional monitors, parents may not be alerted in time if their newborn has a stoppage in breathing or has turned over on their stomach to sleep. 

How does it work? 

Monbaby does it by measuring and classifying motion, movements, position, orientation and activity levels and sending it to parents smartphone. It detects breathing and falls and streams data to a smartphone app, where information is displayed in a convenient, easy-to-understand manner.

To detect slightest movements, Monbaby contains MEMS 14bit accelerometer, (MMA8451Q by Freescale) that measures movements, breathing, orientation and activity level. Measurements are done in real-time, 5 times per second and transmitted over Bluetooth (4.0) Low Energy to an iPhone app or any Smart Bluetooth capable device.

The sensor is powered by 3V coin-cell battery giving 3 weeks of constant use and 1 year in passive mode. The antenna operating range is 40 in the light of sight.

Parents should attach the button to the baby’s clothing and then activate the app to start the monitoring.

Button:

         

Mobile App: 

 

 

 

PROS: 

  1. It is relatively accurate in detecting and monitoring the baby’s breathing and movements
  2. It is very portable and no other accessories required.
  3. It uses Bluetooth technology so it can still work without WIFI.
  4. The baby does not outgrow the Monbaby device.

CONS:

  1. It will be difficult to use it with a sleeper or rocker that would register movement even if the child has stopped breathing.
  2. However, Bluetooth reliance also means limited range.  In some environments, especially homes with certain wall materials, electromagnetic noise and other obstructions, the range of the device may at times be more limited than in the vast majority of homes.

Modifications: 

  1. It can add on an air quality detection feature to see if the surrounding air quality is safe for the baby. This can be a potentially safe feature to detect the slightest change in the air quality, for e.g. gas leakage

 

References:

Wearable Baby monitors: What’s all the Buzz?

https://www.cnet.com/reviews/mondevices-monbaby-smart-button-review/

https://monbaby.com/#what-is