Month: March 2018

FYP General Direction 2: Target Segmentation + Initial Approaches.

After the previous post here and presented it in the class, Kristy asked me about what group of people I would like to target for the direction of the FYP. I had not really thought about that before it, but after a week of researches and further thinking about the constraints which I will probably face while doing the FYP, I came up with a few criteria for choosing my target user so as to segment the broad differences of people around the world.

Geographic:

Firstly, people from the developed country. Because I am currently living in Singapore which is relatively advanced, my cultural upbringing, my daily life consist mostly of what a citizen from a developed country would experience, since I do not have sufficient understanding of what I am not used to and could potentially do more harm than good in a developed country, by targeting a people from the first world meant that I could get the researches done and the feedback  I need readily.

Next, out of the developed country, my interest lies in Asia country, more specifically, Japan, South Korea, urban China, Taiwan and Singapore. As I am more inclined towards the cultural aspect of these countries, moreover, these countries are relatively cheaper if I am to go there do my researches(there’s a possibility that I might do so.)

Socio-demographic:

For the FYP, I would like to produce something which could help the life of a students, this is because students are relatively similar throughout the countries which I am interested in. Also I would like to do something that could help the student of age 21 to 28, primarily because most of my friend falls within this category, this is also the age group who started to be legally labeled as adult, although none of the student would seem themselves as one (including me).

Personality:

Mainly someone who would like new technology and with short attention span who are open to changes. This is because I would like to produce something at the end of the FYP which will be tapping into the current technological ecological system like the smart phone or computer, the short attention span of the millennials seemed like a negative aspect, but I think that there are potential to tap into these “negative” behavior and make it into the strength of my FYP, like how the fidget spinner swept the trend a year before, something that make no sense will seemed like an good product in the eyes of the beholder.

Initial Approaches :

For now, I’ve got 4 ideas that I think that it might have some potential in it.

First, it is to create something that will help students in taking notes/writing/ drawing, like a Wacom Cintiq for computer application, or specially designed for note taking like the Wacom bamboo Folio or Sony Digital Paper,  however the Sony digital paper and Cintiq were designed for professional uses and their price point is rather steep for students. The Bamboo Folio is placed in the zone for note takers and scribblers to write/draw on the paper and still have an digital copy of it at an reasonable pricing. These were wonderful technologies which helped greatly in the transition of going from the traditional paper to the digital note taking, which the millennials spent the first half of their life having notes on paper while the recent half in digital notes, while not all will prefer digital notes over physical one, it proves to be a really good tool as the cloud sharing enhanced the capabilities of these students.

 

Second idea is to create something that will help to manufacture prototype at a better standing, be it cheaper or faster. As I would like to create something like a 3D printer specially for design student who need to produce physical work throughout the course of their creativity studies, although the current 3D printers in the market generally which suits the need of almost everyone who needs it, there are still room for improvements for these wonderful machines like the ability to print in different materials at a cheaper price. How about 3D foam printer? 3D Glue printer? maybe, maybe not.

 

My third idea was the idea that I was considering for the longest time and currently is inclined towards, a human powered electricity generating machine which not generate electricity, it would generate digital currency that represents “clean energy points” which could be used in various digital function like an in game currency or the capability to exchanged into discount coupons to be used in real life shop. While this may seemed impossible that there will be any market for this, it might actually be used in the future due to a few reasons..
1) User could use this as an emergency charger to charge their smart phone, which the battery usually last only half a day and the millennials could not live without their phones.
2) The rate of obesity is rising and partly it is due to the lack of exercise, these human powered electricity generating machine could be viewed as a workout to promote better health, at least by a tiny bit. Also, Gamer rarely exercise, so if there’s a game that encouraged them to play by exercising, there’s a possibility that they might. (like what Pokemon Go did when it was first launched, Gamers are walking more than they usually would because of the game.)
3) Incentives will be given to the users and participating shops, by generating electricity through these machines, not only the user could charge their electronics, they could save a slight amount of bills and earn discount from the shop. While participating shop would gain more customer as by having their shop appearing in the app for exchanging, it serves as an advertisement to their shop. Moreover, by participating, the shop could have the positive label of “environmentally conscious”, “taking part to increase clean energy production” which it seemed like what a medium sized cooperation would do for their branding effort.

 

My last idea of this post is simplest and might be applicable to everyone rather than for the targeted audiences… I would also like to create playful machines, systems, or applications that make people smile through the interaction, if I went along with this idea, I will probably create a diverse series of artifacts(digital or physical) that is funny in hope that they will bring the happy memory along with them after the FYP show.

 

According to Neurologist David Eagleman, there’s a scientific reason why our first(few) idea isn’t usually our best one: Our brains are lazy, and the first idea we have is usually the handiest idea, rather than the best idea. I understand this fact that the ideas that seemed appealing to me now might not be the best idea, so I am still coming up with new ideas that could contest the idea I am currently having, but for now, that is all I have.

 

FYP General Direction 1

In my initial general direction, I think that there many approach to consider what kind of FYP I would like to achieve in the end… Maybe instead of thinking what I can possibly do for my FYP, I feel like it is better for me to think about this question- “What can my FYP do for me?”

GIf from https://giphy.com/gifs/thinking-SabSYEpsVh0di

By this time, I already understand what is my strength and what I would love to do, I think that I am relatively skilled in handicraft, building physical object and would love to build challenging mechanism like my Obseleting Instrument I did for Interactive Devices in year 2.

But will doing what I am good in and what I like for my FYP really help me? It might look good in my portfolio, but at the same time, it simply means that I will be staying in my comfort zone, and I am not saying that there’s nothing for me to learn by doing so, but rather, it means that I am locking myself into just doing related project and narrow down on the infinite possibilities that could be ventured into an unexplored territory that I did not previously knew that I like. In the long run, doing something which I could achieve might not be that great afterall….

If I think about FYP as a “One Year Summary Exercise” for the 3 years here to showcase what I’ve learnt in NTU, the result of that FYP will be way different than if I were to think about it as “One Year Opportunity to learn and explore”. but the question here is….. How would I want to think about FYP as? And seriously, I dont know for now…

If we think about FYP in another perspective, It is a small label that will be attached to us upon graduation, we write this label ourselves, work hard to earn this label and once it is on us, there will be no way to change it. Of course, I am not saying that FYP will be super important to all of our life, but the fact that one year of preparation just for the moment of showcase, if its good, good for us, but if its bad, forget about it, there’s still many other things in life which will be more important.Label Yourself Before They Do

So, back to the question, “What do I want the FYP to do for me?”
Now I’ve got one year to do whatever I want,(I love Interactive Media~~)
this is the time to ask… What do I really want?
Doing something beautiful and looks nice with no meaning? Definitely not my cup of tea.
Artistic pieces with deep meaning that people will ponder over it? Maybe? But I am too shallow for this.
Pure visual/ sensory inducing project?  unless one that will help the scientific/medical field.. for art purpose, not interested.
something easy?
It’s easy to list down what I don’t want but what do I really want?
I can only think of one right now….

I want to change the world at least in a minuscule way and leave some footstep on the sandy beach(not literally) before I die. I would love to have an impact on people’s life in someway, somehow.

Big dream require small steps, maybe, just maybe, this FYP could be these small steps….

I have this A5 note as a motivational quote behind the desktop screen which I wrote long time ago for myself

“Create something that I want but unavailable in the market, not something that would sell.”  – ZiFeng

Now, building on what I mentioned above –“One Year Summary Exercise” VS “One Year Opportunity to learn and explore”, now I’ll nominate a new contender – “One Year Opportunity To Make an Impact/Benefit Others” and truthfully speaking, I like the latter the best and for now, it will be what I would like to achieve for the FYP.

All the celebration GIFs you never knew you needed by MrM3on

Did I change my question from
“What I can do for my FYP?”
to
“What my FYP can do for me?”
to
“What my FYP can do for others?”?
Yes I did.
And I quite like my direction for now, unless I’ve got a better direction that I could come out with before the end of this semester, I will probably go along the path of “Impacting/benefiting people” and think of what I could do along this path. (I am already excited thinking to think of ideas)

 

 

Exercise 3, See Yourself Sensing: 66 Meters Apart.

 

66 Meters Apart is a project that explores the disruptions in the train of thought when a speaker is articulating their words, as our brain functioned as it should, we’ve forgotten how complex the brain are in these almost instantaneous real time processing of information that we sensed. By using 66 Meters Apart, user will have personal experience of these disruptions within our thought and notice how easily it is to distract our focus even from simple task like reading out loud a few sentences.

 

The 66 meters refers to the metaphorical distance created between the mouth and the ear through digital latency of 200ms, which is the time for sound to travel approximately 66 meters. As we hear our own voice through bone conduction from our vocal tract to our ear (which is much faster than the speed in which sound travel in air of the same distance), the physical latency it took to hear ourselves speaking is almost instantaneous and we were accustomed to this. By introducing a 200ms latency of us hearing our own voice, it could greatly impede our concentration in thinking as well as speaking in most of us.

The system which I am using for this project is the Lattepanda, which is a hackable computer and I’ve installed Max MSP into it for this project.

As LattePanda does not come with a sound card for microphone input and the only headphone require input and output jack separately, I had purchased an USB soundcard on carousell and luckily it works.

I was prepared to write the slightly longer code which require to delay the sound from the input to the output, however I found out that there is a “Latency” function in the audio setting and so I used that instead, also, I’ve add an audio gain to the patch to increase the output volume of sound. This is the simplest piece of patch and it works just as I needed so being simple is really good!

 

Interactive spaces: Light and Darkness Ver.1 – Analog

after the previous process, process 3

Thanks to Tiffany and Joan for the awesome snippets that were used as the featured image as well as in the videos, and helping with lighting up all the candles + documentations.

Also Thanks to Bao, Fabian and Suhwee for helping me to place all the candles onto the candle platform.

I’ve seen the actual project with real candles in the dark room the first time as the class saw it.

Light & Darkness was created to give a sense of alternative space within an ordinary space, in this project, I wanted to create a space so that the audience will forget that they were in the IM room, the room was build with pure darkness and stability in mind as nothing should collapse as I wanted to hang the candles platform instead of building a table-like structure to give a sense that all the candles were floating in space(which is also the reason why everything, including the candles platform was black), this worked really well as the candle platform would swing gently which increased the magical feeling to my space, Also, all of this will be enhanced in the digital version as I would add a series of stars(LED, not projection) to the room’s wall to increase the feeling of enchantment. The smell of the candles, as well the burnt smell created when extinguishing the candles worked much better than I expected, as I wanted to have smell that is not too overpowering, I’ve used 239 unscented candles with 60 scented candles, this combination worked like a wonder because there is only a faint smell outside of the dark room. another point that worked better than I expected was the random placement of the scented candles created a colourful candle array when they were all lighted up and this increased the overall aesthetic of this project’s analog version greatly.

After this analog version, I’ve noticed a few points to take note of, it is actually quite hard to light up all the candles so more lighters will be needed and the current lighter that I was using appears to be rather difficult to be used, so I’ll probably buy some more lighter which is much easier to be operated and uses lesser strength. Also, I would have to paint the metal wires that was used to hang the candles platform into matt black as the metallic would reduce the magical floating aspect of this project.

 

Interactive spaces: Light and Darkness Process 2

carry on from the last post, Process 1

I started building my dark room in the corner of IM room.

After the structure is stable, I continued to attempt to secure the walls of the room onto the structure.

Ive spray mount and tape it at the back on the floor before mounting the side wall as it is SOOOO much easier and nicer to do so!

 

Afterward, I tied the structural loop which my candle stairs will be attached to it later, it was tied to make sure nothing collapse again.

after I confirmed that the structure and overall look of the dark room, I proceed to build the roof of it, which is the most difficult piece to be build as it is really prone to collapsing and I did not want the structure to be seen inside, What i want to achieve was to have all structures outside of the dark room so it will feel legit like a room when you are in it.

I really like the overall appearance of it for now!

Interactive spaces: Light and Darkness Process 1

To build the stairs for the candle, I’ve estimated the size of it to be 180cm long and each step should be 5cm wide as the candle is 38mm, so having some tolerance for me to drill holes to place the candle into each hole would be really good to prevent the candle from falling off the stairs. I’ve not decided the total number of steps but since they sell 9mm thick plywood in the size of 2400 by 1200, I could possibly get 22 planks of 1800 by 50mm strip of plywood when I give some cutting tolerance to it.

After calculation and calling around to find the cheapest plywood supplier that does cutting service at the cheapest rate, I found Ban Heng Long at  Syed Alwi Road which the plywood is $20 and each cut is 50 cents.

After buying the wood, I measured and marked out the wood for drilling later.

100X speed and a total of 297 holes were drilled.

Sand sand sand at 100X speed
Sanding is so important for the finishing quality

after sanding the 9 planks of 297 holes in total.

Gluing in 100X speed

after gluing done and excess glue cleaned up.

securing the frame at 300X speed

After that, I’ve purchase a 30m cardboard roll to build the dark room for my candles as I would really like to give a feeling of a customized space which one wont feel like in the same space when we are in the one I created, which actually is another space within what we are always used to, the IM room.

Painting the 8 piece of cardboard roll with waterbased wall paint at 300X speed. the paint is rather expensive so only 2 piece were fully painted in black while the 6 rest were only somewhat black.

After dying, I brought the cardboard pieces up and decided a place to build my dark room… And I’ve decided to use the space that lesser people used in IM room which is the corner with lockers, however I have do do quite a bit of packing up and shifting of the tables to make space.

And finally, end of 1st process post.

 

Interactive spaces: Light and Darkness Process 3

carry on from the previous post, Process 2

this is the completion of the dark room and to add ventilation to it as i assume it will be really hot and there might be fire hazard if the hot air or smoke is not being ventilated out of IM room.

 

lastly, i realised that the air flow wasn’t that good so i detached a ventilation fan from my house and attached it onto the dark room.

And the dark room was done!!!

next post will be the final post for the Analog submission for this project.

Drone Flashing + calibration

To be able to flash, open Betaflight home page and install the 2 driver software/updates:

  1. zadig-2.3
  2. CP210x_Universal_Windows_Driver

update both driver to WinUSB (v6.1.7600.16385) in Zadig

then load the firmware (Betaflight F4 V2.0) to the drone by holding the bootloader button on the drone, plug in the micro usb, then flash the firmware into the flight controller, all while holding the bootloader button on the drone.

if unable to connect to the betaflight after flashing, it meant that the driver is in the wrong setting, follow this tutorial to change the device driver to “Microsoft USB serial port”

after that, reconnect the drone to beta flight and it should connect.

If the Throttle and is reversed(up is lower value and vice versa), simply open the battery cover of the controller and push the channel 3 switch up.

after calibration of the esc, this is the setting for now

Reflection on Rose Bond & Matt Adams.

First and foremost, I think that Rose Bond and Matt Adams live by a different set of ideology whereby their project stemmed from.

Rose Bond

Throughout Rose Bond’s career path, she seemed to be focused on one main element which is the projection of animations, since 1982, her major work was animation and since then, she never left that field until now. We could clearly see the progression of technology within her work as she started out painting on 16mm clear film using vibrant color and it was done frame by frame painstakingly, I was really impressed with hard work of her work as I recently started to tryout doing animation to incorporate into my work which was done digitally that was so much easier than physically painting onto a small film, it was however, still tedious and this was the result that I’ve got from many hours of work.

although it seemed really easy, but for a first timer, it took some time away from me.

Therefore I really admire Rose Bond’s passion and perseverance for doing such complex and long animation on a small film. As the time goes by, she shifted to digital animation and along with the support of better projectors, she could produce a larger, more vibrant piece of work onto building to catch the passerby’s attention, which I think is really effective as a form of art.

Matt Adams/Blast Theory

In Matt Adams work, I was more impressed by various field of technology Blast Theory used in their work, there was a high level of technological engineering required to complete each work and I was amazed by how every details worked together, it seemed that their research done and planning was superbly executed and there must be many contingency planned before the actual execution to make sure that every work flows like how it should be expected, since their viewers is usually also the participant, it is really difficult to anticipate what will they do, and as Matt Adam said:

“There will always be people trying to break your game”

yes, no matter how well the project was made, there will always be chance that something will go wrong, and this is why backup plan or recovery plan should be always thought before the execution as I think that a faulty installation which is obvious to most of the viewers, will not be a good installation at all. I got inspired in this by Matt Adams and I should really incorporate contingency plan during my planning stage for FYP so that I could be prepared if something goes wrong or spoils, it should be able to be repaired during the show. *Note to self – Include Maintenance and Recovery in Project Planning for FYP*

In Every of Blast Theory’s work, I was awed by how every project seemed simple to the eye of the viewer/participant but the work done to put these “seemingly simple” systems was so well thought, like Karen for example, as a user, it seemed really easy to navigate around the story just by clicking and especially from the start, the reaction of Karen was expected, but like as Matt Adam said, as the story progresses, Karen would bring back the choice made from the past which will surprise the user when they were caught off guard and this was also used in Can You See Me Now? whereby the user was supposed to put their username as someone whom they hadn’t see for a long time and while they play their game and forgotten about it, the “catcher” of the game will called their name(which was their friend’s name) and the player will be caught off guard by having the name appearing suddenly in which reminds of their friend. Such small task like inputting information into the system could be used in such a way, the thought placed into every small details was what made the project great when build on a fully functioning technological system, in short, the technological system is the base structure of the skyscraper, and the height of the skyscraper will depend on these well thought details.

In Conclusion

I think that Rose Bond and Matt Adams/Blast Theory was the type of artist that I mentioned in my first FYP post,

Rose bond is those artist that knew what she like, locking into just doing related project and tried to master the craft of animation and projection mapping.

Matt Adams/Blast Theory is those artist whom ventured into an unexplored territory, doing something new every time just wanting to see how much boundary(social and technologically) they could push.

If I were to choose my future, both artist is great and it’s only my preference, but I would like to become more like Matt Adams than Rose Bond as I think I would be really bored to do similar things for many years and also I really like to explore stuffs on my own.