Interactive Spaces

Interactive spaces: Light and Darkness Ver2 Analog + Digital

The final Video:

During the process of adding digital to the analog version, there were more failure than success done throughout, let me start with these failures (and additional works I did which were not used in the end)

The unused Animations

Right after the completion of the analog version, I thought of making a projection of animation from the back of the candles onto a sheet of translucent paper sticked behind the candle shelf, I tried to learn how to make an animation and so I asked my animation friends what program to use to do a simple animation and they suggested Autodesk Sketchbook, so I downloaded it.

I started to draw the head supposed to be shine behind a candle that was unlit.

And I manage to make it move, although simple, this took around 7hours to make sinply it was the first time.

and this is the character that was supposed to be shined behind a lit candle, this is much faster, only took like 1 hour.

The Circuit that works,(or didn’t)

And then the Fairy light I bought from china arrived! I bought 220V fairylight because they are cheaper, and I did not expect them to be these problematic to deal with due to the dimming issue and also 220V = risky.

The light light up really well! they are 10M each and I’ve bought 6 rolls.

and rewire them to a Solid State Relay, I thought this would work really well as they are relays that dont have mechanical parts, so in theory, they could handle PWM for dimming….

and I tried adding PWM code to run the LED, It did not work as there was no dimming, all it did was full flash at faster rate. SO IN CONCLUSION, SOLID STATE RELAY IS FAST, BUT NOT FAST ENOUGH FOR PWM!

Since the SSR alone doesnt work, I thought of adding a capacitor to the circuit, as it will hold and release charge, it should smoothen the flashing rate? thats what I thought. In reality, the flashing of the LED is still really obvious so I cant use it too.

I also modeled and printed a case for the SSR as they are 220V, my common sense tells me to cover all exposed 220V metal parts as much as I could.

As the SSR and capacitor combo doesnt work, I thought of using a Mosfet to control the PWM of the 220V circuit… and my arduino blew off instantly after i turn on the 220V switch. yeah, maybe I wired them wrong, but I am not going to try it again as it instant killed my Arduino… one Arduino down, a few left to go….

So I wasnt expecting this to work, I did alot of research about using the super small resistor I have on a 220V circuit, and everything on the web said that I should not use it, but I thought I might as well try to see if it blows up or get heated up really quickly, at most i lose one resistor, I could definitely afford that! so… WOW TO MY SURPRISE, IT WORKED! THE RESISTOR DOESNT HEAT UP!

AND 1M OHM RESISTOR MAKES IT DIMMER!!! SO YEP. IT WORKED LIKE THIS IN THE END. all those expensive components I bought couldn’t be compared to these small resistors… ALL HAIL RESISTORSSS

so I researched about how to calculate the resistance of the resistor, the more parallel there are, the lower resistance = brighter, so I could do a combination of brightness from a 2M( 2*1M in series), 1.5M(1M and 500k in series), 1M, 680K, 91K. With these numbers, i could do a huge variety of resistance to dim the light(like for example, 2M and 1.5M in parallel gives a net resistance of 857k) , i just need to connect these to the SSR(normal relay could work but since i have these already) and select the path to open to create the parallel circuit and hence controlling the resistance to the 220V circuit.

I’ve notice that there are 5 wires in each strip of LED, and only 3 is requires, and I also dont need to chain these 10M rolls anyway, so I decided to savage these wires in case I needed them afterwards.

and although it seemed simple, it took some time as there are a total of 60m.

I am really glad that i savaged these wires, as just nice Makoto needed this so all time savaging was really well spent!

The original adapter and controller have some problem with it as it will automatically switch mode, sometimes to flicker and such, which I just want to have constant brightness controlled through my arduino, so I decided to remove the chip within it by replacing this circuit.

so I tried to understand how this works and mapped it out

and then I re-soldered it to the circuit board

and in the end, this one doesnt work so I found 1 adapter for this kind of LED light and use that instead, which works!

The additions to my “Dark Room”

I’ve picked up this from near my house and thought that I could build a legit door out of it, so I did, and in the end i removed the wooden piece I screwed in and made it a folding door, I also added magnet to the door so that it will stay closed to reduce light leak into the room.

attaching the LED dtrips to the roof of my “Dark Room” is a big problem as the roof is too big for me to puncture a zip tie through it (i can poke one end through, but can’t poke it back to complete a loop), and tape is too not reliable for my project as i need to have it on for atleast a week, so I’ve use a lighter to burn a needle and bend it slowly to a U shape so that I could pierce it and bring it back to sew the LED strip onto the roof, and just the sewing of the LED took 2 days to complete, because I have to carefully organize where I am attaching each point so that it does not go into the line of sight of the camera I will use to sense the candles.

slowly but surely, I attached these LEDS to the roof and wall of the “Dark Room”

and I tried lighting up, the best thing about suspending the LEDs using a thread is that not only it will create a better illusion of stars, it will also prevent a fire hazard as there is a much lesser chance that any wire(220V) will touch the cardboard and setup a fire. so I am sure of the safety of this project.

Coding is a nightmare

as there are 297 candles, the coding to split each candle was simple but tedious, I am sure there are better ways to do thing, but the downside of using max msp was that the exact function to do things the better ways is really difficult to find, so… my mindset was “If I only know “IF”, I can also do unlimited amount of task, “IF” is as powerful as Hercules.” so… I had “IFs” my way through this project, literally. (just to be clear, I tried to find a better ways, and though I found them, but in the end it either doesn’t work or crashed my max msp.)

the main patch consist of Jit Grab to get information from the webcam, a lens distortion corrector as I am using a 150 degree webcam, a crop to crop away all details which i dont need and to pixilate the average brightness within a certain region to a bigger area(to see is the camera capture a bright object within a certain area which can be used to see if the candles were lighted up indivitually or not.

the jit.cell which shows the numbers in every squares (33*9), which is the amount of candles I have

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.

took this rectangular pillar and removed the top screws and wooden block to use it as the main structural support for my dark room

measure and screwed in the track that will be used to hold the metal pole for the main structure

carefully measured and place the triangular poles in a 2.5m square

slide the metal poles on top of the pillars

connect the metal poles with metal joins and tighten it to make sure that it will be stable as safety the main concern.

well supported H frame which will hold the weight of the stairs for the candles

sample for me to gauge the overall look of it.

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

the bottom piece is really easy to secure using staples

however the top is really difficult as there is no support when i am securing one side.

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!

ziptie were used to secure the flap onto the pole.

Ziptie were used to to make sure it looks nicer and does not collapse, again, structural strength is the main priority as this is made of cardboard and I am lighting fire in it, I don’t want anything to collapse onto the fire.

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.

Next, the sides of the candle stairs were secured with metal plates for hanging.

and its measured to make sure that it balances while carabiner were used in case i have to remove the candle stairs from the structure later. but i think it sure does look good here!

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.

then i tried to secure the bamboo for additional support

but remembered that i want the structures outside so i flipped the pole out

and then again, it is easier to do it on the floor then bring it up.

so I cut and tied the cardboard roof onto the support on the floor and bring it up afterwards.

but I’ve realised that I should not fasten the previous pole as this new piece of roof has to be ziptied onto the previous pole too

placing the ziptie through the small hole

and I sprayed it with adhesive just like all other cardboard overlap to increase strength and reduce light leak

the top of the roof with all cardboard fastened with ziptie.

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.

i’ve waited for 4 hours to get them to cut the wood as there were many orders before that

and I just took public transport to school with the super bulky woods

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

drilling a small hole as the center point for accuracy.

I bought this hole saw at Banheng long and I al really glad that I did, although it was tedious but it could be worst

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

this glue is liquid nail and i assume its strong enough.

I’ve secure both plank with nails and it protrude out from the back

so filing was done to remove the sharp nails

after gluing done and excess glue cleaned up.

securing the frame at 300X speed

this seemed nice but the height of this might be too tall,

so I’ve reduced the distance bettween planks

marking of the point to secure initial nails

first I drive the nail through the side plank first

then driving the nail through the main plank

this was done by having bricks on the other side to hold it with constant adjustments

90degree support were then screwed to secure each planks.

then steel epoxy were added to increase the contact and triple secure each planks.

Next I brought it down to spray it black

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.

I cut the 1.2m by 30m cardboard into 8 pieces of 1.2m by 2.7m piece

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.

after shifting of tables but before packing

after packing and arranging the space into a 2.7m by 2.7m 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.

the pipe for the air pump for soldering in im room was damaged so i’ve repaired it

I’ve purchased 4.2m of PVC pipe and ask the seller to cut it into 1m length for easier transportation

but I realised that i need the full 4.2m in the end so I stick them back

I also fasten the 4.3m PVC pipe to a bamboo pole to increase the strength. the machine was placed at the only openable window to draw the smoke out

did a marking from the inside of the dark room for the ventilation pipe

I screwed the 90 degree bracket to secure the pipe

tapped from the outside as well as inside.

tapped it securely to increase structural strength and remove light leaks

fasten a wooden plank for structural support as well as to finish the roof.

previous ziptie were removed and re-fastened for the final roof piece

cardboards were cutted for a smaller opening

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.

attached onto the structure of the darkroom with screws.

cardboard were added to reduce lightleaks.

And the dark room was done!!!

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

Interactive spaces Idea Generations part 2: Candles, More Candles.

Why Candles?

I think that Candles are really interesting, not only that they are visually appealing to watch as an therapeutic experience, they also produces smell depending on the nature of the candle, even extinguishing a candle produces a different smell. In short, a candle will utilize 3 out of the traditional five external senses which are sight, smell, touch but not hear and taste.

There are always meaning to everything and many objects have different meaning depending on the cultural context of the objects, However, candle have similar meaning across the globe as the candle symbolizes light in the darkness of life especially individual life, illlumination; it is the symbol of holy illumination of the spirit of truth.

There are festivals among different cultures around the world which uses candles as part of the “rituals”

Judaism – Hanukah, the ‘Festival of Lights’- a candle is lit for each of the 8 nights. Used to ward off evil spirits, life safe as long as candle burns

Hindu – Deepavali, spiritually signifies the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, knowledge over ignorance, and hope over despair.

Western Christian – Halloween, candles were carried from eleven til midnight, if the candle went out it was an evil omen, if it didn’t it meant one year free from witchcraft.

Mahayana Buddhism – the lighting of a candle or an oil lamp represents the light of wisdom illuminating the darkness of ignorance.

“Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the single candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared”

Main Idea

I want to play with the idea of Light and darkness which is the most common way to depict a candle, however the Project should incorporate a sense of aesthetic and should look nice and pleasant (Opinions on the matter vary from person to person) especially in the analogue stage.

Interactive spaces Idea Generations part 1

Idea 1: To Build a secret hideout for us to sleep in IM Room.

my initial idea was to build a structure that allows people to go up and as IM student, we could sleep there or rest there, since it would be really nice to place a bed on top and we could just go up and sleep during our free time. and this is part of my research to build the system, of if it gets too expensive, I might use the bamboo pole in the IM room to make a ladder since the height is 4meters tall, and a metal ladder is quite expensive in the first place. I also used a drone to check if it look like it is walkable or not, apparently it seemed like we could walk on it!

http://www.rombout.design/vertiwalk/

after the researches, I decided to try to inspect by climbing up once to make sure if it is walkable, as it might be a fake ceiling thing, in the end, I used a ball tied to a long pole and threw it onto the top to listen to the sound, it sounded really hollow with the dampen drum sound and I gave up this idea because I don’t want to vandalize the school by making a hole on top.

Bye my secret hideout.

Idea 2: scout around to find materials which are cheap and make sense for interactive spaces.

first, the place should have decent price range and generic product, and maybe carry some big items at cheap price. so 2 place came to my mind.

Daiso and Ikea.

mini table and chair. imagine making a mini space with this. ahaha

39cm x 39cm cat preventing carpet thingy

broom. can create a flying lesson of harrypotter. LOLL

500cm x 30cm reflection foil thingy for kitchen

all the above are from Daiso, so $2 each.

30m paper roll $9.9 and paper roll stand $14.9

Ice maker plastic, 10 piece, each piece could make about 30. ice seems like an really interesting object to make use of, because it got an element of time in it.

$0.9 ceramic bowl, it might be really fun to smash them, but then, safety concern.

210 to 385cm extendable metal rod, they could only extend but not lock, $9.9 This might be really good for constructing something..

floor lamp, $7.9, this one is another interesting object, visually they look good and when placed in repetition, they might look even better. and many things could be done to them ,like painting on it.

Table lamp, $3.9, even cheaper, smaller, but because they are cheaper, more could be used, making the the space even more interesting, depending on how they are placed.

mirror $3.9, mirrors are super interesting to work with, as they reflect light and give a sense of additional space.

double side frame, $0.9 another cheap item that can be placed anywhere.

Candles, this is the object I am most interested in till this point.

more candles. yes, I could figure a use for them.

IDEAS TIME!!!

These were the ideas I drew down in Ikea.

a circular white room will be constructed( probably in cloth) and a circle of spotlight will shine to the middle of the room. when the viewer enter the room,they would cast shadow depending on where they stand, or no shadow at all. and the viewer would be blinded by the light and feel confused.

a room with nothing but two big pairs of eye, since psychologically speaking, people will feel discomfort when others are looking at them, so by entering into a room with nothing other than a pair of eye staring at you seemed to be weird. however I think someone else had done this.

Onto the idea of candles, first, build a shelf with many candles lit on it, these candle have different smell and together they would smell like a bakery which is baking vanilla and cinnamon. whereas there will be a piece of cake(unflavoured) on the table, and the viewer might just taste the vanilla and cinnamon in the cake. Don’t know, but can try.

Exercise 2, 100 boots: mOFOs – The story of Many Ofos. (Lay Valerie + Tan Siew Hua + Bao Song Yu + Ong Zi Feng)

Bike sharing had been in Singapore for almost a year and it is rather successful (transportation for us wise, not in business or government policy) and we could virtually find these bikes anywhere and everywhere (like in the drain, read: man throw ofo bike into canal)

There are 3 major bike sharing company running in Singapore, namely OBike, MoBike and OFO, and out of the 3, OFO is in striking yellow and would be nice in contrasting to most background and so we decided to use OFO for this work! (not because OFO was free from Monday 22nd January to Sunday 4th February, we would definitely pay if we have to. Really.)

During our first session of mOFOs we shifted bikes to create a roadblock in a void deck, by doing so, we had many curious passerby coming to us and asked why are we blocking the path? and we told them that we will remove the Ofos and they are like “ohhhhhh ok”. One even took the pictures of the bike too! she must’ve like our installation and think its really organized and definitely did not think about complaining us…

And on our second session of mOFOs, we went to Chinese gardens and shifted the bicycles around, Senior Nat saw us during his MRT ride and he alighted the train and helped us to carry the bicycles. Thank you again Nat! =D

at the end of the day, we got photos taken by random passerby and it was uploaded onto Reddit Singapore… well… that’s free publication!

Team mOfos Signing out.