Research – Page 2

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.

Response to Chapter 1 from Kim Goodwin, Designing for the Digital Age

I personally think that this is a really good read and it seemed to me that Kim Goodwin was writing from the point of view of a designer within a product design company(product could be tangible(physical product) or intangible(service or digital product). As in the corporate world, there will always be a team of people weather big or small, who fulfills the different role within the project like designer, engineer, marketing and so on, this information about designing human-centered product within the ecosystem of structured company would be really useful when we graduate and step into the real world. As of for now, we not only have to understand the role of the designer(which was covered in this reading), we too, must learn everything from the engineering(the coding/construction) to marketing (pitching/selling the idea) prospect that will lead to the completion of a project.

The Design Process:

In terms of project planning and management, I partly agree with the chart which the book is focusing on, the “Process”:

This chart seemed really logical, but I think that in real life designing situation, the research and project should be happening simultaneously.

I drew this chart as I personally think that it would be rather inefficient if we were to plan a project before doing any research regarding it, normally during research, there would changes made to the project which will drastically change the planning of the project or even scraping the idea due to really similar product already existing in the market without prior researches. This is why, I think that the safer way is to research and plan simultaneously to avoid wasting time, effort and resources.( As mentioned in the reading – Project Planning is happening “Before dedicating resources to a project”.)

Research, the good old research.

I always think that research plays the greatest part into designing,

“To solve a problem, you must first understand it. Good research helps you make the best product definition and design decision later on.”

I totally agree with this sentence as a research well done will not only help the designer to understand the situation better, it will also help them to understand what resources is available to them which will help them to complete the work in a more efficient manner. For example, sometimes, outsourcing the productions of parts might be of a better quality at cheaper price and faster than to produce them in house within a certain company, and this information could be found during the research.

In Summary

I really think that this will be a good guidance to creating a human-centered product or services if I am to read the whole book, by reading this chapter, it gave me the rough idea of how to plan for the planning process, as I did not previously know that we were supposed to think about implementation of support to our project/product which we are making.

When I was reading the Principles, it mentioned that “Does it help your user to accomplish their goals?” and ” Will it help the users minimize their work?” as the evaluation of weather a supposed principle is both true and applicable to the problem in front of you, these evaluations are indeed wonderful, however, not all products and service were designed with maximizing user’s convenience in mind, how about in situation where the customer is not the user, do we take the end user or the one who is paying the bill into the consideration?

In the situation of selling service as products, having the best service(above user’s expectation) at the reasonable price would greatly increase the perceived value and customer’s loyalty to an extend, and so is a good marketing strategy. If a good marketing strategy is being considered during the planning phase but not as an after thought (like now we have a good product, but how do we sell it?), could the marketing strategy be seen as the product itself?

Thoughtful Interaction Design Reflection

I found the Thoughtful Interaction Design really enriching and there were many useful ideas which I could learn from. Although Lowgren was specifically mentioning about the topic revolving “Designing digital artifact”, like he mentioned:

“Interaction design refers to the process that is arranged within existing resource constrains to create, shape, and decide all use-oriented qualities (structural, functional, ethical, and aesthetic) of a digital artifact for one or for many clients.”

Thoughtful Interaction Design?
Good Design?

I did some research about Jonas Lowgren and his main area of expertise includes collaborative media, interactive visualization and the design theory of digital materials. He focuses on the digital world and “design” to him is very different from how I interpret it. He places huge emphasis on the “digital artifacts” while I am for the inclusion of more than just that. I think that his concept of thoughtful interaction design could definitely transverse from the idea of just within the digital world into the physical world because not only do we interact with the “digital artifacts”, we also interact with the “physical artifacts”, take for example, a normal physical door. By not placing a door handle on the top corner of a two meters tall door, it might seemed commonsensical, but that is “Thoughtful Interaction Design” to me.

I think that for an artifact(digital or physical) to be an amazingly-thoughtful-interaction-designed, it has to be design with the consideration of all targeted user, how and where will they use the artifact, and account for the safety while fulfilling the expectation of the users, the specification of the client, and when it goes above these basic of an artifact, it has to inspire other designers to follow or “copy” the system or the ideology behind it while simultaneously, the original designer/company would improve the existing design and strife for a better version because nothing is really perfect,

Working with design means that you continuously need to define and redefine what you think of as good design. It is a never-ending process of thoughtful reflections.

And when something was brilliantly designed, not only the customer wants it, the competitors(existing or potential) would want it too.

The iPod Generation 2

I think that the iPod classic 2nd generation from 2002 was brilliantly designed in the aspect of thoughtful interaction design, it had also changed people’s life drastically, even though it was not the pioneer of the iPod series, nor the one that made the biggest leap in sales, I personally think that the 2nd generation iPod classic was the breakthrough within the realm of interaction design, not forgetting that there were many iPod generations to come after the 2nd, each had their multiple system updates and then upgraded to the next generation and then came iPod touch, which gradually evolves to the latest iPhone X.
(Just to be clear, I am definitely not a supporter of Apple and even dislike it as a brand, but their product marketing and system design sure is amazing.)

The biggest change that apple made from the generation 1 to generation 2 was the inclusion of Windows system for syncing the songs from iTunes, as the biggest downfall for generation 1 was that Apple forces the user to be running an Apple computer system to be able to use the iPod, this resulted in the potential user who doesn’t have an Apple computer to be excluded. In Generation 2, Apple included the Musicmatch Jukebox to manage the user’s music library and transfer music to the iPod which made generation 2 the first iPod for Windows.

Before iPod, the usual MP3 Players could hold like 100 songs, and then there was still CD player, where… yes is could hold 1 CD(about 20 song), I remember it took some time to click through the music in these MP3 players.This was the exact MP3 I used when I was young. It has 128mb storage space and uses one AAA battery.

I always think that the ipod were magical in a sense that the circular touch-sensitive wheel, these were really the thoughtful interaction design that was mentioned in Lowgren’s book:

Design work is given form and structure by designer’s own thought, consideration and actions.

These circular touch-sensitive wheel was designed in the consideration as of how they marketed the iPod: to”put 1,000 songs in your pocket.”(which was really ground breaking during that time). The designer took the system advantage(also the limitation) into consideration… Imagine that the iPod does not have the circular wheel for the user to scroll through the song list, and the user did have 1,000 songs, how long or how tedious would it take to click the down button or the next button to go to the 499th song in the list?

With the circular wheel, the user could easily scroll through the list at great speed by spinning the wheel.

The whole form and aesthetics, material used, hardware, software, even till packaging, was well thought of for the optimal user experience, the size is just right to be carried around in the pocket of jeans (target audience demographics placed into consideration), the placement of the screen and the directions was ergonomically constructed so that user could use it with single hand operation, back light of screen vs battery life were well balanced to have good visibility and above average battery life so that user could use the iPod wherever they go and it should last long enough until the user could charge it(understanding the target user). Every aspect of the iPod was efficiently designed to suit their target audience. And by watching the advertisement from that time, it is rather clear who the target audience was.

and then came this:

Young active hipster.

In Conclusion.

I think that through the eleven pages of reading, this quote impacted me the most as a designing student,

“We are all living in a world almost completely artificial and designed, and every new addition, every new design adding to this world has an impact on how we experience the whole”

(I like how it goes from a designer’s perspective to a user’s perspective here)

“Design is about shaping the world we live in by creating the conditions” and “it means that you influence people’s work, leisure, and everyday life.” It let me realize that we are actually living in a world that is partially ran by designer, every thing we saw, every thing we touched, was designed by someone at some point of time. We, the designers in making, may hold the power to change the everyday life of the people we’ve never seen in our life.

Interactive Devices Final Project: Obsoleting Instruments Process 3(Final).

Continue from my previous Process 2.

again, I had progressed much further since that post, mainly in designing the workable electrical and mechanical system that could fit into the Telephone and to write the Arduino code up.

First, lets start with the Final Video!

Back into the Process

Since the previous post which I’ve roughly did the belt system that drives the music card into the laser reader, I had added the motor to the system and tried it, at this point, it seemed to work as I thought all I need was to slow the motor down and it will be alright.

First I sawed the phone to remove the material for me to cut them easily later

after chipping the plastic off, i constantly checked the dimension of it and trimmed a little at a time to prevent having a larger hole than I needed.

With this hole, I could finally see how it is looking internally and if there are any parts i made which was too tall in the case.

After I cut the hole, I proceed to modelling the card slot and i took inspiration from the ATM just to have the user to have something they’ve experienced and know how to put the Music Card in without instructing them, since subconsciously, I assumed that they interacted with a ATM at some point in their life.

This is the inspiration that I took from

I used Tinkercad to modeled it and the cube like doesnt look like ATM card slot.

so i tried to use curve lines, and MANNNN Tinkercad was not meant to be used this way!! these angles and tilts of a pipe line was only done by brute force trail and error.

Version 1 on the left and Version 2 on the right.

After the modelling which i am really happy with, I proceed to print it.

I changed filament to clear filament to print the card slot which was modeled according to the ATM

Half way printing, its looking really good

and i tested by plugging in one green LED in it and MANNNNNN IT LOOK SO MUCH NICER THAN I EXPECTED!! I WAS IMPRESSED.

Since it was looking good, I went ahead and make a nicer LED system for it by soldering 4 LED(3 on the bottom and one for the top).

I used the flat and clear when Unlit Green LED so that i could stuck it in the shell on top.

and I soldered the 3 on the bottom and tested it out.

The light was too glaring so I sticked white electrical tape to diffuse the LED to make sure that they glow nicely.

Next, I Epoxyed the speaker onto the bottom of the front belt drive since there is already a hole in the bottom shell for the speaker.

This is a 8 Ohm 0.5watt speaker that will be plugged directly into the Arduino.

I also Epoxyed the 4 LED into the card slot to prevent them from sliding around.

And came the soldering party.

This is the DC motor driver which is used to run the 2 DC motor in the system.

I thought I woundn’t need to solder this again… but… i happened to solder this for the 4th times..

I extended the wires and used thinner and softer wires so aid me in the messy wiring withing the telephone afterwards.

this is the wires for only the photoresistors.

and I soldered the relays which control the 14 laser diodes and the 4 Green LED lights which runs on 2 AA battery to reduce the load on my arduino and to make sure the laser and LED have a stable current flow.

It was at this point then I realized that if i reduce the speed of my DC motor to the speed of the music, I wont have enough torque to pull the card in..

After an afternoon of panicking and finding alternative motor or even thinking to redesigning my whole belt system….

I opened up the current DC motor to see if i could make modification by changing the spur gears to worm gear, which will increase torque and lower speed(after i did some research). but this require me to rebuild the whole gearbox as well as to remodel+reprint the whole of the front and back belt system.

And then I found that I have a longer DC motor with metal gears built into it and i tried to figure our if I can incorporate this gear box into my current system, which is also rather impossible as the ratio for this gear box is about 1:45. when I only need about 1:5 to 1:8. if i use this, I will have the belt driver running too slow. same goes for this, but this is 1:250… even slower.

So to solve this problem, I tried to get the medium speed which is faster than what the song should be and will stuck about 30% of the time and removed the buttons (which detects card when user insert into it that trigger the motor to turn the belt.) that caused more friction. And I also jump start the motor by making it to spin at full speed for half a second to break the initial force required when the motor is starting.

The messy configuration, components and wirings.

It took me some time to sort out these messy wiring and make sure that none of the wires interfere with the track that the Music card is going through.

after trying out the workable speed of sound and getting stuck by removing the buttons.

and after this, I tried to code the majority of the code together.

For this, I did not expect to work this well and I am really excited about it!

Towards the end of the project.

to make use of the original button on the phone, I’ve figured that the 12 buttons runs on 2 different circuit which I could simply solder these number together and make all the 12 buttons into one button, so nomatter which buttons the user pressed, it will be registered as one button pressed.

Because I cut off the Redial button on the phone to make space for my belt driver system, I epoxyed the Redial button back to the case as there are no PCB supporting it.

The overall layout before the mp3decoder mount was printed and installed.

The relay which controls the LED and 14 laser diodes, it work as a ground for other buttons to do the pulldown resistor.

the only part in the whole system that was not soldered was the connection to the Arduino Mega as I intend to reuse it in the future.

I’ve epoxyed the nuts of all the wheels for the belt drive to make sure they stay where they should be and don’t unscrew/tighten themselves.

I also Epoxyed the relay onto the case of the AA battery to make sure nothing is loose in the case.

Soldered connection from the phone coil wire to the 8 Ohm 0.5 Watt speaker.

I also Hot-glued four big nuts in the phone to increase it’s weight to make sure that when the phone is in the place, it is heavy enough to press the button down.

after the MP3decoder mount was modeled and printed, it looks quite good overall!

I used this 400 Ohm resistor to reduce the volume of the tune when playing the music card.

And added a relay that cut the power of the MP3 Decoder since I am not able to control it digitally, the only way was to let it play until it is the start of the next track and cut off the power to stop the voice track. it also switches the circuit of the phone from the MP3 Decoder to the Arduino pin at the same time.

Some may wonder how did I make the Music Card..

I copied a few from online like Demons by Imagine Dragons, Harrypotter’s Hedwig Theme, and Pokemon Theme song, These were labeled on the card and those that weren’t labeled was What I composed myself. Since I have no music background, I did it by trial and error to give it a tune.

This was screen recorded when I tried to compose my 4th tune for this project:

after this was completed, I screen shot it and import into Illustrator to trace it into the Card layout which I made.

and this was how the cards were made.

Laser raster and cut in school on 2mm acrylic.

AND how about the voice command in 7 different accent?

well, this is relatively simple, just type whatever I want on Webbased Text to speech reader and have it read it out in different accent and edit them in premiere pro to cut them up to the exact same length(9 seconds) and put them into the SD card within the Obseleting Instrument’s MP3 Decoder.

I really like the Japanese and Korean accent, its really funny!

Why did I made it to speak different accent? It was to engage the user and make them feel like there was really life in the system where they called/receive call from a real person, like if they discussed with their friend and their friend said that there was a Indian accent while what they heard was the British accent, they might want to try Obseleting Instrument for a few more time. The accent there is there to add variables in the system.

In Conclusion

Throughout this Project, I’ve learnt many things like how to model objects in Tinkercad and make measurements properly, there are always failures in everything that I modeled before it works, and this is why 3D printing is a good prototype process where I printed it out and tested it to know if it work or not, if it doesnt, I will shave off some piece to see if it fits, if it does, I will make new measurements for the edited model.

I am really glad that this many piece worked well together and this was the biggest challenge.. since there are so many components working together (electrical and mechanical), even if one of the parts failed, it would not work as well as it is now. So I considered myself really lucky that the parts happened to work well even when there are misalignment everywhere.

Also, to have a Telephone case in the start and scale everything into the Telephone case was really a challenge especially at the start when I could not measure how big the internal was and could only make a guess and print some test print to try it out.

In this project, I realized that if I were to do a project that require multiple fields of knowledge like mechanical and electrical, It was better if I did not know how hard it will be, if I were to know that every part of the project will be something that I don’t know, I will be too afraid to jump into this project. I did something, realized that it doesn’t work and find solution to that single problem and proceed to work on the project and faced another problem, solving and learning one problem at a time lead me to the completion of the project.

Now that I had completed the project and looking back. Obseleting Instrument is really a complicated project as a whole, but thinking about it, I am just putting many small system into one project- like using one laser diode and a photo resistor as a switch, playing a tune when triggered, a physical button to sense if the phone was picked up, using a relay to control circuits of different voltage, running two DC motor at the same time and so on… Obseleting Instrument is just a collection of small systems, which I personally thinks was what made my journey of doing this project really interesting because I explored the basics of these components and learnt a whole lot through it.

Interactive Device Presentation – Unconventional Musical Instruments.

The file size of this presentation was too large to be uploaded so I’ve screen recorded the presentation and uploaded it to youtube.

I’ve chose to narrow down my scope to just Unconventional Musical Instruments mainly because it will be more interesting and fits the time limit nicely.

Device of the week 4 – GoBone

GoBone is a smart bone designed for the dogs and puppies and is available(currently out of stock) in Amazon at $200 currently and had raised $180k in the Kickstarter campaign in the past.

KickStarter Campaign

Amazon

Basically, it is a interactive automatic dog entertainer that rolls around like a remote-controlled car where the dog will chase it around like a cat chasing a mice. The wheel could also store treats that the dogs could eat from it and according to the maker, apparently the user could rub peanut butter over the shell for the dogs to lick… which.. seemed like a bad idea to me because think about running peanut butter all over the house and the mess it will make.

Looking at the process and timeline for developing this device seemed really doable even for our standard. since it started it’s development in an Arduino Uno, two DC motor with gear box that is available from china at around a dollars each which I happened to have the gearbox that I purchased to test my final project out but did not use it in the end.

so the connection to the phone and developing an app for it seemed quite hard for us, but the technology in the GoBone itself seemed relatively simple, receive inputs from the phone, turn MotorA and motorB in the same direction to move forward or backwards and turn both motor in different direction to spin the dog bone.

Although it is said that GoBone was designed for the dogs, I personally feel that it is still designed for humans to be lazy. And a $200 for a “smart” dogbone is rather expensive, but I can understand that pet owners are more willing to spend on their pet and hence they make a good target audience to begin with.

Networked Conversations With Second Front Review.

This was a eyeopening Network Conversation with five of Second Front’s member – Bibbe Hansen, Liz Solo, Doug Jarvis, Patrick Lichty and Jeremy Owen Turner This Conversation was HIGHLY advertised on Facebook by Prof Randall, and I found it really funny that the artists(Patrick Lichty) commented that they sensed danger in it and Liz Solo and Bibbe just found that comment funny and went along with it.

During the live stream, when there was a technical error when Prof Randall disconnected as a host and many disconnected together, I was lucky to remained in the chat room with a few of artists still streaming, they were really excited about the technical error, they Laughed Out Loud and being really thrilled about the fact that “Every where they go, they would crash the system.” JUST WHAT HAD THEY DONE IN THE PAST? I am also really amused with Bibbe with her animated personalities that she felt like a 8 years old kid in a 60 years old body where she gets excited fairly easily.

It is really interesting to see that the artists viewed their Second Life character (Avatar) sometime as themselves and sometime as a separate entity where they would mention what they did in their performance with “I” but also gave third person introduction to their Avatar during the introduction in the Network conversation. I guess they see the body of the Avatar as a separate being but shared the psychological, intellectual, emotions, conscious and all intangible aspect that made us human with the Avatar, this really seemed to be similar with the movie “Avatar”(2009 film) where the “Blue Avatar Thing” shared everything with the main character except for the physical body, and when Second Front logged out of the Second Life, the character will be inanimate and lose their “body” until they logged in.

They also mention about the identity within Second Life where they did a work in the past by interviewing the people in real life and recreated the information they gained and place it directly into Second life, They would also change their Avatar appearance to replicate the other member’s Avatar and place a tag with the name of the character they copied and act as them for some time, also to add to this identity within Second Life, Second Front found it really interesting to place unsuspecting Real Life people like Andy Warhol into Second Front’s performance, as mentioned

“There was a Fluidity of Who was Where and Who Was What In Second Life”

AndyWarhol in Second Front Performance, also notice the Campbell soup can in the background which is the reference to one of Andy Warhol’s famous work

Anyone could be anyone at any place, there was no clear boundary of what you can be in Second Life, this was what made Second Life so intriguing to a point that people lost themselves in the game.

Throughout the Network Conversation, Second Front talked about topics which were really got me thinking about the third space performance, as they are moving towards the VR, Patrick Lichty also mentioned the possibility that the neuro-plasticity might takes hold, if we gets too engrossed with the Virtual Reality, our brain may be rewired to evolve along with the technology and they briefly mentioned something about Neil Harbisson (I think, my ear-to-brain-to-hand function were not fast enough to write it down, but Patrick mentioned about some guy and I think its Neil Harbisson after I googled) where his brain was rewired because he uses sense that we would otherwise not use in that context, This is why the VR headset will someday affect our visual cortex, and by using VR, isn’t it just putting a screen to the third space right in front of our eyes and transport us directly into the third space? The future will be amazing for sure.

Lastly, I would like to agree the Network Conversation (I cant remember nor did I write down who said it again, and this is not the exact words but what I interpreted and summarized) that

“Performance is all about the body, what if we take the body out, we have emotions, we have feeling.”

When we are in the Third Space, it is real as there are all of what made us human, except the physical body. These panels(the Adobe Connect grids) is a great example of bringing people together through Third Space.”

If there are anything that I learnt from the Network Conversation, It further emphasis that the third space is a very new platform for human to be in and we are still in the process of integrating into it. It may take some time before our brain complete the rewiring so that we can have the thirdspace as a new human sense through the “Evolved neuro-plasticity” which might not even happen, but while the possibility are endless, so why not just learn from the Second Front and to have fun in doing things we all like while enjoying the process of creating something regardless of the end result but only focus on the enjoyment of process.

Nonetheless, the Second Front enjoyed and had fun in the Network Conversation!

Bibbe Hansen thought the network conversation was fun.

Liz Solo thought the network conversation was fun., even though she was lagging. LOL

Patrick Lichty thought the network conversation was fun.

Robotic – Final Project Prototype Part 4 – Unlimited Revisions.

There is only testing and remodeling, testing and remodeling after i went to simlim to look for a battery 2 weeks ago.

some panorama shot i took since im there.

and i bought this lead acid battery as it seemed promising

After that, the battery could also power no more than 3 servo at once so I purchases some AC-DC 6V 10A converter online and had been waiting for its arrival since then.

meanwhile waiting, all I did was re-model almost everything again and again…. and I also downloaded ZBrush- a 3d sculpting software and learnt it just for me to sculpt the turtle appearance since i have to learn it sooner or later and luckily I tried it now so I know that there are actually a lot of problems in my current structure when place in the shell I modeled afterwards.

After last post, I’ve built a bigger base mount for the turtle.

This was originally the rough full size for the turtle base, Version1, Version 2 with 2 arm motor attached, and Version 3 with no Arm motor attached.

And I downloaded Zbrush and started to learn how to sculpt something in it and MANNNNN IT IS HARRDDDDD

This is so much difficult than it seemed.

And then I printed it out in smaller scale to see how it feels.

And to check which layout should work.

and since after I did more research on turtle, I realize that the bone structure of the turtle wasn’t straight and so I tilted the motors to give it an angular tilt for it to move more like a turtle.

then I tested the structure of this configurations.

I also modeled a arm motor connector and found out that this is WAAAYYY to long for it to work properly, and another problem is that there is still not enough tilt, so I changed from a 45 degree tilt to a 22.5 degree tilt.

This is the Version 4 and Version 5 of the motor mount, I’ve decide to make it higher so to be able to turn the arm in the correct direction, I’ve also tried to add the middle servo which will control the turtle head retraction and head/tail turning.

I have to remove the base of the motor temporary so to insert it into the connector because the wire blocks the way.

after I insert it into the connector and closed the motor back. perfect.

This is with Version 5 base and version 2 Motor connector which are much shorter.

Next, I further edit the turtle shell and upscale it to see how it fits into my system, however i found many problems here like it doesnt fit well. Since I can make adjustments to the layout, I decided to use another method to do the leg mechanism.

By combining this lever system straight into the leg.

The 4 generation of motor connector.

If i place it in the shell, it looks so much better

I also changet the layout of the hind legs which uses 2 lesser motor.

This should be the mechanism I will use for the leg, I hope it works.

for now, I have to test them out again.

Research Critique: Second Front

The Second Front performance was extraordinary and unlike anything that we’ve experience in internet art and culture, the performance is entirely within a virtual world(third space) where what was common in the Second Life was totally impossible in the real world that we live in(like physics and such).

To be really frank, I started the research about Second Front by reading the Assignment Post and watching the two video over there, IT MADE EXACTLY ZERO SENSE TO ME, I am like..

WHAT THE SHH IS HAPPENING? WHY DID THEY USE THE HELICOPTER WHEN THE BANK IS RIGHT BELOW THE MANSION? WHY DID THEY SIT ON THE MISSILE HAPPILY? WHERE DID THE MISSILE EVEN COME FROM? WHAT IS THIS FLOATING BALLET DANCER THING? WHAT IS HAPPENING??
WHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY~~~~~~~~?

“A good piece of art gives you a sense of wonder but a piece of astonishing art make us feel foolish” but I felt really stupid after watching both of the video, because I must be too slow to not get the meaning/message of them. So I carried on in the researches by starting to understand what exactly Second Life is….

Wait… This Second Life is actually a really interesting “Game” that have no boundaries or whatsoever. Users could create their game character anyhow they want, make their character to do anything, build all sorts of structures and items in the game and there are even user using Second Life to raise funds for real life volunteer funding which I think is such a good use of third space as a medium to solve problem in the third world!

Back to the topic of the work of Second Front

I think what Second Front was doing was really amazing as they are all from different country and meeting, planning and executing the performance in the third space while transcending any laws(physic or social) which is only possible in the third space, Grand Theft Avatar felt like a piece that was drove by the inner desire of human, it started with the characters in the “Evil Genius Mansion” with the dramatic music and I think this is a reflection of us dreaming to be a badass in some point of our life like having super power- able to fly, super strength etc. and in the Grand Theft Avatar scenario, they are the “Rich Evil Genius”(rich because of the helicopter which is totally unnecessary) whom disguise themselves to rob the bank with the “Genius brain” that could unlock the safe to take all the Lindens in there, annnnnnnddddd *Plot Twist* they are trying to portray that they are not evil at all but rather acting as the Robin Hood who steals from the rich and “Give” it to the poor as we can see that the money is all scattered from the helicopter soon after they take flight but if it was the money they were after, scattering the money will be the last thing they do.

I really admire that Second Front is an adult group who are really childish(Just to clarify, being childish is a good thing, like child in their heart still survived) and they could make such wonderful performance in Second Life, when I was much younger, I was a gamer who did things which were really similar to the what Second Front were doing but on a much smaller scale, I remembered that I made my friends to wear a set of costumes in the Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) called MapleSea but in a private server, we dressed up as the Meso Ranger and went around helping(Disturbing) people.

It was fun to be “Someone else” other than the normal character we used in the game and doing something we normally wouldn’t do with the disguise on, this was exactly what Second Front had done in the Grand Theft Avatar.

I would like to quote Alise Iborg when asked question about the rehearsal vs Improvisation in their work:

If it is better improvised we will probably do that. Each has its advantages and disadvantages.

With prerecorded performances, we can fine tune and edit out things we don’t want the audience to see. But with improvised performances, the work takes on a life of its own fueled by the creative energy of our players which really shows through.
Also, many times, it’s the surprises and unintended actions that make the work really come alive!

Isn’t this exactly what we learnt in this module? “Also, many times, it’s the surprise and unintended actions that make the work really come alive!”. Alise Iborg is more likely to have an improvised performance than a prerecorded one (its kind of paradoxical as their work was prerecorded and edited, but the content in it seemed really organic and improvised) and this is the spirit of having a performance(live or not) and if we embrace and accept the possibility that things will not go as planned or even planned to have the unplanned happenings, it would make organic pieces which unique and flavorful due to the shift against logical interpretations.

Afterall, Second Front is having fun making these artwork which some were funny, some were totally illogical, but the main thing which we all can learn is to have fun in the process is more important than having the perfect end result, I am sure Second Front laughed out loud when they were executing their pieces while they were like “FLYYY!! MAKE MORE OF THEM FLYYY!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!”

ROBOTICS COMPONENTS!! CHEAP CHEAP! COME COME!

First, you will need an EZbuy account, it will be really worth it. Best part, they have collection point from Canteen 2 in NTU!!

Buying from Taobao /EZbuy won’t guarantee the quality, occasionally will you receive item that doesn’t work but they are CONFIRM 3X to 10X cheaper than Simlim Tower.

Waiting time is anywhere from 5days to 3 week (5 days only if you are really lucky that the seller send your order out the same day and it finished inspection the next day in EZbuy warehouse PLUS you used Express shipping which is $2.99 per 500 gram) if you are REALLY UNLUCKY that the seller gone MIA after you purchase, good luck, but that shouldn’t happen with the link I gave as I bought from them and all is good.

Tutorial here for those who don’t know how EZ buy works,