Week 4
Kate's Physical Computing Journal
Some Thoughts on the 4th week of Physical Computing....
Kinetic art...there is some really beautiful stuff being created. Everything I read seems to say that the movement is over but I found a lot of links to artists who are creating some really nice stuff. I like the fact that the sculptures are both simple and complex at the same time. I also like the fact that in a lot of them you can see how they are powered or you can figure out what is happening by looking at them. Is it relevant to this course. Yes! There are so many alternate ways to power something. I think the most beautiful sculptures I saw were wind powered. I'm going to look into using sources of power other then a battery or power supply.
http://www.kenfeingold.com/IfThen2.html
Interesting work--I'm not completely into this artists physical rendition of his projects but I think some of the ideas are extremely interesting. In the piece linked above, "If/Then", the artist made to heads that are reminiscent of mannequin heads and put them in a packing box. The heads have a conversation with each other, wondering if they really exist, if there is any way to figure that out, etc. What is most interesting to me about this is that electronics are just a part of the whole. They do not overpower the piece. Before one sees the electronics one sees the idea. It makes you look at the piece and wonder about the process of these entities creation. Why are they here, why do they exist and why are they questioning. I like the idea of adding feelings and emotions to pieces. By doing this you gain the viewers sympathies. You make people feel.
In terms of electronics the artist made the conversations be generated in real time "utilizing speech recognition, natural language processing, conversation/personality algorithms, and text-to-speech software."
Sub main()
dim nextLightVar as byte
call delay(0.5) 'start program with .5 second loop
do
for nextLightVar = 13 to 20
'comparable to repeat with counter = 13 to 20
call putPin(nextLightVar, 1)
'in the beginning light 13 turns on then next then next and so on
call putPin((nextLightVar - 1), 0)
'When the next light turns on then the last light turns off
call delay(1.0)
next
loop
end sub
This was a much simpler way
to make the lights change in order. (in comparison to next week).
nextLightVar is my own variable and for seems to work exactly like a repeat
with command in
lingo. I am glad to see that there are some similarities there. At the
same time I
feel much more competent in lingo and wish we could use that.
The problem for step two was
easy to do but step three was a little harder to figure out. It
is really hard to think in a way that is so logical. I came up with this
code to solve
the problem of the explosions of numbers I saw when I used code that was
more like
the code on the website.
Sub main()
dim myVar as byte
dim previousstate as byte
call delay(0.5)
myvar = 0
do
if getpin(5) = 0 then
previousstate = 0
end if
if (getpin(5) = 1) and (previousstate = 0) then
previousstate = 1
myVar = myVar + 1
debug.print cStr(myVar)
end if
loop
end sub
This allows me to count the
numbers without adding more then one for each on switch because
it has a previousstate variable. With the previousstate variable I can
tell the computer
to only count when the last state of the switch was off.
Luckily step 4 was optional
because I didn't understand it at all. It looked really fascinating
and the code had a nice effect but I need more time to look at it then
I have right now.
Step five was the end of my
chip or at least I think so. The code wasn't working and then my chips
two lights (the once that blink when you first get it) went on and won't
go off. I can't
download anything at all to the chip. I'm wondering if I blew something
in the chip that has to
do with where the information goes into it. Anyway, Yulia, Idit and I
were trying to make
a little lego house either shake, beep, or turn a light on inside of it
when this little
roller switch was pushed. The roller switch was placed inside of little
lego dog. Ideally
this would be wireless but at this point the dog had to be connected to
the house. I guess
it was really the green grass that inspired us. It was more fun designing
the project then
programming it. I think we've kind of given up on trying to get it to
work. Maybe will
find another use for the dog chip.
None as of yet....