asli sevinc

I got my IR sensor that has a range of values form 0 to 600 and began working on my code and circuit. I’m using the IR sensor as the analog input and the servo motor as the analog output. First of all, I managed to read the values from the IR sensor and used it to light an LED.

Final Project: IR Sensor & LED from Asli Sevinc on Vimeo.

Then I got the IR sensor to move the servo motor:

Final Project: IR Sensor & Servo motor from Asli Sevinc on Vimeo.

After that, I went to the shop and cut a piece of wood that I could attach to the servo motor, in place of the mirrors I’m going to get soon. The servo was powerful enough to carry and rotate the wooden plaque, but will it be strong enough to carry the mirrors?

Final Project: IR Sensor & Servo motor & Wood panel from Asli Sevinc on Vimeo.

Next step will be to buy mirrors, come up with a better mechanism and build it. But I’m so inexperienced with building things that I don’t even know where to get mirrors or wood, let alone start building something! I need to ask around a little bit on the floor this week.

After I presented my final project idea in class, Nahana recommended that I take a look at the works of artist Jim Campbell. She thought that his series of installations called Memory Works could give me some inspiration for my final project. I visited Campbell’s website after class and it was indeed very inspiring!

In his artist statement, Campbell describes his Memory Works as: “The Memory Works (1994-1998) are a series in which each work is based upon a digitally recorded memory of an event. Some of these electronic records represent a personal memory and others represent a collective memory. These electronic memories are manipulated and then used to transform an associated object mounted on the wall. Avoiding the usual notions of what a memory is, none of the original memories is an image or a sound. These works explore the characteristic of hiddenness common to both human and computer memory. Memories are hidden and have to be transformed to be represented.”

I especially liked his Cyclical Meter and Cyclical Counter pieces from the series. For each of them, Campbell takes an old wall clock and connects an input that moves the clock’s second hand at the rate of a memory. One memory input is the “breathing”, the other is the “blinking” of a person recorded over a period of an hour. The way Campbell made his digital memories tangible and physically representative reinforced my idea that my final piece should represent a memory, but not necessarily communicate it directly. I’m thinking I should also follow a similar path as he did: focus on one single memory, rather than making a collage of various memories; which I sketched as an installation here, which turned out to be a big, horrible mess:

While I was moving away from the idea of a collage and not knowing how to really approach it, I came across a radio show on WNYC on memory, totally by chance. I couldn’t find the podcast of the show, but they essentially talked about the relationship between emotion and memory. The question that resonated with me the most was: How does emotion modify our ability to remember and forget? The answer is, emotion is tightly related to memory and emotions do trigger certain memories in a certain way.

This got me into thinking that maybe, I should look at a specific memory that I associate a certain emotion with. Especially a moment/memory that I remember myself as being happy and playful.

After some memory digging, picking out and doing sketches on a few of them (listening to the story of my great-grandmother who saw the prophet, talking to my grand aunt who became a beggar, playing dodgeball in the backyard with my “neighborhood friends”, writing my favorite poems and making illustrations for them after I learned how to read and write), I remembered this one game I used to play on my own when I was a kid and enjoying myself beyond explanation.

In my grandmother’s old apartment, there was a bathroom. In the bathroom, there were mirrors placed in a way that duplicated my reflection. So, when I was standing at a certain point, it would cut my face in half and reflect one half so that both halves would be the same. I don’t know if I could explain it well… But I would play with my reflection in that specific spot for hours without ever getting bored! I remember laughing so hard, making new creatures and animating them in my own way…

When I discovered that there was the same effect in Apple’s Photo Booth 2 years ago, I was so excited. Here are two pictures of me playing with it:

So I decided that for my final project on memory, I want to recreate those mirrors and invite people to play with their reflections. As I remember it, and my memory can be very decieving, there were 3 mirrors, placed perpendicular to each other like in the letter Z. I want to exploit the reflections by moving the two arms of the mirror with a servo motor and use an IR sensor to trigger the movement and some audio samples that I are meaningful to me, and hopefully recognizable to the viewer. I will have to make a serial connection between the Arduino and Processing using the minim library, where I will store an array of sounds, which will then be randomly triggered by the changing values of the IR sensor. In other words, when there is someone close to the mirrors, a sound sample will be played. Sounds will encourage the audience to come closer to the mirrors and to play with their own reflections like I did when I was a kid, which is only possible when you are close enough to the mirrors.

I don’t know, is it all too simple? It is challenging to me since I never used an IR sensor (and I heard they are tricky to work with) and I never did a sound project using audio editing program and the minim library in Processing, but still… I’ll keep posting my progress as I move along.

PS: Buy mirrors, an IR sensor, and an extra servo motor!

I don’t know how 10 weeks have passed already, but we are now fast approaching finals!

It is time to start thinking about our final projects. For Pcomp, I’ve been doing a lot of writing, a lot of sketching, a lot of brainstorming for the last two weeks. I decided that I want to work on my own for this project, not because I don’t like to work with a group, but because I think I want to do something more personal this time.

While I’ve been thinking about my project, I kept remembering Red’s “Play, play, play…” advice she gave us on the first day of Application’s class. What does she mean by play? Why does she want us to play? What does play mean to me? Why would I want to play with anything?

These recurring questions will not really be answered until probably when I leave ITP, but still, I always find myself trying to figure out what the essence of play is while I’m working on a new project. In fact, it’s so liberating that we are greatly encouraged here to do whatever inspires us; moves us; drives us. We are so fortunate to be in such an open environment where creativity and collaboration are the most emphasized notions and we are allowed to play along the way.

Having said all that, what I see in play for this semester is that we have room for making things that are more about exploring the very new tools we have been learning so far, and not so much about making things that can be packed and shipped as products. Do I make sense? Maybe that’s all what ITP is about anyway! Well, for me, I take the final projects this semester as an opportunity to create art. Not that I would give up on that in the future, but… Oh, I’m confusing myself!

Anyway.

If I stop and try to make a clearer picture of what I have in mind, I would say that I saw myself inclining towards choosing a subject matter that is personal to me. For that reason, one that is perhaps very risky to communicate. But we are encouraged to take risks; we are encouraged to play! So, instead of doing something gadget-like or something more of a product, I decided to work on a interactive sculpture or installation piece that plays with the idea of memory.

I am extremely interested in the notion of memory for a number of reasons; one important one being the fact that I have a very poor personal memory. I am the type of person who forgets events, dates, numbers, names, plots, stories; you name it, I’ll forget it! It is very sad that it is the case, but I never know what I can do about it other than revisiting my memories whenever possible or keeping a journal, which I have never been so consistent at… This blog will definitely be a collection of my creative memories and I will appreciate it greatly later on, I’m sure.

Where was I? Yes, memory! With this project, I want to explore my personal memory; as well as political, social, cultural, artistic and religious memories. But, how would that be interesting to other people? Would they want to interact with it, and if yes, how? How am I going to approach it? Am I going to recreate a memory, or should I focus on making memory tangible? Something that represents the memory, but not necessarily communicates it directly?

I have many questions. I’m going to start sketching and writing and see where I go from there.

Worry Friends!

We presented our “Worry Friends” to class today and I think the presentation went pretty well. To be honest, we could’ve done a better job, were we to not worry about it too much, but we did. How ironic is that? We made Worry Dolls and didn’t use them before class, because we were too worried to even consider it ! I find that quite amusing!..

For the in-class presentation, we put together a slideshow document and projected it on to the house of the “Worry Friends”, whom we named as Ilik, Tsuuk and U’yik. The names are taken from the Mayan language, because Worry Dolls were originally a part of the Mayan culture and we really liked how the words sounded.

So here, let me introduce you your new friends!

Ilik wants you to wake him up. Open his arms, uncover his eyes and he will see you.

Ilik

Tsuuk wants you to rub his belly. Hold him close, press on his belly and he will fell you.

Tsuuk

U’yik wants you to sing her a song. Sing to her, tell her your worries and she will listen to you.

U'yik

It took us a long time to sew all three dolls from scratch, to make three circuits, to write three programs and to put them all together, but it was worth it! I thought the process of creating the dolls, the group meetings and talking about the project in general were the most exciting aspects of the project. Li and Marco were very easy and great to work with and I learned a great deal from them, just by sharing ideas and brainstorming.

Here is the slideshow document we put together for our final presentation.

And below are some other pictures we took during the making of the dools:

Worry Friends!

Friendship tea & fabric & sparkfun order

Doll in progress

Today, we planned to go to East Village Fabric Store to get fabric and other supplies for the dolls we are going to make. On the way, something incredible happened: we found a box full of bits of fabric left outside of a tailor shop on 10th street! It was such an unbelievable coincidence! After that, we only needed to get some threads and needles, so we went to the fabric store and completed our mission.

Later on, we started to work on our code and tried to get the LED light working using a pressure sensor. Li has made this prototype silicon head that we might use, and above is a picture of how it looks with a super bright LED lit inside it.

Aside from these pictures, Li has some videos that he took while we were working on the circuit and the program. I will ask him to forward them to me so I can post those as well.

For our midterm observation assignment, we got a few Guatemalan Worry Dolls and handed them out to our fellow ITP classmates. Everyone had their own way of interacting with the dolls. The most common interaction was that people preferred to communicate their worries with their minds, instead of saying them out loud. That was very interesting to observe, because it means that we might have to reconsider using microphones as sensors. Here are some fun pictures we took in the Pcomp lab:

Later in the afternoon, we made a prototype doll and we gave it to Ozge. It was great to see that she really liked to hold it and basically refused to give it back to us! Here is how she interacted with it:

Midterm Project: Observations / Ozge from Asli Sevinc on Vimeo.

When tried this lab a few ago, I couldn’t get it to work. But when I was going through the labs last weekend, I got to it to work and was very excited about it!

In this lab, we learned how to control a high-current DC motor and to use a TIP 120 transistor. Below are the two videos I took while playing with the motor and paper:

LAB 7: DC Motor from Asli Sevinc on Vimeo.

LAB 7: DC motor 2 from Asli Sevinc on Vimeo.

Here is the code I wrote on the arduino:

Arduino code

The members of our group are Li Li, Marco Antonio Castro Cosio and me.

We came to realize that we are all interested in the idea that technology can be used to improve quality of life, to calm the body down, to evoke peaceful emotions.

During our first brainstorming session, we talked about our fascination with light, the sun and things that calms us down, things that has memories, things that trigger memories, materials and objects that have meanings.

The idea that technological objects don’t necessarily have to be high-tech looking, but that they could be serene, emotion-provoking or they could just give you a warm smile was something we touched on quiet regularly.

The fast pace of school and New York, and living in a period of everything-fast — these are some of the reasons why we want to make something slow, personal, soothing, touching to the soul.

Li brought a design catalog for inspiration and a Sun Jar, a jar with a built in solar charger and a LED that lights up at night with the power generated by the solar charger during the day. We are all very interested in sustainability, D.I.Y. art and technology as well as using materials that have a history, that were used for something else before. Therefore, we were very excited about using a solar charger for our project, whatever it was going to be.

Marco told us that he has a small room that doesn’t have wall space, but big windows. If we are to create something interactive/decorative, could we do something with curtains?

Ideas were flying around in the Peanut Butter & Co sandwich shop Marco took us.

- Time capsule
- Photo booth == confession booth == emotional outlet
- Sensor coaster
- Lights triggering/manipulating mood
- Voicebox of your loved ones with nice/inspiring messages
- Snow globe with screaming people

We shared some of our inspirations: Linda Stone’s talk on the importance of breathing and quality of life, The Design of Everyday Things, distancelab, cube ecraft, many photos Li showed us of Japanese design objects, instructables, post secrets, Jonathan Harris, the fold school; just to name a few.

On Thursday afternoon, we met again to see if we can go somewhere with all these ideas.

What we decided is that we want to create something that uses input from the body and produces a different output depending on the different input it receives.

Something that uses heart rate as input? Something that uses heat? Something that processes touch? Light? Sound?

Marco brought up Guatemalan Worry Dolls, which we thought was very interesting. Here is what is written about them on wikipedia:

A person (usually a child) who cannot sleep due to worrying can express their worries to a doll and place it under their pillow before going to sleep.

According to folklore, the doll is thought to worry in the person’s place, thereby permitting the person to sleep peacefully. The person will wake up without their worries, which have been taken away by the dolls during the night.

The idea of a interactive journal within a worry doll that will react depending on your audio stories fascinated us immediately. We started thinking about how they could react to the sound: would they give off light? Would they talk back to you?

And then we started wondering about all these following questions:

What kind of sensors are we going to use? How are we going to make the dolls? Can we make them D.I.Y? Can we make a website? Where are we going to put them at night? How are we going to get audio interactivity? How are we going to incorporate solar chargers/sustainability?

I am very excited about our dolls!

Brainstorming at Peanut Butter & Co.

I can’t wait to explore the possible solutions to all the challenges that await us!

This week, we took the serial lab we did last week one step forward and made a serial communication between arduino and processing using a circuit that has two analogue outputs and one digital switch.

For my lab, I used a digital push-switch, a potentiometer and a force sensor. Here is the picture of the circuit:

Circuit with multiple serial outputs

I wrote the code in arduino to read and send the serial data for all three sensors and here is how it looked:

Values on arduino

After trying that, I used what is called the “Punctuation Method” to be able to see the values for each sensor separately and here is what I got:

Punctuation Method

And finally, I tried the “Handshaking Method”. The visualization image I got on processing is below. How it worked was that when you switched the digital push-switch on, the ball would appear. And then after that, you could control the x movement of the ball with the potentiometer and the y movement with the force sensor. It was very fun to play with the ball on the screen!

Handshaking Method and ball visualization

This week, we learned how to make a serial connection between arduino and processing. The idea is to make a them communicate so that the values we get from an analogue input connected to our arduino are visually translated in processing.

Here is the circuit I made using a potentiometer:

Circuit with potentiometer

After that, I wrote the serial code in processing and here is a visualization of the data, based on the potentiometer’s value received by processing:

Visualization of potentimeter

After trying this, I replaced the potentiometer with a force sensor and the result is below:

Visualization of force sensor