For our third and final project in Physical Computing, my partner and I are developing a functional scale model of a floor system for video projection. The idea is relatively straightforward: using homemade pressure sensors to detect when and where someone is standing in a room, a video animation appears on/around that space.
The resolution of our floor will be 5 x 4—twenty squares within which the animation will occur. Instead of purchasing twenty force sensitive resistors, we’re building switches with wire mesh and foam. The wires are attached to separate sheets of aluminum mesh and spaced apart by 1/8″ strips of foam. With pressure applied, the two sheets come in contact, completing the circuit.
Working at a scale 1/4th actual size, each tile will measure 4.5″ x 4.5″ for a total floor size of 7.5′ x 6′.
The second of three projects that occupy the semester in Physical Computing, New York Sound Controller: Quartet for Accelerometer Pods was an attempt to conduct the sounds of an urban environment. Our desire was to give the performer control over the volume of different field recordings sampled from around Manhattan by maneuvering discrete metal pods.
We traveled around the city, gathering sounds as they met us—train traffic, pedestrians, water, Grand Central Station, ATM buttons, construction. Many of these form the backdrop of our daily commute. Using a shotgun microphone, we sought to isolate disparate elements of urban cacophony in order to designate each to an accelerometer pod. Afterward, field recordings were combed through and pared down to twelve of the most interesting samples.
The project was then broken up into three stages of development: sound editing, programming, and pod construction. We drilled holes in a set of spice tins suitable for the pod housing. Code was worked out in Arduino for the motion of the pods and in Processing to control sound with the help of the Minim library. Wires in an ethernet cable connected an Arduino Mega to the accelerometer boards. We also formed small pucks out of blue foam for the accelerometers to rest in inside the pods.
While our project was functional and had some of the qualities we had envisioned in the early stages, the accelerometers proved difficult to draw consistent readings from. As such, the motion of raising the volume and lowering it was much more jerky than we wanted. Additionally, the LEDs were intended to brighten and dim in accordance with volume levels and, due to time constraints, we fell back on a less functional blinking pattern. I’m ambivalent about the future of this project in its current form. Still, there was a lot we learned along the way and potential to revisit the concept.
Theory, text, interpretation, dialog, iteration, publication—all of these play an important role in contemporary artistic practice. Conversation is a foundational component of works both conceptual and referential. Accordingly, lots of verbal interaction and reading has accompanied the first half of this semester in Recurring Concepts in Art. Every other week, students are asked to submit a paper in response to ideas and work that have come up in class. For the midterm project, in which we’re asked to make a piece that is not technology-based, a paper summarizing the collaborative project is also expected. In our project, the paper itself occupies a central role.
The idea to explore a text-based piece—or at least one in which text is foundational—derives from a text parsing project of Alex Kauffman’s design. For this work, lines of text are meticulously cut out of a sheet and reconstituted as a typographic system. With that as a starting point, the three of us moved through conversations about poetry, détournement, perspective, layering, and modes of production. Often we were not meeting together at the same time and a process of synthesis and translation resulted from the intermediate conversations. This, too, produced an interesting dynamic that would eventually feed into the project.
For Dimensional Hanging Compositions. Illusions and Words. Discussions:, we’ve approached a text-based project by way of performance. In this performance, the paper summarizing our work is read aloud by each member of the group at differing intervals to produce a circumference of overlapping spoken words. Each of us grew up speaking a different language: English, Spanish, and Korean. Therefore, we chose to stage the reading in each of these languages simultaneously. The three of us each stand with our backs to different walls of the room, facing the class now positioned within the space the table encloses. Before each student, a blank piece of paper, a glue stick, a pair of scissors, and a page from our midterm paper is set. With “Please make a new text.” projected on the fourth wall and the materials’ visual clues to guide them, participants begin to cut up and re-compose the text as it’s performed around them. The result is three-fold—a shared experience, a sound recording of spoken word and scissors cutting paper, and multiple versions of the paper including the “original” and the new ones assembled with the original’s palette of words.
The paper’s original composition is also a product of three distinct efforts, synthesized with a cut-and-paste collaboration. Having decided on the direction and conceptual underpinnings of the project, each of us wrote our own three-page paper to describe the work. We then met together with printouts of the texts and engaged in a literal editorial process much like the one students enact during the performance. Spreading the pages out on a table, we cut up and rearranged the sentences to produce a final version incorporating the strengths and insights of each. Once assembled, the new text is again typed into a document that is also the script and medium of our interaction.
It’s our hope that the piece operate on a number of levels as a study of the communication process and an act of production. It’s interesting to us that audience participation results in a kind of assembly line of work on predetermined parts, which could be viewed as either uniquely liberating or confining to the point of frustration. Either way, the product of each person’s efforts is valued for its contribution to the piece as a whole. In the end, Dimensional Hanging Compositions transgresses the project’s stated limitation. While proceeding from the technology that is the written word, though, it appeals to our desire for authentic shared experience, intellectual engagement, and an archival, physical object to refer back to.
Entering the 8th St–New York University subway station just south of Astor Place on Broadway, commuters must pass through a full height turnstile in order to reach the platform. The process involves, first, swiping your MetroCard through the card reader, situated to a person’s right, approximately three feet from the ground. The gate will then give you a high pitched tone and, if your card is read correctly and you have sufficient fare, a green light indicating that it’s OK to proceed through the turnstile. The interior metal spokes can then be pushed to rotate 120°, allowing one person through at a time.
I wanted to observe how people interact with this gate as it’s one I use on a regular basis and the experience varies. Obviously, one advantage to the system is that it allows for more points of entry into a station without requiring station attendants to watch for turnstile jumpers (although, pairs do occasionally squeeze through the full height turnstile together). So I spent some time watching people move through the turnstile, noting the rate of success and any recurring issues that arose. I was surprised to find that roughly nine out of ten people move through the gate in one sequence of motion. That feels like a better success rate than my own. Only one person was wrongly turned away by a turnstile rotation that ended before enough clearance was established to pass through. The rest either needed to swipe their MetroCard again, or the card was expired or had insufficient fare.
Easily the most common problem was the system’s way of communicating whether or not the card swipe is approved. There are two reasons for this, related to the system’s two forms of feedback: a tone and a green, backlit sign. The first is that, even with careful listening, it’s very difficult to distinguish between the tone of an accepted swipe and that of a rejected one. Both are exactly the same pitch and seem to be differentiated only by how many times the beep repeats—a subtlety completely obscured by the reverb of the space. Thus, the beep serves only to confirm that the card has been swiped, nothing more. You’d think that, at least for those who aren’t blind, this would be compensated for by the green “Go” sign that lights up when your card swipe is validated. I find, though, that its position is a bit too far forward in the motion of moving through the gate. As a result, people are often beyond the sign by the time they realize they need to swipe their card again, requiring them to walk back two or three steps and try again. This is how backups tend to occur at the entrance.
I would propose establishing two distinct pitches and shifting the placement of the “Go” light. This would allow for clearer interaction and speed the flow of commuter traffic through the turnstile. Ideally, the whole system would be unnecessary because people would simply pay trustworthily. It would be interesting, though, to study how many do if the gate were scaled down.
I decided to take a recent Applications assignment and design it as a book project. The premise is a bus trip through Manhattan, observing some of the city’s neighborhoods by way of public transport. A PDF of the book is available here for you to download and enjoy.
