Experiments in Communication

Halo Headband with smd leds

2008-04-17T06:24:06Z

You can only see that the LEDs are lit through the camera!

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Test tube amulet testing

2008-04-17T06:19:39Z

I gave the test tube amulet to one of my friends to wear for a few days and get feedback from her about it. Hoping to do the same with the others soon as well.

Locket getting there...

2008-04-16T05:57:24Z

It took much more time than I had expected, but I was able to get the battery and the screen into the locket, and to attach leads made of conductive fabric to both the battery and the screen, which make contact when the locket is closed. My main problem now is that the contact they make isn't reliable enough, and sometimes you have to squeeze the locket shut to get the slideshow running smoothly.

Camera Eye progress

2008-04-16T05:49:06Z

Drilling through glass turned out not to be as difficult as I had thought. I followed some advice from Anastasia Chung, a jeweler that I met with for help on some of my pieces, which was to submerge the glass piece under water while I am drilling it, to avoid it getting too hot and breaking. I also used special drillbits for drilling through glass. The results were very clean. I made one hole all the way through for the camera and one partial hole for the blinkng LED. Now I just have to figure out how to secure the battery in the back. Here is a video of the eye in action, followed by production photos.

The eye is being taped down to the tupperware (with a little bit of foam between the two, to avoid drilling through the tupperware), before being submerged in water.

holes!

Locket

2008-04-13T19:23:35Z

Wax models

2008-04-09T06:48:35Z

I made these two models for the bluetooth. Though they are pretty, please ignore the colors of the models. The finished pieces will either be metal or resin, and the color (if they are resin) is still pretty undefined. The blue one was the first one that I made, after the sketch of the one that looks a bit like a shield, and it came out looking maybe a little too sharp/aggressive (though compared to the green one it might be more elegant). Unfortunately it turned out too narrow in the end to fit the bluetooth board inside it, so I made a second one, which I tried to make a bit more like the drawing, and also made sure would fit the electronics inside it. It came out a little lopsided, as I can't seem to saw straight, but I think it makes it look pretty good. Still not sure which one I like though. I will take some photos with the reed switch tomorrow, see how it looks as a whole.

I also started on the case for the locket, but just the back part of it, that's going to hold the battery and the screen. I wanted it to be convex from the back, so that it feels nicer. Still need to work on making it a little more oval (or round).

Bluetooth amulet designs

2008-04-08T18:17:22Z

The little connected circles will be a chain, and the horizontal thing is a reed switch, which is made of glass, and looks kind of like this:

Amulet Descriptions

2008-03-28T17:50:07Z

Besides the Eye, I am working on 5 more amulets.

The Facebook Locket
Traditional lockets open up to reveal one or two photographs, representing a strong loving bond between two people. Nowadays it seems more important to have a network of people that you can get support from, so the facebook locket will display the photos of all of your facebook friends. The locket is different from traditional lockets in that the images are not concealed inside it, but publicly displayed, in the same way your contact list on facebook is public. This can allow for serendipitous moments where your established social network can lead to new connections in the real world, through the recognition of a mutual friend.

The Halo Headband
It's all about appearances, and you will most probably be remembered by the digital photographs of you. So why not appear a saint? The halo headband has infrared LEDs that are emit light that is outside the visible spectrum, but is detected by digital cameras. If you are a shy saint, turn up the brightness to conceal your identity.

prototype:

The Test-Tube Amulet
The modern version of old fertility amulets, its ambiguous form commemorates current fears of women: unwanted pregnancy and inability to conceive naturally.

prototype:

Wi-Fi Amulet
This amulet plays with the need people seem to have to always be connected to the internet. If it senses a Wi-Fi network, it is comfortably warm. If it doesn't, it becomes disconcertingly cold. I want it to look very raw and non-technological; I am considering casting it in the shape of a stone.

Bluetooth Protective Amulet
An amulet that represents protection but also provides protection by initiating a 911 call from your cell phone when activated. In an emergency, you have to break the switch of the amulet, which triggers it to make your phone call 911. I am probably going to make it in the shape of a cross.

assembly of inspirational items and materials:

clockwise from top left: surface mount infrared LEDs for headband, camera for eye, eyes, bluetooth module, stone for wi-fi amulet, screen for locket, test-tube amulet, solar panel

911 bluetooth protection amulet

2008-03-26T22:33:19Z

I was able to pair my bluetooth module with my phone, and put it in a mode where it connects with my phone as soon as it powers up, and then I made my arduino tell the bluetooth module to tell the phone to dial a specific number (I am dialling "123", which is my voice mail, but eventually I want it to dial 911, or maybe your closest relative?).
Here is what happens once the arduino is plugged in to power:

My idea was to have the microcontroller off, and once you connect it to power through a switch, your phone will dial 911. For the switch I want to use the glass magnetic reed switch, which is meant to be triggered by a magnet, but I am repurposing it to a switch that works when you break it (and physically connect the leads). On second thought, that shouldn't probably be the power supply to the microcontroller, rather some interrupt that will maybe wake the arduino from sleep mode.

Distrust

2008-02-26T04:51:33Z

I generally don't think that trust is something that can be measured or secured through some device, agreement, or any kind of remote or face-to-face interaction. My feeling is you could have as many reasons to not to trust someone you meet up close as someone you meet online. I mean, if they really want to deceive or betray you, they could do it even if they were very close to you.
of course, if it is someone you have never met in person, this would be a different matter. Seeing what they look like would give you a better sense of what they are like, and if the basics of who they claim to be are true. It's possible that meeting someone online you wouldn't be sure if they are lying to you about who they are, but hopefully having a more complete image of them will help ease your worries.
That said, I am interested in the thin line between distrust and paranoia. Most of the times it only takes common sense to know whether or not you should trust someone. If you are talking to people you know nothing about, you could build trust slowly, or by getting external information about them. If you are afraid that they are not revealing something, then you could try looking when they do not think they are being observed. An idea would be a platform that connects people to each other only if they are willing to be connected to the other person whenever that person wishes, with no step in which the person "agrees" to accept the connection, then you would hopefully be a little more convinced that the other person doesn't have something to hide. But that sounds an awful lot like surveillance/spying.
On the flip side of distrust is, obviously, trust, or faith in something. An interesting commentary on the untrustworthiness of the internet as a medium to meet and interact with people would be to use the internet as a source of "trust" so as you are talking to someone, you will get a background check with any online traces of the other person, or who they claim to be. Sure that could just lead to even less trust, but it is faithful to the technology -- you have to trust something. It is also somewhat taboo, to openly admit that you are not trusting someone, and are "stalking" them to see if they are telling the truth. if the other person trusted you and found out that you were being so paranoid, would they still trust you?

Tele-eye

2008-02-26T04:34:48Z

While webcams are really about providing us with a window to a different place, surveillance cameras are most often used for security and protection. They are placed in discreet places to see who goes by and what they do, ready to catch any 'evil' deeds. They transfer the image of the place they are in to someone who is overseeing (a security guard), or to a machine that is recording, or sometimes nowhere at all. This is such a common concept that numerous websites are selling imitation security cameras that you can attach to the outside of your house if you can't afford a real one and want to scare away people with bad intentions.

Traditionally the act of seeing is considered so powerful that there is a very widespread, deeply rooted in very old traditions belief that someone can harm you just by looking at you, by casting on you the Evil Eye. To protect yourself from that, you would wear one of a variety of amulets, depending on where you are from (different cultures have different amulets). Greeks and Turks use a blue bead that represents an eye as protection against the Evil Eye. I am not sure why that is, but one interpretation is that the protective eye reflects the malevolent gaze, protecting its wearer.

By merging the iconic traditional eye with a camera, the symbolic charm turns into an active observer, perhaps one that, at a time that superstitions are frowned upon and technology is glorified, might be able to protect you better. The renewed eye contains a cell phone camera embedded into a blue bead. It is worn discreetly on your body, observing (and recording?) everything even when you are not. A blinking red light mimics the status light of video cameras and indicates that the amulet is functioning. Wearing it and believing that you are protected by it is still a matter of faith however, as it is not certain that what is seen by the camera is being sent to someone who will be able to protect you.

Revised Thesis Description

2008-01-31T20:27:15Z

My thesis stems from a few different concerns and interests: objects as cultural artifacts and symbols, the effect of globalization and new technologies on those artifacts, the impact of technology on human values and society, the fascination of humans with the supernatural/spiritual realm and their superstitions and the psychological reasons behind it.

I want to reinvent cultural artifacts, creating a "functional" version of them. I will look into what the objects are meant to represent, and the modern-day equivalent of those values (security,protection/surveillance, interpersonal bond/telecommunication, identity/fingerprint or DNA) and create objects that combine the traditional form of the object and the technology that enables its symbolic purpose.

Interactivity

2007-12-13T17:49:17Z

This week I was doing a lot of thinking about interactivity, and a lot of research on Jim Campbell. I read an interview of his where he says he makes work to compensate for his inability to express himself through any other means (at least that was what I got out of it). Maybe I was just projecting my thoughts onto his words. (my language project from another class is bleeding into my observations). The automatic door example, which Despina also mentioned in class is a good example for thinking about whether or not a work is interactive or just reactive. Funnily enough, the same topic came up in my games class as well.
A few of these thoughts that I have been having popped up during my game design class. The automatic door example came up (sort of) because we were talking about how we wanted to use some gestural interface as part of our game. Frank (our teacher) said that making someone make a whole gesture to effectively just turn on a switch is not particularly rewarding, or a very rich experience. There has to be a reason for the input to be analog (and also complicated and difficult), as opposed to digital. Campbell's reflection on his work (how the viewer's distance from one of his works created an analogous response) addresses the same problem and explains how he deals with it. This refinement in the response of the "interactive" object is what I am trying to wrap my head around. I imagine it becomes easier with concrete examples. But the fact that I just called it a "response" and not an "interaction" is a tiny bit disconcerting to me. But maybe that's just linguistics.
Anyway, the other thing I was thinking about is the differences between making a statement, asking a question (dialogue), and testing a hypothesis (experiment): are these the differences between art, interactive art and science, respectively?Are the boundaries not clear? I have the feeling that these correspondences don't really work -- interactive art could take the form of a dialogue, a statement or an experiment, I think. But there would have to be dialogue involved somewhere in the process.

"No one's ever done that before!" (progress)

2007-12-06T17:41:51Z

We printed the first circuit board for In Touch. Everyone at ITP was very impressed, which was kind of nice, and the board came out really pretty, especially since the substrate is white(ish).

the process:
after printing (with a laser printer) the traces on glossy paper, press with iron for ~3 minutes, to transfer the toner to the copper clad

soak in (soapy) warm water till the paper peels off on its own

use a sharpie to fill in broken traces, and a dentist's tool (or anything pointy i imagine) to remove excess toner/paper

dip in ferric chloride for a while till only the traces are left. then rinse with water and use acetone to clean the toner off of the copper traces

drill the holes for the components using really small drill bits carefully cause they break easily!

Decision Making Assistive Device

2007-12-03T17:31:37Z

What do you want to choose? I always am extremely slow in making decisions, so I am making a device that might be somewhat helpful. It is a binary decision-maker, that tries to help you figure out which of 2 options you really want to choose. Cybernetic feedback loops really influenced this project, as it is in itself a feedback loop of sorts.

There are two indicators (LEDs), one for each of the things you are deciding between. (They could be handheld for a "on one hand, on the other hand" metaphor.) The device chooses one of them for you by lighting one of the LEDs up. This choice is random. Then it asks you if you are happy with this decision. You have to indicate "yes"or "no" (possibly with a thumbs up, or thumbs down hand gesture -- I am thinking of this device incorporated in a glove). If you say "no" then the cycle will repeat itself, and if you say "yes" the cycle will end, as you will have found an option you want.

I guess the way the deivce would work is that it would change how you think about the options. Once a decision has been made for you, it's no longer an option, but a given, so you consider all the implications of it more fully and it becomes more real, so it's easier to decide whether it is a good option or not.