Group 5

  • Aaron
  • Chetan
  • Kenny
  • Joseph

Project 2: Device/Tool/Musical Instrument

Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4

Week 1: Observation

Overview:
Action: Sweeping
Medium: Floor/Surface, Dust, Air
Tool/Device: Broom
Goal: Clean, Move Dust
Phisicality:

  • Arms - push and pull broom
  • Legs - move and position the body
  • Posture - bent over
  • Attention - ground

We chose the act of sweeping as our action to observe.

Sweeping is a very physical act.
The broom is a tool to push and pull and bang agaist any surface.
You can feel the weight of the broom, the frictional force when you pull it across the floor;
because of its shape the broom is a lever - you sense the forces on the bristles through the handle.

It requires your attention yet very little 'mind power.'
In this way it occupies but does not stress the mind.
Monks in Korea practice meditation through sweeping.

I think an interesting aspect of sweeping/and brooms in the dustpan. It is sort of the terminal device, that allows you to complete your sweeping, unless you push the dust under the rug or something. Brooms also remind me of the broom slaves in Fantasia, that replicate themselvse to infinity. I think there could be something there, like a subconcious desire to have home automated cleaning, which of course turns against you. Maybe there really isnt anything there, but just a thought.

Here is an mov of us sweeping (4.5MB)

Videos of a man sweeping snow off of an awning:
In 1min he presents a myriad of broom actions.

1_Pulling
2_BodyPos_Adjust.mov
3_BackAndForth.mov
4_Banging.mov
5_SweepThinkHitWipe.mov

We will make a flying broomstick! (Like witches and Harry Potter)

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Week 2: Prototype - Medium, Feedback, User Testing

We met Sat, Feb 18 to disscuss our basic prototype.
The group was pretty happy with the contact of the brissles and the floor as the medium.
We would take a x,y location of the head and a z force/bending for the brissles as our input.
The z part could be done simply with a flex sensor; the x,y part would be a bit more complicated but doable.
There wasn't concensus on application/feedback - should the user get immediate feedback (and possibly dissrupt the act of sweeping) or should he see the result afterwards and have the product come from 'his unconcious'?

Joseph -

I didn't like the idea of the user not getting any feedback during the sweeping process and then seeing 'the result' of his sweeping time afterwards. I found the little 'user-testing' session we did very telling: No feedback made using the broom boring. The counter argument is that our audience would be regular broom users but I think that the act of sweeping is contained. You change your environment while you do it and break completely from the act of sweeping once you are done - you don't want to watch something happen afterwards. When you kick a ball you do the action and then watch what happens later. The sweeping should have an immediate effect on the environment (maybe the floor moves or the air flow changes as the room is filled with mist/dry-ice-smoke and light is projected onto that). I do agree that a visual/screen output is not what we want. It would take the focus away from sweeping and the floor and room as well as not being particularly interesting (it would be a paint program - not very physical).

I'm starting to doubt that the x, y and force are the most interesting focus. It seems to me that the broom is the actor and it is the room and the dust, which is the recipient of the action and may be more interesting to observe. For example this would be easy to visualize if the floor was covered in blue sand and you moved the sand around creating mounds and gaps in the 'sanscape' (SandScape is actually a MIT media lab project and may be an unfortunate influence here). I'm also interested in the broom as a flying instrument. I think a multimedia cave would be very cool to make. Sitting on a broom is an intense feeling! You're always a little off balance and uncomfortable yet if you're in a rich environment this will literally sweep you off your feet and force you into that world. Another idea is to have the broom talk to the user. To comment on sweeping style or to tell a story while the brush is being used.

Aaron-

I am somewhat in the opposite frame of mind. I am interested in having a feedback system which is the absence of feedback. I would like to gather and visualize raw data from the sweeping patterns of various individuals. Like rig up one of the Pcomop brooms before people clean up at night, and look at the data the next morning to create pictorial representations. I think that feedback would alert the user to heavily to what is going on, as if a particular instance of sweeping is no longer just sweeping, but now something different. The broom would still offer its typical feedback that alerts the user on how to move. The force of the bristles against the floor, the movement of the objects that they are sweeping, the different noises from different floor types, materials being swept and force used on the broom, a sore back from holding the broom incorrectly. I think each of those feedback systems are inherent in the act of sweeping, and therefore there is no need to create an artificial feedback system.

__________

'CHE'

Trying to breakdown this tool called a broom was a very challenging task as we tried extremely hard to move away from the stereo typical approach. This brought us to a simple place, which was to try and pull the most useful information from this object? In order to this we decided to put a flex sensor, force sensors as well as a accelerometer to pull out the values from the actions of the user

'THESE ACTIONS ARE'

  • pushing down - flex sensor
  • pulling - accelorameter
  • and the pressure applied while holding the stick. - force sensor

this data can tell us a great deal about the user. Is the user nervous, compulsive, lazy, relaxed, preoccupied, etc.

'USES OF THIS DATA'

  • we could also use the motions created by the user to generate form using a 3d printer
  • to tell a narrative about the user to the user
  • i like the idea of it being a natural act where the user does not get immediete feedback, but uses the tool in a natural way and then we use that data to tell a story
  • i also like the idea of using the brush as a tool to reveal something. For example to clean up the dirt of the political system and as we sweep it uncovers hidden truths.
  • the floor in this case would be like a large scratch card.
  • Joseph mentioned the use of this information to generate something physical.

__________Processing Code__________

I adapted Tom Igoe's processing code to just read the flex sensor in the broom, and alter the opacity and the size of a circle based on that reading. I also gave mouse control to the ellipse, just in case we wanted to go the paintbrush route. I have the circle run through some random colors, becuase its fast and dirty. If you guys want it done a diffrent way, which it probably should be, feel free to change it. This is what I came up with (I hope it works): G5.Code1

Revised Code: PIC and Processing: G5.Code2

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Week 3: Advanced Prototype of Device

This week we settled on an application for our project.
We are working to correlate the cleaning of the floor to cleaning an audio/video 'surface.'
A projected video and audio track is initially pixelated and layered with noise.
As the user sweeps the floor, the clear version is revealed.

A flex sensor in the bristles of the broom activates an LED.
A camera extracts the coordinates of the broom when the LED is on.
The floor is represented in the computer as a two dimensional array.
As more squares are swept, the video and sound becomes clearer.

Diagram of how this will work:

__________Processing Code__________

Blurring video code: G5.Code3

Vision System code (uses iSight): Broom_pde.txt

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Week 4: Final Prototype of Device and Concept

This week we are focused on creating the media.
There are two main avenues to explore with the broom:

1. Reveal a World
2. Compose by moving and piling sound and video

Kenny -

We decided that the main purpose of the broom is for cleaning.
To clean represents to clear.
If someone sees objects with a clear conscience then one can see the objects more clearly.
Also, state of clearness can come when one is slightly at ease as if under the influence of a stimulus.
We express the concept of clearness in two ways by images of noise and slience.

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Page last modified March 01, 2006, at 04:59 AM