Sarah D at ITP

Comm Lab is over. And here is what we have to show for ourselves:

Time After Time from Sarah Dahnke on Vimeo.

A first experiment with After Effects:

Christmas at the Zoo from Sarah Dahnke on Vimeo.

Project overview:
closer to you is a set of shirts, tethered at the heart that when worn, affect the volume of music and the brightness of light. They were originally created for use in performance, especially dance.

Prototype of shirts:

How it works:
Strands of conductive stretch material are embedded within two of the stretchy connections. These are connected to an Arduino, which reads the varying resistance and maps these values either to a servo motor attached to a light dimmer switch or through Processing to control an .mp3.

Materials used:
- Conductive stretch material from Less EMF
- Strips of spandex
- Servo motor
- Light dimmer switch
- Clip lamp
- Arduino

Stay tuned for a video of the shirts in action!

My original intention was for this stretch sensor to effect the slowing down of audio, but after playing around with the minim library, I realized that was going to be more difficult than I realized. So I decided to instead effect the volume, making the volume decrease as the sensor stretched (or, as the individuals wearing the shirts stretch apart).

First, a volume test:

Stretch sensor test from Sarah Dahnke on Vimeo.

The volume is actually more dynamic now that I’ve played with the code. It now provides a pretty wide, obvious range.

Prototype of my prototype:

Right now the shirts are attached with simple white elastic, except for one strand of conductive stretch fabric (the silver stuff in the photo).

Now that I’ve mastered this, it’s time to move on to figuring out the heart rate monitor. Ugh.

A group of us decided to ride the M5 bus together, making it a more communal experience. This also made it a more distracting experience. Keeping my attention on the many sites and sounds and smells and textures along this extensive ride was difficult when I was among friends, but with my camera firmly in my grip, I was determined to make something of this.

I didn’t have a firm plan. I just took photos of anything I saw that was interesting and noted the nearest bus stop to each photo. When I got home and uploaded my photos, I noticed such a wide array of colors that I knew I needed to highlight in my paper.

Although the photos were all from the same bus route on the same day, they all seemed to have their own individual story, so that’s exactly how I decided to package it. I selected my 12 most favorite photos and wrote a short story that corresponded with each one. I pasted each story on the back of a photo and boxed them up with a short instruction sheet, letting the reader (in this case, Red) know that the stories are not meant to be read in any specific order.

The funniest part during the process was when I was cutting and gluing my stories on the floor, I had a ton of people ask me what I was doing. It was as if a glue stick and scissors were completely foreign at this point.

A short:

E E AM I from Sarah Dahnke on Vimeo.

Documentation of our presentation:

Indo Board Media Controller from Sarah Dahnke on Vimeo.

Like many people, I plan to combine my Pcomp and ICM finals into one project that includes a sensor system connected to Processing to control audio and visuals.
In my former life, before ITP, I was a dancer and a choreographer. I still consider myself one, although I have not done much dance-related work since school started. Right before school started, I presented a piece titled “grasp” at an outdoor festival on Staten Island. While I had been working on it for a few months, I still consider it a work-in-progress because my full vision hasn’t yet been realized. However, the idea driving the project is one based on ideas of magnetism and repulsion, or, push and pull.

This summer when I was taking a class with Gabe BC, Kate Hartman paid us a visit and talked about her work. In her presentation, she breezed past these connected shirts she made but didn’t talk much about them, as they weren’t one of her major projects. However, I kept that image in my mind and sketched a replica in my notebook. Probably because I was at work on this piece and obsessed with these ideas that the people who come in and out of your life are uncontrollably connected to you, these shirts struck a nerve.

Remembering these ideas I’ve been sort of sitting on this whole semester as I learn to light up LEDs and use sensors and make balls bounce across the screen has led me down a path toward my final project.

I want to create a set of connected shirts (I have Kate’s blessing) that are connected with threads but also with a conductive stretchy material that will be used to “stretch out” audio wav forms. Since the shirts are connected at the heart, I also want to have one of the performers wearing a heart rate monitor, which will be used to control a visual projection.

I’m currently doing experiments with conductive stretchy materials, such as crocheted conductive thread and stretchy conductive fabric to see what gives the best range. I think I’m going to end up going with the Stretch Conductive Fabric from The EMF Safety Superstore.

For heart rate, I’m playing with a Pulse Heart Rate Monitor and the corresponding interface Sparkfun makes.

I am unsure if the visual component will be video-based, image-based or graphics-based. One idea is to use an EKG-type visual, but a) I think that’s too literal and b) it doesn’t really connect with the overall concept.

Over the coming days as I play around and continue to brainstorm I hope to solidify the idea conceptually and technically.

We decided that Photoshopping a bunch of photographs was the best way to get our point across since none of us can draw at all. Peiyu downloaded a storyboarding template to make our lives easier.

I guess I’m about a week late posting this .wav file that Sue, Benjy and myself made, inspired by the ITP Haunted House. We installed the sounds in the men’s and women’s restrooms, turned off the lights and lit the space with a single colored light bulb on a clip lamp. for a few hours.

You can play the track through your browser as long as you click on the following link, then click on the filename hauntedhousesoundissue.wav: http://drop.io/g01sdpi#