Again.
Intro, again.
To understand my intention behind this project I have to explain a bit the way I develop ideas and the way I think about design and art.
I like design and I like art and I like the combination of these two even more. Creating a meaningful art piece can be very satisfying. You express your thoughts to others and if you have done well during the development, they will understand it and maybe even like it. That is great.
And if you present something well designed and you show it to other people, they will look at it and hopefully recognize all the details you have implemented in your design. And if you have done well, they will understand why you chose that specific typeface and why the purple background supports your design and so on. That is great too.
But besides these meaningful and thoughtful aspects of art and design, I also like another facet of this topic: Simple entertainment. Often art becomes interesting to me when it entertains me. I like to watch unusual stuff where no one really can tell what it could possibly mean. But as long as it grabs my attention and makes me smile for a second, it has a priceless use. I believe that under certain circumstances a piece with less meaning can become more intuitive and thus reach you on a different layer than severe understanding or interpretation does. No explanations, no discussions, no deeper intention of the artist. Distraction instead of education. Strong words, I know, I will try to explain my concern more detailed in the following lines.
Idea, again.
My final project for this class is called 'again'. And its only purpose is to grab your brain and waste your time for a few seconds. And do it again. And again.
It does not have a deeper meaning than that. It does not criticize the social gap between poor and rich and it does not care about soldiers getting mad in Iraq. And no, no hidden relation to starvation in Africa, child labor in China or global warming. All I want to create with this piece is a short moment of entertainment, a moment of brain relaxation, letting a few seconds of time pass by without caring.
Inspiration, again.
If you have ever seen some works of Erwin Wurm you probably understand what fascinates me about distraction and art. Even though his works are definitely not meaningless, I am more attracted by the entaining and visual part of his sculptures. His installations have an extremely high visual quality and many of them are just a pleasure to watch because they make you smile.
If you didn't know Purple and Brown until now you should check out some videos of them. Purple and Brown are two animated clay characters, once realized for Nickelodeon by Aardman Animations. These two guys are way more on the entertainment side than in an art context. But what fascinates me about their short adventures is the amount of details that was put into these very simple characters. They are just a bubble of clay with a mouth and eyes. But they are perfectly animated and manage to tell a story or a gag in just a few seconds. They stayed in my mind because they are entertaining and very well done at the same time.
Details, again.
'Again' is a cube made out of silicon. The cube houses a capacitive sensor, some LEDs and a vibration motor. Ideally, I see this object placed somewhere in your everydays environment. On your desk or on a bookshelf for example, in a place that you see frequently during your day.
Interacting with the cube is easy: If you approach the piece with your hand, it will start reacting. The cube will start to glow and to wobble slowly. Move your hand away it will stop doing so. If that is not enough for you, feel free to touch the object. You may pick it up, hug it or squeeze it gently. Or just leave it where it is and enjoy its look.
The material I used, the super-soft silicon, is the actual trick of this object. However, when you see the cube, you want to touch it. It has hard edges but looks unusual and artificial. Its material evokes the wish to find out how it feels.
During the development of my concept I was hoping to achieve an effect like that. There is no use in touching the object, it is nothing more than a simple haptic feedback that you will get when touching it. But regardless of this 'no-use', it makes you curious. And you definitly want to touch it, squeeze it or stretch it and see how it feels. The reaction of other people during my work in the SensorLab proved this.
The feedback of the capacitive sensor works in a similar way as the silicon does but offers the possibility to interact with the cube without touching it (you will avoid washing your hands all day like that). It is very playful and fun to trigger an action without having to hit a button or touch anything. Once you hover your hands over the object, it reacts to you, even though you don't have the feeling of having triggered anything. It invites you to play with it, to try out its range and so on.
Development, again.
The first thing I had to figure out was which silicon to buy and how to process it. As Vincent pointed me towards a model-making silicon manufacturer, I searched for a soft and suitable material. My goal was to end up having a cube with hard-looking edges but made out of a very soft and stretchy material. The material I finally used is called "EcoFlex 00-30", made by "Smooth-On". This silicon is very soft and stretches very easily while snapping back into its original shape afterwards. As it comes with two components and needs to be mixed and casted, I needed a suitable mold for my plans.
I constructed a wooden mold for the cube and positioned a placeholder in the center to make it hollow. Next stop was the Dollarstore to get some cheap silicon mixing devices: a bowl, some kitchen tools and a pair of rubber gloves. The actual casting of the silicon was very straight forward and took about 15 minutes. In contrast, the demolding process was astonishing hard and exhausting: It took me lots of calories, lots of swearing and finally almost two hours of pulling and pushing!
The main aspect for the electronics was getting the capacitive sensor to work properly while minimizing the interference caused by the other components. As all electric parts create a small electromagnetic field when they are turned on, I had to try to keep this shielded from the sensitive area. The capacitive electrode sits at the top of the cube. It is a wire frame that fits the shape of the object and holds the vibration motor at the same time. As capacitive fields get more and more instable with increasing size, I tried to find a balance between range and reliability.
The vibration system was just a matter of money: I had to spend quite some pennys on this! The motor needed to be slowed down, as it spins way too fast by default. This happens via pulse witdh modulation in the Arduino. And the motor is isolated and shielded from the capacitice wire cage to reduce the interference.
The light that makes my cube glow is emitted by four blue LEDs. The LEDs light up the cube evenly and their brightness is gently animated through some pulse width modulation in the Arduino code. The whole circuit with the LEDs, the capacitive sensor and the Mosfet-switch for the motor is built onto a small board which fits into the base of the cube. The only thing that has to stay outside is the Arduino: Even though it would fit into the cube, it is to bulky and would take away a lot of the light if it would be placed inside the object.
The whole system is powered through the regulated 5 Volts provided by the Arduino. This makes it very easy to handle and is sufficient for the type of action I request from the motor.
Conclusion, again.
Finally, I am very satisfied with my result: The material is great and the electronic components I use are easy to control, even the capacitive sensor. And finally, it is a working and standalone piece and it fulfills the visions I had in mind while developing the idea. As a reference to my intro: This is the best reward that design and art can offer to me.
Throughout the class I tried to explore the technology while keeping an eye on aesthetics, a certain meaning or a small story that an object can tell. Even though this 'again' cube is intentionally meaningless, I think it works quite well. The interaction is intuitive and while you are walking around your office, thinking about an idea or speaking on the phone, I am sure you will play with the cube when you pass by it.
Videos, again.
