Open Share

Initially when I first heard about this project back in semester one I thought it was a much bigger 2 week project or something along those lines. So when it finally came around I was surprised and stressed at the limited time.

At first I really wanted to work with Arduino in combination with processing, something similar to my CoLab 1 work where I used a DIY potentiometer to scroll through data visualised using processing. However I didn’t feel that my Coloab 1 work would work best for exhibition and generally I wasn’t hugely happy with the work. Less so the outcome but more the data and specifically how I visualised it.

This all meant that I thought of taking an existing processing sketch from Creative coding 01 or 02 and extending it with the addition of some Arduino sensors to make it more interactive, especially for a exhibition space where I am not going to have a keyboard and mouse interface obviously.

I started by messing around with ultrasonic sensors…

You can see I have a few dead boards (don’t worry they’re mine not the studios!).

I thought about how I could have an array of sensors in the space but really it would be unmanageable with the time frame, and then once I thought about only having one I noticed it was very similar to Nicks work and decided not to take that any further.

By this point I had decided I would using my old iMac 5.1 to display my work however I had the slight issue it could only run Processing 3. This was fine until I decided that I wanted to switch out the ultrasonic sensors for OpenCV and work with the webcam input. Processing 3 was not on board.

There was a brief period where I was going to install Ubuntu or some lightweight linux distro onto the mac so I could run Processing 3 but once again time constraints and the fact that processing 3 was not essential to my work meant this never happened… maybe in the future…

Finally I decided I would implement sound into an existing processing sketch. The sketch I chose was actually from Creative Coding 01.

Here you can see how it evolves over time. Its just a basic walker with boundary detection that controls colour.

I took this sketch and turned into a class based walker so I could have as many agents as I wanted.

The way I wanted to make the sketch interactive was to use the microphone input. I wanted to use the space of the exhibition (Garage space) to dictate how my piece looked.

The concept behind it relies on the fact that I hate silence, to me noise in a creative environment gives me a blank canvas to work from. Inversely a quite space is like having TV static in head. This idea of TV static actually is what inspired the piece graphically and why I chose to have a greyscale colour palate.

I used the microphone to take an average sound reading of the environment with a sample rate of around 2 minuets.

The louder the space the clearer the piece became.

The quieter the space the noisier the piece became.

Here its setup in the studio as a test when it’s quite busy for some time and the piece is very clear.

It was time to setup in the Garage space and try calibrate for the space. The problem was I had no idea how loud the space would get during the exhibition so there were some guestimates made.

Here it is being tested in the space and I was happy with how it looked.

WRapping up

I really enjoyed this project for many reasons. The fact that we were all working together for one shared goal (exhibition) from years 1 – 3 was really nice and gave the studio space a nice atmosphere.

Also this was my first Exhibition so it was very exciting to have the opportunity to show of some work and just generally take a piece of work from something I’d just show at a review to something I was proud enough to let speak for it’s self.

That Idea that I couldn’t stand by it and justify it or explain it the entire time was nerve wracking but it really helped me make something that I feel is quite elegant and able to stand up for itself.

Over all it was a very exiting few days and a great time at the exhibition.