Developments for this iteration:

fabric from past iterations — very impressive results
for this iteration, we are trying *shibori dying techniques*. on the left — more traditional folding technique. right — more arbitrary folding technique, still used accordian folds but I tried folding from different corners. hopefully will give the pattern a more rugged look which I feel is more consistent with my art style.

We finally solidified the motion of our device — a repetitive bobbing motion while our environment is lit and quiet, pausing in silence, slowing down with less light. We played with different levels of silence, starting with 300, which was a bit too oblivious to its environment, and down to 100, which made me feel too insecure about how much noise I was making. We settled at 200 for our threshold of silence.

The sounds that interrupted our device:

  • Heavy bass in my background music, and some aggressive hi hats. But not the meat of a song unless I am loudly singing along
  • Walking into my room and taking a seat at my desk (particularly, the sound is “wheels rolling over wooden floor”)
  • The FaceTime ringtone
  • Dogs barking

I appreciate that our Bluefruit is not hyperaware of every little noise. I am listening to Toro y Moi’s Divina (Instrumental) and my device is not reacting to it. It is simply minding its business. The device pauses at sizable noises in a way a creature would perk up its ears and tune in to abrupt noises/changes in noise level. It also responds to harsher light with a quicker pace of dunking.

Before, our project was more emotive in concept: a device that responds to sunlight and stillness. With this iteration, I found myself getting so sentimental. It even visually it resembles the way you bob a teabag into your morning cup. The set up also reminds me of the way I have dried persimmons in the past:

The motion of our device is very manual, and the incessant whining of the motor eventually fades into a familiar white noise, the way the sound of construction work does. The laborious quality of our project, and its on-and-off dunking, is reminiscent of childhood, and in particular, of the times my [Kim] mom would make kimchi or fermented Ume plums. She’d be crouched in the kitchen, almost mechanically spreading chili paste onto each cabbage leaf or pitting the small green plums. She’d only stop when I shuffled into the kitchen to bother her, but even then, she would sometimes be too deep in the process to notice. I’d call her name and only then would she look up and pause her movements. And soon Rebecca JL and I will have our final products, which, after hours of manual labor will look vibrant and familiar and, with a little help of the effort heuristic, very meaningful.

We can more clearly visualize our project now and am feeling a lot better about where we are! Plus, our progress and newfound emotional connection to our work feels like it has come full circle, as the first assignment we worked on as partners had us very open with each other. As for our MQTT Bridge, we suspect there is a small bug somewhere in the code. Kim’s data is not transmitted to JL. We will work through this in class Tuesday.