Concept

Our team aimed to create an interactive installation that emphasized the uniqueness of winter in Pittsburgh. As the holidays were coming up, it would be a nice touch to promote a local charity and encourage people to donate to a cause. Since Arsenal Bank is a vacant building that receives plenty of foot traffic during the weekend, we wanted our installation to draw attention to this blank slate of a property. Therefore, we took inspiration from Pittsburgh’s enthusiasm for its local hockey team, the Penguins, and came up with different ideas for a small hockey-like game that could be integrated into the existing architecture and would allow people to donate to charity.

Refining the Concept

At first, we had planned to use a stepper motor to power small penguin toys to move around a space between the small windows on Arsenal Bank below the pavement. These penguins would perform and play a hockey game with a coin between the windows, which represented hockey goals. Once a coin reached a goal, the space would light up with vibrantly colored LEDs to signify a reward. The representation of our concept changed due to the movement of penguins being too complex. This led us to design a vertically mounted clear screen with a transparent track to drop a coin through. This screen would be painted to resemble a hockey rink and fit perfectly between the windows of Arsenal Bank so that it would appear as though a hockey rink were incorporated into the facade. The two highlighted parts of the drawing represent two tracks in which a coin could be dropped. Once a coin reached the end of the track and triggered the IR sensors, the space would festively light up in multiple colors. Each of the four paths a coin could take call a different lighting effect.

Fabrication

In order to create a large clear screen, several large notched pieces of acrylic had to be cut to fit together. They were to be bolted on a varnished plywood frame for structural stability and to withstand the wind and precipitation that would ruin it. Smaller notched pieces of acrylic were cut like jigsaw puzzle pieces to create the track, which would be attached to the large screen in interlocking notches cut in the larger jigsaw pieces. Everything was cut with jigsaw joints for better durability.

In addition, we fabricated a large sign from chipboard to show which charity that this installation promoted. The charity that we had selected was Dress for Success (https://pittsburgh.dressforsuccess.org/), an organization dedicated to providing professional attire for women who wanted to enter the workforce but could not afford work clothes. This organization accepted monetary donations, so it worked well with our coin machine.

Lighting and Software

In our initial design, we planned to incorporate a high definition light display from three LED color bars. We also planned to outline every major line on the hockey link with animated LEDs, but quickly realized that this would require using several micro-controllers to animate 10+ individual strands of lights.

In a static state, the bar LEDs emit a slow color change animation. In order to add an element of fun, we attached a pair of IR break beam sensors to either side of each of the coin tracks. When the coin fell down one of the tracks and interrupted the connection between the sensors, this triggered a different light animation per track. This would last for 10 seconds, and then reset to the default animation. The animations were controlled by one Arduino, connected via XLR cable to one light bar, and daisy-chained to the other two bars. The micro-controller and wiring were placed in a plastic bin to prevent weather damage.

See the animation code below. Note that it requires the DMXSimple Arduino library.

#include <DmxSimple.h>
#define LEDPIN 13
#define SENSORPIN1 4
#define SENSORPIN2 5
#define SENSORPIN3 6
#define SENSORPIN4 7
// variables will change:
int sensorState1 = 0, lastState1=0;         // variable for reading the pushbutton status
int sensorState2 = 0, lastState2=0;
int sensorState3 = 0, lastState3=0;
int sensorState4 = 0, lastState4=0;
void setup() {
  /* The most common pin for DMX output is pin 3, which DmxSimple
  ** uses by default. If you need to change that, do it here. */
  DmxSimple.usePin(3);
 
  pinMode(LEDPIN, OUTPUT);      
 // initialize the sensor pin as an input:
  pinMode(SENSORPIN1, INPUT);     
  digitalWrite(SENSORPIN1, HIGH); // turn on the pullup
  pinMode(SENSORPIN2, INPUT);     
  digitalWrite(SENSORPIN2, HIGH); 
  pinMode(SENSORPIN3, INPUT);     
  digitalWrite(SENSORPIN3, HIGH); 
  pinMode(SENSORPIN4, INPUT);     
  digitalWrite(SENSORPIN4, HIGH); 
  
  Serial.begin(9600);
  /* DMX devices typically need to receive a complete set of channels
  ** even if you only need to adjust the first channel. You can
  ** easily change the number of channels sent here. If you don't
  ** do this, DmxSimple will set the maximum channel number to the
  ** highest channel you DmxSimple.write() to. */
  DmxSimple.maxChannel(30);
  
}
void loop() {
 // read the state of the pushbutton value:
  sensorState1 = digitalRead(SENSORPIN1);
  sensorState2 = digitalRead(SENSORPIN2);
  sensorState3 = digitalRead(SENSORPIN3);
  sensorState4 = digitalRead(SENSORPIN4);
  DmxSimple.write(6, 56);
  DmxSimple.write (7, 80);
  DmxSimple.write (9, 10);
  // check if the sensor beam is broken
  // if it is, the sensorState is LOW:
  if (sensorState1 == LOW) {     
    // turn LED on:
   digitalWrite(LEDPIN, HIGH); 
   DmxSimple.write(6, 136);
   DmxSimple.write (7, 255);
   DmxSimple.write (9, 20);
   /* Small delay to slow down the ramping */
   delay(10000);  
  } 
  if (sensorState2 == LOW) {     
    // turn LED on:
    digitalWrite(LEDPIN, HIGH); 
   DmxSimple.write(6, 76);
   DmxSimple.write (7, 255);
   DmxSimple.write (9, 20);
   /* Small delay to slow down the ramping */
   delay(10000);  
  } 
  if (sensorState3 == LOW) {     
    // turn LED on:
    digitalWrite(LEDPIN, HIGH); 
   DmxSimple.write(6, 96);
   DmxSimple.write (7, 255);
   DmxSimple.write (9, 20);
   /* Small delay to slow down the ramping */
   delay(10000);  
  } 
  if (sensorState4 == LOW) {     
    // turn LED on:
    digitalWrite(LEDPIN, HIGH); 
   DmxSimple.write(6, 156);
   DmxSimple.write (7, 255);
   DmxSimple.write (9, 20);
   /* Small delay to slow down the ramping */
   delay(10000);  
  } 
}

Installation

Although we were able to set up the lights at the site, our initial setup in Arsenal Bank was faced with many challenges. Because the screen was too large to be carried out, we had to assemble it in three different panels indoors. We glued and bolted the acrylic to three different parts of the wood frame. While this made the installation easier to transport at first, it was difficult to assemble on site because the track pieces had to lock into each other before being placed onto the acrylic. In addition, the strong wind, cold temperatures, and the snowfall that night had greatly inhibited our progress.

Because it was too difficult to create our installation on site, we set it up in the Ideate lab instead. By this time, the wood and acrylic had been warped by the cold moisture in the air and parts of the acrylic track and screen had broken off due to pressure. We had to glue the broken frame and screen back together. We were able to fully assemble the entire installation  Unfortunately, the track on the right could no longer allow coins to roll through it because a little too much hot glue had seeped into the cracks. The track on the left functioned perfectly and could be used to trigger the lights.

Conclusion and Lessons Learned

From the onset, this project had a difficulty in scope that plagued it until the very end. It took much more time to laser cut the acrylic and wood than anticipated, which pushed back all other steps in the project. The materials  weren’t resilient enough to handle below-freezing temperatures and wind, which led to the entire structure deforming and having to be moved indoors. Finally, the enormity of the structure required more coordination and manpower than what was available – each third of the structure weighed over 30 lbs and had to be transported by truck, and bolted together by at least two people.

A project of this scope would have benefitted from less physical structure and more dependence on scalable electronics.

Created by Daily tous les jours (the same studio that created McLarena,) 21 invited passersby to play the game using their mobile phones to control a ball through obstacles. The obstacles were controlled by a second installation – 21 Swings – which was composed of a series of swings that anyone could ride on. Each swing had the additional component of being tied to a single piano key, so multiple swingers could create an interactive musical number.

The entire installation embodies Colangelo’s vision of massive media not only due to scale, but because of the layered interactions in a public space. The projection made the building performative outside of its mundane existence as an office building. The dueling installations also created a fun, competitive relationship between strangers on phones vs. swings that made public participation in the urban environment inviting.

Theme

Inspired by the Family Feast theme of the plant life and decorations, we wanted to maintain an ambiance of warmth and comfort by creating a subtle firelight display with the lights.

Narrative

When the visitor first enters the room, she will see flickering firelight in shades of yellow, orange, and red along both main walls.

Every other light array will be controlled by a knob control reminiscent of a fireplace knob, strung on the columns on the brick walls The visitor will be able to turn the knob to control the intensity of the connected firelight (the height of the flame).

We believe that having a directly interactive installation will delight visitors, but also help disperse foot traffic away from the central flower bed towards the outer walls.

Design

Inputs:

6 knob potentiometers (one per light fixture)

Every other light fixture will be attached to a potentiometer directly underneath on the brick wall. By default the lights will be set to a low-level array of white to yellow to orange to red. The potentiometer will map to the intensity of the light.

Outdoor Inhouse was an in-house (ha) installation created by Intermedio Studios in 2016 to simulate the almost forgotten act of relieving oneself outside, but in a public bathroom. Motion sensors detected when someone entered a bathroom stall, and then played a field recording taken from outside an actual outhouse in rural Ohio. The installation was meant to target “the controlled, plastic quality of contemporary elimination and it’s isolation from natural environments, while referencing a recently abandoned architectural staple of daily life prior to indoor plumbing.”

I was drawn to this project because it is almost entirely opposite to a typical work of media architecture, which tends to invoke High Art and High Tech. Outdoor Inhouse forces participants to reexamine a mundane act of everyday life in a location where the average person is not “primed” to experience a work of media.

Outdoor Inhouse

SUN

SUN was a project created by Dutch artist Philip Schutte as a playful exercise in self-generated landscapes. Sensors capture the movement of a giant ball controlled by the user, and reflect and distort light through the “atmosphere” backdrop based on the ball’s relative position to the horizon.

I particularly like SUN because of the artist’s fascination with world-building. According to the an interview in the Creative Applications blog, Schuette was inspired by rendering algorithms for world generation in a video game. Because the position of the sun has such a powerful emotional effect on people, the ability to move the sun and alter the emotional landscape of a scene is a way for the user to create a personalized emotive environment.

Philip Schuette