The idea here is to have a scene of sorts that evolves as the user bikes on an exercise bike. If the user stops biking, the scene dies and can’t be replicated. Kind of inspired by Tamagotchis and loop pedals.

Ideas for the scene:
– A procedural world that slowly grows with complexity
– Something fully acoustic: synthesized chords and music.
– Some on the nose satire about spinning / peloton.
– Just totally abstract visuals
– “Building something” like a pot on a wheel or something like that.

Things to incorporate into the scenes:
– Some sort of dataset visualization stuff, similar to the mattress factory installations with waves and satellites.
– Incorporate 3d scans of living spaces. I think that’s a cool way to get a window into people’s lives.
– Measured data from the user on the bike, like speed, consistency, etc. They could bike with some sort of intention that can change how the scene comes out.
– Camera footage of the user’s face

Idea 2:

Mocap or camera footage or environmental sensors + https://dood.al/pinktrombone/

Also: restless garden??

As a quick refreshener, this project aims to create a jungle of digital “animals”, which resemble the devices already around us. Each listens for its call sound, and emits a different call. These calls propagate until one animal dies out, and the chain is broken.

People will be able to contribute their own sounds as well. By whistling or yelling, users can trigger the device’s calls using their own voices and sounds, and enter into the jungle which we spend so many of our hours in. They can even become animals of their own, coming up with their own response when another animal emits their call.

I’ve been thinking about the engagement of this piece; I want people to participate and watch, so it cannot be a solely audience driven piece. The users should have input, yes, but each animal should also emit calls at different times randomly. It would also sound bad if two animals consistently lined up their calls so we have to schedule the “random calls” to avoid that, but that’s a harder problem without a common controller. Luckily, I’m coming up with a similar system for a different project, so I can reuse that prime-coding to prevent overlapping calls.

https://www.firstpalette.com/images/craft-mainpic/foldingpaperzooanimals-bear.jpg

I’m also not sure where the devices will “live” or what the animals will be. Visualized, I expected to have foamcore cutouts of various animals, but that defeats the “digital devices jungle” theme. Originally, we were going to use consumer electronics; Google Homes, microwave, toaster, kettle, etc., but I worry that they do not anthropomorphize well. Slapping googly eyes on them will help make them more animal-like, but even then the room will just have a bunch of toasters beeping at each other. The atmosphere must be set, and I’ll probably use a rainforest-y noise soundtrack to do that. It would be really cool to have techno-forest noise, but I doubt it exists.

Another thing is the scale. I want it room-wide, I want the atmosphere to encompass the room. Due to distance, that means the animals must be loud enough to transmit or sensitive enough to pick up a call from across the room. This power demand may be tough to overcome, since I can’t make a great amp for each animal. I’ll also choose some to make battery powered, so you can place them anywhere.

I’m definitely interested in the ambiance of the space, which is impacted by the speakers. The rainforest noises will set the jungle vibe, but the digital part is trickier. Using beeps for the speaker is easy and sounds electronic, but also somewhat jarring especially if they’re really loud. Making an electronic call is possible (sequence of tone() calls), but also tricker to detect and differentiate by other animals. Any failure in the chain of understanding means a call that won’t get a reaction, which makes the jungle feel like it only has one animal at a time.

Anyway, I’m excited to work on this. Lots of distributed pieces coordinating into an environment on their own, and participatory for the users too. Only question I have left for now is what bodies to put the animals into: organic or digital?

Extra Points not in the drawing

• Measuring the size of the balloon
• Question Randomizer button

Idea 1: Tilt controlled mechanism

• This is a system where a tilt sensor will be used to control different aspects of a mechanism. The tilt sensor will be placed on your hand. The mechanism is something that is not set in stone yet, but one of the ideas I have is to have a pulley system with a claw moving in different ways. Particularly, a half roll with the tilt sensor would move the pulley system to the left or right based on the direction. The pitch will determine how much further up or down the claw will be at. Another input through an IR sensor will determine how much further the claw is in the grabbing mechanism.
• This will be a system can be installed in various places with people traffic. It is intended for all people to try and grab some objects with the claw.
• While looking for how the Kinect system works, I found a project which was utilizing accelerometers in a phone to control other systems. I liked the idea of using tilt and using it to reflect instant changes in another system. I believe the idea I presented here does so and could be something I potentially enjoy working on.

Materials

• Claw (laser cut wood?)
• Pulley
• Rope
• Tilt sensor/ 3 axis accelerometer
• IR sensor
• Servo motor
• Stepper Motor
• Laser cut wood (for sectioned arm)
• Arduino

The idea behind this project is that your life and experiences are largely influenced by the circumstances of your birth, and a very small minority of Americans are born extremely lucky. This is a cute little slot machine where for the first time ever, you can “rig” it in your favor. Press a button and the slot machine will spin, randomly landing on some result. These results correlate to some aspect of a person’s life. For example, one roll may land on the country you’re born in, another roll may land on the amount of money your parents have, and the last roll may land on your level of education. After this, the user will be given the opportunity to “rig” the machine in their favor. Part of the machine includes a magnet and the user can basically wave it in front of one of three magnetometers to try and get the result they want. The magnetic values observed correlate to some angle of a servo motor, which is your result. Only, a very very small range of magnetic values correlate to “Jackpot.” Thus, it would require a lot of fiddling and desperately moving the magnet around to get what you want. An added factor is that from using a magnetometer in the past, I know they are very funky and sensitive pieces of equipment, so it would require a lot of work just to get what you want. I’m planning to implement an LCD that says humorous and sarcastic remarks based off of whatever it landed on. Aesthetically, I really want to pull from traditional slot machines with LEDs, lots of lights and a bold design. Landing on “Jackpot” will causes the lights to flash and noises to play, making it very exciting.

Another idea I have that I haven’t yet incorporated into my block diagram that I would like feedback on is that maybe the rotation of the servo motors influences the rotation of the other servo motors. None of these elements live in a vacuum, and as a result of being intertwined they influence the likelihood of each other servo motor. It might be shocking to mess with the magnetometer of one to see another one all of a sudden change as a result. Furthermore, how actual slot machines work is that it goes in order of one, two, three after each other to make it dramatic. Thus, applying this idea to my device, someone may be inclined to change the money column directly only to discover that waving the magnet in front of the place of birth column is more effective/helpful to the ends of not being born in poverty.

I’m potentially interested in possibly adding another variable to determine the output of the slot machine outside of the magnet, but I haven’t yet determined what this added factor should be or if I definitely need one. As another point, I’m worried it won’t be as engaging as I’m imagining it to be, so any and all feedback related to that is appreciated.

Block Diagram

Sketches