Intermediate Studio - Permanent Flux - Inhabit Development - Prototype Board

After long deliberation and talking to various final years about what is the best way to talk to any kind of sensor, I have decided after all to build my own circuit board. The best thing about this, is that once built I can adapt and evolve it to cope with not just this idea but many varied ones. So to do this I need to create a standard circuit board that contains a programmed microchip that is programmed to output data in the form of voltage several times a second and a smaller microchip that turns the 5 volts being used on the board into 10 volts so a computers serial port can read the data. The motion sensor door chime will then be connected to the board so that a ever changing number will be shown on the screen using a piece of input code created in Processing. Then when the motion sensor is triggered a signal will be detected coming from the door chime unit which in turn will via the circuit board make the number on the screen drop and it is this drop in numerical value that will trigger the image to blur and desaturate.

Virtual Environments - Networks, Artifice and The Virtual - Presentation - Weekly Report - Week 11

Just blogging to report our presentation and piece are ready to by shown tomorrow. The only problem though is that since the network is playing up we have to show a movie of our program rather than play it live.

Virtual Environments - Networks, Artifice and The Virtual - Presentation - Weekly Report - Week 10

This week our presentation is almost complete along with our notes and final piece. Now all that is needed is a bit of polishing up on all fronts, ready to present on Friday. Fingers crossed it should be ok!!!

Intermediate Studio - Permanent Flux - Research - Sublime and Beauty - Edmund Burke

Throughout my experiments it has become clear that I am trying to effect the viewers perception of something, but what, I couldn't work out. I have now worked out that it is the audiences view of beauty and the sublime that I am questioning. Now first of all it important to state that the sublime and beautiful are not the same, they can be linked but still are no the same. Very much like black and white can make grey but when viewed next to each other are not similar. In this case though I simply need to understand them and don't need to go into the vast detail of what makes them the same and what makes them different, so for this purpose I will simply refer to them as "Beauty."

Edmund Burke states that for something to be beautiful it must cause "love" or somekind of other passion similar for it. Simplicity is seen to be the key and beauty is not just physical, for example a beautiful woman automatically doesn't make men fall in love with her. It is the actual desire for something that makes it beautiful and unique. It demands no assistance from our reasoning and it does this by using proportion. Flowers are beautiful as they have the soul of proportion in their makeup.

The way we perceive beauty and the method to which my piece is questioning is in relation to the fact that we must analyze something first before we can state whether it is beautiful or ugly. It is important to note as well that although crisp, clean, balanced colours and soft, clear, looping sounds may make something perfect is doesn't make it beautiful. Gradual variation is needed very much like in my piece for the audience to analyze and appreciate beauty.

With this research in mind I am going to continue with my experiments and delve deeper into the subject of beauty and how we perceive it by taking photographs and sounds of my own to use in the piece that I think best represent it.

Source: Edmund Burke - A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

Virtual Environments - Networks, Artifice and The Virtual - Presentation - Weekly Report - Week 9

We are currently having a problem with the network allowing us to gain access to the internet through Processing for our "Perfect System" idea. We will now have to search Yahoo instead of Google as this seems to have more chance of connecting to when using the university's computers. The simple idea is that a computer style networked map will be drawn in realtime over an actual street map to show the differences between physical and digital networking, one of the main comparisons in our presentation. At this moment in time we have managed to pull off the code for an advanced Yahoo search page and hope by next week to have this code controlling lines and shapes in the Processing window.

Virtual Environments - Networks, Artifice and The Virtual - Presentation - Weekly Report - Week 8

This week we have been deciding what to do for our final peice and are still undecided. One idea is to do a video composition of all the things that link and give us information during a typical working day. The other idea is to visually represent what the result of the "Perfect System?" gives back when searched for in Google. Both ideas will show how data is linked and networked but both have drawbacks in relation to development time. For example for the video peice to look professional we need a style and for the coded peice to work, we need to know how to attain data from the Google website. So the next week will involve choosing the final idea to take forward.

Intermediate Studio - Permanent Flux - Inhabit Development - Motion Censor Door Bells

For my Inhabit idea to work I need some way of detecting simple movement within the room the installation is occupying. The most easy and simple way to do this is to use a motion censored door bell. This will work by cutting the wire that goes from the circuit board to the speaker in the bell and then putting a 3.5mm microphone jack on the end of it so that is can go into a standard PC. All we need processing to do then is once I have done all my experiments for image desaturation and blurring, is bring all the code together and use the Processing Sonia sound library function to detect when a sound signal is being sent from the doorbell, for it then to trigger the on screen action. So below are a few door bells I am looking at:

Helix Motion Detector Alarm/Alert

Virtual Environments - Networks, Artifice and The Virtual - Presentation - Weekly Report - Week 7

Wooops!!! I forgot to blog a report last week, it totally slipped mind! Anyway this week we have looked at some artists from PLAN and also Skype. We now have the sufficient information for our presentation, we now just need to display this information and also think of a final piece to do that properly represents what we have found.