For this piece, designer Yuri Suzuki recreated the map of London’s subway as a working electrical circuit. The piece is a working radio with all of it’s components exposed and organized as a drawing. Looking forward to the semester capstone project, I was hoping to do some drawings on proto-boards. A form of printmaking where I would create the drawings using Cadence (software) and get the designs sent to a lab for printing. I searched to see if this had been done before and stumbled upon this project, which is related. Instead of just using the electric paths as line, this piece considers and incorporates their intended purpose, as pathways for flow. If this is the project that I will pursue, the imagery will be very important.
Another related project. Here ignoring the conventional use of these materials in pursuit of pattern. To be honest, this is the project that I prefer, and the route that I would want to take. It uses these components for their materiality as opposed to their utility. I’m really impressed at the transformation and really excited about the possibilities of working with proto board layout.
For my capstone project for this class, I am very interested in combining my favorite two mediums in art: video games and robots. Thus, I am likely to build some really cool kind of robotic video game controller that plays an actual game. So that’s what I’ve been looking around for:
R.O.B. Robotic Operating Buddy, by Nintendo Corporation (1985)
This is a video game unlike anything else at the time of its release, and quite unlike anything else even today. Perhaps better known as a Super Smash Bros character in the 21st century, R.O.B. was originally a medium-size robot toy that was sold as part of a Deluxe Set including two games along with itself. R.O.B. would directly integrate with the core game play of the video games it shipped with, and players could control the robot with a videogame controller, with gameplay information displayed on the screen. While the device never did achieve commercial success, it did help show the public that video games can be a novel and innovative medium for art and entertainment, against an economy that still resonated with fear of the recent Videogame Crash of 1983. I think it R.O.B. was a bold vision on what video games could be like, and proved that the medium did not have to limited to a screen and a conventional controller. The biggest problem with R.O.B. however, was that the kinds of games it could play was extremely limited, and it was hard to imagine a good gameplay mechanic that would both be fun to play and be tied well with the robot.
NESBot by pjgat09, 2011
Oh, how far artificial intelligence has gotten. First, robots play chess, and now they play Nintendo games from the 1980s. Soon enough, they’ll be playing advanced 3D games like Halo and Skyrim. Anyways, this is an Arduino hack that plays the classic Super Mario Bros, independently generating key presses based on data being output from the game. Well actually, its not really generating anything intelligently or independently (its all prerecorded key-presses simply being played at very specific times), but the concept of a non-human robot playing a video game is intriguing, especially if the robot has the same limitations as human players. Artificial intelligence controlled characters in videogames has never really been too smart – when they happen to be a challenge, it’s only because they are given unfair advantages, such as always knowing where everything else is in the game, or being given special powers like increased health, damage or speed. However, it would be really interesting to see a robot that actually has to sit down, watch the TV, and press buttons on a physical controller to play a game. It will probably take extreme computer vision algorithms and a killer servomotor/solenoid setup along with a camera with a very high frame rate, but being able to play complex games will bring robots that much closer to the level human intelligence.
Computer Orchestra is a system that integrates a collection of sounds (a person’s own voice, instrumental sample, or any other audio) submitted through crowd-sourcing and then allows the user to construct his or her own orchestra of computers. A Kinect senses the user’s conducting movements and relays this data to Processing, which then commands a particular computer via WiFi to play a particular sound, collectively creating an orchestra. Each computer’s screens display visual feedback in addition to the sound being played. I find this project interesting since it incorporates a collection of sounds generated by the human voice. There is something humanizing about creating an orchestra using this crowd-sourced method of sound collection rather than an orchestra that plays synthesized music based purely on an algorithm. Just like a conductor with a human orchestra, the computers in this project will play with continued arm motion and will hold a note when the conductor holds her arm out steady. Additionally, another person can benefit from a different experience than the conductor by walking amongst the computers and hearing different sounds depending on where he is positioned in the room.
Audible Color
Music is typically an audio-only experience, although many people visualize it as notes on a staff or as abstract shapes. This project generates sounds based on color using Processing. Using a camera, droplets of red, blue and green hues are mapped to certain musical notes, and mixing these hues creates different notes. The size of the droplets are mapped to volume and the frequency at which a note is played. The color source isn’t limited to water droplets; they can be acrylic paint or solid objects. I like the idea of mapping sound to the color spectrum in this project, but this project doesn’t seem to take into account the location of the colors in the camera’s field of view; I think it would be interesting to have the sound be generated based on the color’s location, similar to how notes are read on a musical score.
Insect Traps by Markos Kay simulates insects inside a virtual spinning cube, while being attacked by “larger than life biomolecular structures”. The atmosphere and color choices are fantastic. However, it is really difficult to tell what the project is actually about, and how it actually works, so it just ended up seeming like smokes and mirrors. The process of why an insect dies is especially not transparent. It does remind me of Evolved Virtual Creatures by Karl Sims, however it felt much better and more interesting, due to how its process and many results being presented to us.
My Secret Heart uses Openframeworks to visualize a musical piece. I really enjoyed how the tendrils have multiple layers. However, the rainbow colors and particles felt a bit tacky, along with the occasional silhouettes that popped up. The organic movement is what really drew me in though. It reminded me of music visualizations that many music players came with, but the music along with the organic motion gave this piece something that is more ethereal and haunting about it than other visualizations.
