takos – 60-423: INTERACTIVE ART

takos-FinalProject

Generative friends!

Tweetable sentance: Generative friends that you can print out and take with you! Scripted in Blender, these friends are ball-jointed creatures you can pose and play with.

My project is scripted in Blender using Python, and mainly metaballs. Running the code creates a 3d Mesh that can be printed out on a 3d printer, and strung together to create a fully mobile

This project was driven by three things: My knowledge of dollmaking, my interest in generative art, and my determination to learn blender before graduating. I developed

Previous monster generation projects:

E-Self generator (with Connie Ye and Josh Kery) – April 2019

Machine Learning Rat generator (with Connie Ye as part of Algorat.club) – Feb 2019

result | interpretation | dataset

Machine learning doodler – March 2019

result | result | dataset

Monster generator – 2018

(theres more but I wont include them all)

Also a photo of a sculpted doll for reference

I think this project arrived as a natural progression and combination of my skills. This is a way to combine my doll making practice with my computational and illustrative practices, and provides an exciting opportunity for me to integrate many of the different things I do in a natural way.

Metrics of success involve visual aesthetics resembling creatures similar to ones that I draw or otherwise create, a complete amount of parts, and being able to fit printed pieces together to actually create a functioning friend.

What is next for this project?
My main issues with this project involved blender’s three dimensional boolean operations, whats next for this project is restructuring how data for each part is stored, in order to create the metaballs in a more ordered fashion, which will in turn allow me to preform operations on them instantaneously (as opposed to after all other 3d shapes have been created), due to some quirks in blender shape/modifier hierarchies.
I’m also interested in expanding the possibilities in difference for each different body part, and for total amounts of body parts randomly, but only in rare cases, i.e. creating a figure that perhaps has 4 arms, or 1 leg, or 5 heads etc.

Credits: Shutout to blender’s stack exchange page

takos-lookingoutwards01

Irene Posch & Ebru Kurbak – The Embroidered Computer

The Embroidered Computer is a programmable 8-bit computer that’s made completely out of magnets, glass & metal beads, the cloth frame, and metal threads. It uses gold thread to create relays, and “Individual relays switch and consequently pass through signals to perform the calculation based on the instructions given.”

What I admire about this project is that the artist took more traditional fields of embroidery and quilting, and re purposed them as a way to create a simple computer. The fact that it is an 8-bit computer is also important because it highlights the history of computing as well as the simplicity (in contrast to modern cutting edge tech like multi GPU computers, etc)

There is not a lot of documentation of how this piece was physically created, but we have the schematics of the logic circuit, and so by necessity we can mostly assume that it was created by embroidering thread in the pattern of the schematic, following the outline and sewing the various pieces and attachments. There was a very specialized team involved in creating this piece.

This work seems to have been inspired by a history of wearable technology, interactive textiles, and embroidered circuitry such as the kind of stuff found on http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/

People involved in making the project: (quoted from link)

”

Irene Posch, Ebru Kurbak

Computer circuit design and simulation software: Matthias Mold
Generative routing: Raimund Krennmüller
Embroidery consultant: Susanne Frantal
Metal thread consultant: Sophie Fürnkranz
Crafting assistants: Pascale Ballieul, Abdulrahman Ghibeh, Ramona Hirt, Ngo Thi Dao Nha, Katta Spiel, Isabella Wöber, with special thanks to Eva Ganglbauer, Anna Masoner and Angela Posch
Video documentation: Ulrich A. Reiterer / UAR Media

Funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): AR 284-G21 in the Programme for Arts-based Research (PEEK).

”

takos-DrawingSoftware

My goal was to train a model to draw like I do (see sketchbook except below)

Input: I drew 1200 friends:

I wrote a quick p5 sketch that stores the data in 3stroke format, which keeps track of the difference in x & y of each point , and weather or not a specific point is the first point in a stroke or not.

I used SketchRNN, and trained my own model off of the drawings I did. This was the first result I got as output, and so far the only one with a distinguishable face

Other models as I’ve adjusted variables in the output:

takos-mask

My mask takes the form of a wearable array of devices that notifies you of the presence of other people either in front or behind your person, and forces you to be constantly aware of your environment

I hooked up two webcams and a set of earphones to my laptop; which the user carries around in my backpack. The user must wear a around their forehead to support the webcams, with one placed above their face and the other on the back of their head, as well as a set of headphones, all of which are attached to a laptop that is secured in back of the user.

The Webcams are both Logitech webcams, one from STUDIO, one is mine. The band is a re-purposed HRT sleep mask acquired at a job-fair like event. The laptop is mine. The backpack is mine.

Proof of function at very low framerate: