Main Idea

One of the most-discussed ideas so far is a choker-sensor. The sensor is embedded in a choker accessory so that it rests snugly around the user’s vocal cords.

Our main concerns for this are:
1) The many wires connecting the sensor to the Arduino. We might have to put the Arduino in a pocket close to the neck. A wireless Arduino board was also considered, but is unavailable as of yet.

2) The sensor would need to be very sensitive, yet durable. The sensor’s purpose is to detect vibrations from the wearer’s throat, and change the flow of the Arduino’s numerical output accordingly. The sensor would have to be able to detect small scale to large scale vibrations, and also be able to keep all the wires intact.

If this idea does not work, we have thought of making a wristband instead, so it can detect the flexing of the wrist muscles (although I do hope this idea is feasible).

Here is a (very) rough diagram of how it would be placed:

Week 2: Progress and Setbacks

Last week, the class was split into two groups, and sent, according to their last name’s first letter, to either learn ASCII and MAX/MSP first or be introduced to the Arduino board.

The first hour and a half of the class I spent going over some new functions in MAX/MSP. Much of said time was spent trying to decode the new functions and how the program detecting four sensors might break down -the answer had to do with confusion in output numbers. My main issue in this lab was decoding the ASCII number outputs: I found these quite tricky unless you actually knew (roughly) which number stood for which keyboard input. Functions that were helpful for ASCII were the “atoi” and “itoa” functions, allowing the user to convert from ASCII to integer and integer to ASCII, respectively. List functions also seemed especially helpful, such as the “prepend set” function (which put selective outputs into a message box), the “group” function (which stored objects in a list).

The second half of the class, I spent tinkering with the Arduino. I’d never even seen one before, much less touched one, but thus far, its capabilities sounded more impressive than the Teleo’s had ever been. After partnering up with Stephen, we started following instructions for creating the sensor when the laptop (and consequently the Arduino program) failed (never a good sign). We spent much of the rest of the class trying to put the sensor together and getting the laptop to respond; we didn’t manage to connect things properly, however, and decided to meet later to put things together.

When we met this week, we managed to get the sensor working, so that was a relief. We’re still throwing ideas out there regarding Assignment 1, and I’ll be posting some of them along with some schematics.

Meanwhile, here are some images of our Arduino, its connections and progress:

Embodiment + two examples

Embodiment is the assigning of the human consciousness/mind (a “soul”, in Descartes’ view) to, in context of this class, technology (a “body”). This includes capabilities of human perception: sense of place, identity, knowing where your limbs/organs are (proprioception), etc. Embodiment also extends to reflecting human emotion: in the “Kismet” example, people saw their emotions in a robot that was simply programmed to move its “facial features” in certain ways.

Two examples of embodiment presented in class that I thought were really introspective were Tim Hawkinson’s “Emoter” and Rebecca Horn’s “Measure Box”. In Hawkinson’s project, the “Emoter” piece is similar to the” Kismet” project. Mechanical parts move Photoshopped images of his facial features in accordance to luminosity of a TV screen. Thus, the effect is some bizarre and improbable human “emotion” that the viewer could easily identify with. The second piece, Horn’s “Measure Box”, gave an insight into just how much volume the human body takes up in the world, something many people would not think about. Long prongs set up around a rectangular frame would just slightly touch the human body, leaving a negative space imprint of the person’s form.