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Everything Everywhere
In this text, the writer looks at issues concerning microcomputers in our environment. Some of the difficulties concerning this deployment of sensors are due to the nature of technologies; the material is expensive, and it necessitates a wide array of professionals to get the project running.

It is fascinating how large networks of microcomputers could be formed to retrieve data from our surrounding. This could bring a better understanding of nature and could also help us save it. A basic example is Pister with his light monitoring system in factories, office buildings and homes. Even if the project was created for lucrative purposes, the factory (for example) can monitor it’s electrical intake and adjust it, which saves the environment by using less electricity. Pister also brought up a good point by saying that after creating commercial work, the scientific world can pick up on the technology and use it for it’s own needs. It made me think of how the Internet was once a military funded project that today is used by a wide variety of professionals. It is easy to foresee that technology like sensors will evolve to be of greater use to scientists, just like how the internet became something of a much greater impact then initially intended.

The Internet Of Things
This text starts by looking at two contrasting future cities where cameras would be omnipresent. In one city, cameras are implemented everywhere, and every image would be in the control of a secret police. It is a city of terror, much like the panopticon by Foucault, or 1984 by Orwell. The other city also has cameras in every corner, but the images are available to everyone, and not only the property of a secret police. It is a community built on trust instead of fear. The contrast was effective, using the same technologies that scare most people, one can see the future as positive and full of hope.

In a more modern approach to things, since we now know that cameras are not that effective for crime fighting, the author suggests for the City Of Control identifying all objects and humans with RFID tags. That way everything, from your groceries to the people you frequent could be identified and monitored by the authorities. In the City Of Trust, the same technology could be used differently. For example, if you forget your laptop on the train, you could locate it again and retrieve it. Since all objects would be tagged, no one would dare steal it and would much rather return it to its owner.

The need for there to be a plan, or a blueprint as to what our cities are going to become in an era of technologies is of dire importance, but not enough are thinking ahead. Many tracking technologies already exist; companies already track what their consumers buy and camera systems are already in place. But it is for us to fight the future “of control” and to make a future “of trust” for ourselves and our children.

In the last few days I’ve been dedicating most of my time on research for this project. A few worries that I have addressed in the past few days are:

Will it be meaningful for people that are going through depression or loneliness?
To answer to these questions I met with Ilya Razykov, student in clinical psychology at McGill. We went through a few issues concerning confinement and communication with individuals facing hard times.

Our conversation made clear that the piece should:
- not be used as a replacement for communication, but as an “aid” that can help ease physical confinement.
- have functions that are triggered randomly, like smiling and inflating, so that if no one sends commands the owner would not feel abandoned.
- have a more direct physical bonding attribute.

To answer to the last issue I thought about making the piece double as a pillow. The creature could have a “sleep” mode where it keeps inflated and a soft blue light could follow the breathing of the owner of it’s sister creature.

Physical attributes and design
Now that things were a bit more clear as to what the creature should do, I started thinking of the design aspects. Since the creature would double as a pillow, a simple round design is preferable, but I would still like the creature to have some design detail to it. I have been fascinated for the past few weeks with deployable structures, and how they move in an organic and seamless way (like mimosas), it would also make an appealing design choice for an inflatable structure. The issue with this design is that the edges are a tad hard, and would make it less of a pillow. Some tests are needed.

I also researched inflatable structures. It is crazy how many project use this technology, but how little documentation is available on the internet about it. Most projects say they use air pumps which is very interesting because it can create pressure (good for hugging and sleeping) but is a very costly alternative to a computer fan. I found very useful information from the Rabbit Field creator on his personal blog. He explains in detail his technique used for his project which resembles mine in a few aspects. The only issue I have is that I am not crazy for the sound plastic makes when inflating and deflating. Non-rip nylon would be a fantastic alternative, but it will probably not keep air in when used as a pillow. Therefore I will have to run some tests tomorrow with different types of fabric and plastics to see what is the best possibility.

For this project, I am proposing a simple tool that can help people with difficulties with communication. More precisely, my aim is to close the gap between people facing depression, loneliness and sadness.

This project comes from personal experience. In the past few months people very close to me have been hospitalized for depression, suicidal attempts and overdose. This has been an eye opening experience for me, as I now try my best to remain present for my friends, even when they lock themselves in their rooms for days and refuse to see anyone.

I also see this as a communication device for people dealing with long distance relationships. Ideally, tihs project can help individuals relieve stress, deal with depression, sadness, longing, etc.

Opposed to my previous project, this work is focussed on human interaction, it is a cultural work that, hopefully, can make a positive impact on individuals. I am aware of many similar projects, but I feel very strongly for this topic, and so I hope that I can make something meaningful that is not a replica of other works. Also, most of the physical computing projects that try to help with loneliness and depression use AI technologies. My project is about breaking the distance and making communication more seamless between people.

Features of my project:

- Made with Felt for softness
- Blows and lights up when someone “thinks of you”
– When someone puts an object on a plate
– Hug will be blowing up and lighting pink
– Blue lights will be I miss you
– Purple lights
- Lights up to “communicate with you”
– Randomly blows up and lights up to cheer you up
- Facial expressions?
- SMS/EMAIL communication
- RFID objects?

Basically, it will be a felt “creature” that can blow up like a balloon, light up and present expressions. On the go, you can send an SMS/email to a specific email address. The creature at home or at the office will blow up and light up. It will be happy that someone is thinking of you, and when it will be blown up it will be nice and soft to hug. You can also, at home, send specific messages to the creature. You can ask that it lights pink, for example, to signify that you love the person. You can also make it light blue, to signify that you miss the person.

This project would work so that one doesn’t need to have a cellphone, Skype or to check their email or social networking site every 10 seconds to be sent encouraging messages instantly. Other projects also try to use AI to give intelligence to others, while the main component of my project is interaction between people. To me, this tool will be helpful as instead of writing “hug” or “love” as a sms everyday to my friend, I can make my others know that I miss them, love them and think of them in a physical way.

Inspirations
http://www.skaal.no/index.php
http://www.activeage.org/files/lonelinessdp.pdf
http://beatbots.net/
http://www.cutecircuit.com/products/wearables/thehugshirt/
http://chalmersphyscomp09.wordpress.com/2009/10/17/huggable-lily/

Famirds is a project consisting of 3 birds made out of felt that follow basic rules of survival.

[ The box under the birds is a project of Vadim Kratchenmachin and is not part of my project, aside from the fact that the data of the offsprings was sent to it as part of the network ]

Here is a video (bad quality, sorry) of the project in action. At the end, because there are only female birds the generation dies.

Birdies from Claudine Lamothe on Vimeo.

First Rule : Gender
Like all living creatures, Famirds have genders. Since this project was centered around networking, these values are determined by simple mathematics using the values received from the Serial Port of the Arduino. If the value received is an odd number, the Famird will be male (XY), if the value received is an even number, the Famird will be female. In other words, if the value datum1 received is 3, then bird number 1 will be male, if the value datum2 received is 6, then bird number two will be female.

If there is at least one male and one female present in the “flock”, then there can be offsprings. If not, then the birds are unable to reproduce and will die.

Also, female Famirds can be identified physically by the presence of yellow in their color pattern.

Second Rule : Dominant and Recessive Attributes
If the birds are able to reproduce, then the offsprings will have some of the attributes of their parents. This is demonstrated with the colors of the birds. Famirds are red and blue (and yellow if female), but these two colors are not always in the same intensity. Ergo, a Famirds color can be purple, pink, blue, red, sky blue, etc. Once a new generation of Famirds is born, these new offsprings take the attributes of their parents, mixed with some randomly generated values, to then pass it again to their children. Henceforth, if a red Famird reproduces with a blue Famird, the offspring will most likely be a shade of purple. More precisely, 4/6th of the offsprings’ color pattern is determined by it’s parent’s color pattern, while 2/6th is taken from a randomly generated value that adds “personality” to the new generations.

In a closed network, the birds would show clear signs of dominant and recessive color patterns, but in a networked system, I decided that since the adults’ color was determined by the values received through the Serial Port, the babies’ values should be repackaged and sent to the next project. This transformed the values, sending them again to the Arduino modified. In a poetic way, we could say that that was the “voyage” birds have to accomplish before becoming adults.

Research Process
I’ve always wanted to work with felt but never really had the opportunity to do so. When sketching for ideas for this project, I had made a joke to a friend saying that I should make chickens that would have babies. After reflecting on the idea, I decided to go for that concept but to instead use birds. I started by making the bird and egg pattern, cutting the felt and sewing it. I then did some prototypes with Arduino and some L.E.Ds, and got the project to work so that if there was at least one female bird and one male bird, an egg would light up. It was only really late the night before the submitting date that I had the idea to make them genetically “evolve”. Everything was there and all I needed was to change the programming so that the offsprings would take part of the “genetic code” of the parents and make new generations of birds.

Conclusion
This project started very humble, and grew to be something far greater. Even if it is a quite simple physical computing project, it is the first project that I have made in this class that made me truly inspired. I really liked working with the felt, and the way it diffuses L.E.Ds is quite pleasing to the eye. It is also a very nice fabric for it’s texture, robust and “easy to sew” attributes. To boot, I love pigeons (hence the name I Heart Pigeons for my personal site), so these birds were a lot of fun to make.

I am also very happy with the simplicity of the result. At first I was unsatisfied with only making L.E.Ds light – as we are always compelled to add sensors, motors and other fancy instruments to our projects – but as the project unfolded it was really fascinating to see what happened to the birds. Which color would dominate in the end? Would they die because they lacked female or male counterparts? Would equilibrium thrive because of the individuality factor of each new generation?

Given more time, I would have liked to make the bird pattern a bit better. Some people though they looked more like fish then birds. Also, the work would have been more physically pleasing if I had done the sewing by machine, instead of by hand. Additionally, I would have liked to place the birds on a tree branch or some sort of perch. This would have been very practical to dissimulate the wires. Ideally, I would have create a million of these birds and made the code more complex to find exactly who would be the parent of given offsprings, but for the benefit of my sanity, only three were created.

I was a tad disappointed that the values fed back to my board were almost all even numbers during my presentation as it would have been far more fun to see the project similar to what it was during my closed network tests. Overall, thought, I am really happy with the end result.

Veritex

“Shape-memory composites are made with resins whose qualities have been altered to give them dynamic properties. Under thermal stimuli, shape-memory polymers exhibit a radical change from a rigid polymer to a very elastic state then back to a rigid state again.”

Spent a lot of time and energy with my teammates making this project.

***CAUTION: Contains explicit materials.

Sorry if the quality of the video is bad. I had to use my cellphone to capture the footage. Real video coming soon.

Moulin à vent from Claudine Lamothe on Vimeo.

[ Server Source ]

The initial idea for this project was the create a weather vein but that concept did not allow as much interaction with the piece as I had wanted, so, instead, I created a windmill. Other aspects changed from the original idea to the present one too, I realized along the way that aluminum foil is highly conductive, so I replaced the idea of the key in the center for aluminum foil running down the “wings” of the windmill. Aluminum foil is very thin and blended itself very well to the project, on an aesthetic and a practical point of view.

I started by taking regular paper and cutting it into a square shape, and then I spray glued wrapping paper on the outside layer for design purposes. Once it was dry I made cuts until close to the middle, I took two diagonal connected quarters and spray glued some aluminum foil on the inside layer for conductivity. Afterward, I curled the tips together, and inserted a nail to hold everything down the center.

Then I nailed the piece to the wall and connected all the alligator clips and L.E.D to the wall. Everything is held vertically with nails and clothespins. I put two nails on the side of the windmill, and clipped wires to it: since nails are conductive, if the windmill “wings” don’t come in contact with the alligator clips then they will connect with the nails. Since the windmill with glide over the “wings”, I added some aluminum foil to the outside of the wings to improve connectivity. Once everything was set up and plugged, all that was needed to do was blow into the windmill and watch the L.E.D blink.

The effects are exactly what I had planned them to be, even if it was hard to make it work perfectly. The L.E.D blinks using a natural and physical delay, instead of a programming one, which is very interesting as an analog technique. If I could improve anything I’d like to make the project stand-alone so I could go outside and run with it, using the wind instead of a fan to power the windmill.

I’ve learned a lot doing this project, though, first harsh lesson was the fact that my alligator clips weren’t soldered properly and connectivity was bad. I also learned that Dollarama batteries aren’t a reliable source of energy (all batteries I bought there were already dead) which is why my project is powered by arduino instead of batteries.

These are the materials used for the project: regular paper, wrapping paper, scissors, spray glue, aluminum foil, L.E.Ds, nails, clothes pins and alligator clips.

For the switch project I came up with multiple ideas. One of them was to get a domino set made out of metal that would work as a switch once they would fall down and connect to the L.E.D. I also thought about using a zipper that would conduct electricity once it is up, but alas, this idea has been used many times before. An other idea of mine was to use collision as a switch, by taking two conductive objects and making them collide, but, unfortunately, I found someone doing that exact same thing in the MAKE Blog (with miniature cars).

My last idea was the one I liked the most: I will create a switch that is powered by wind. It will be in the shape of a “girouette”, and part of it will be constructed with a conductive object, a key for example. If the wind is blowing in the correct direction, the conductive element and the wires will meet to make the L.E.D light up.

I like the idea of using wind to power my switch, and the “girouette” is a great way to harvest that energy. I remember how we used to make these when I was in grade school and how fun it was to run around with them. In that situation, I presume that the L.E.D will blink a lot because of the different directions you take while running. It also is interesting to let the “girouette” on it’s own and to let a natural element (the wind) choose whether the L.E.D will light or not.

I found two materials that I find would be very interesting to work with. The first one is “Smash”, a “specialized long-fiber non-woven polyester” that can be blown into shapes.

It’s a new product so this is the only project I have found using the technology. I find it very inspiring and would love to create a piece using it.

The second is a re-purposed material: felt usually used for sport center floors.

I love the rigid and soft features of the material, and it is interesting how it can be bent into shapes.