My project deals with how insecurities that are masked in the real world can be brought to life in the anonymous world or the internet. More specifically, I worked with the narrative of teenage girls who may appear in real-life as self-confident about their sexuality, but that really are scared and clueless on the inside.
It fascinated me to browse questions and answers on Yahoo! Answers. Therefore, I centered my project around this portal specifically. Using thermochromatic dye as a medium, I painted strips on panties, much like sensor bars, and with thread a similar color as the dye in it’s initial state, I embroidered individual questions. When worn, the dye reacts to the body’s temperature and changes color to baby blue, and the dark fuchsia thread creates a contrast with the new color, making the question now apparent.
Issues
Countless problems arose with this project. Firstly, the dye is quite old, which is why I got it for free. After running tests for weeks, I concluded that it could still be used, but for some reason it would never dry, even after intense drying and curing processes. Initially, I wanted to dye the entire panties in fuchsia, but the no-drying issue made it impossible, and I had to quickly change my tactic to only a strip of dye on each panties. Beforehand, I also tried silkscreening words unto the panties that are usually found on teenagers’ underwear, like “SEXY” or “CHERRY”, but, because of the texture of the dye, the letters were always bleeding unto the fabric and it looked sloppy. So I went back to making strips, although, even after 3 days of drying with heaters and fans, the whole thing never truly dried, and much of the color was lost.
Also, because of the age of the dye, it’s sensibility to heat and reaction time were greatly affected. I wanted people in class to be able to hold the panties in their hands and see the message appear, but it works far better if you put the panties under your armpit for a few seconds… which is quite weird and unrelated to the project.
Finally, the part that broke my heart the most about this project is that I couldn’t use it in the embroidery machine. The panties’ fabric was too stretchy, and because of their odd shape it was impossible to stretch the fabric well enough to put in the machine. Having faith in my embroidery skills, I decided to do everything hand made. This did not turn very well because the dye was still wet (which made the operation harder) and very stretchy, even through a hoop. Therefore, the embroidery is of very very poor quality.
My love story with Spambot.
This little robot breaths and shows emotions, like other “tamagotchi” like digital age creatures, except that Spambot has a few limitations that add to it’s personality: it can only survive if it is fed spam. We, the humans, cannot feed or interact with Spambot. Only his peers, the internet crawling spambots, can feed him and help him live. We therefore are faced with a loss of control of our technological surrounding, and a fear that Spambot might die.
This project embodies many of the themes I have been exploring this year; communications in a networked world, interaction and genetics. Unlike my previous projects, though, Spambot is not about bringing people closer together. The interaction with this project is on a different plane: You want to see Spambot live, but you cannot feed him, like you would do for a pet. You are powerless as to what his future is going to be and it is equally sad and fascinating to me. But this isn’t the only thing about Spambot that sets him apart from the crowd, the fact that he “feeds” off spam, and even posts what they are saying on his website, shows his disconnection from human interaction.
How it works
Physically, the bot is composed of recycled cardboard, LEDs, an Arduino, a continuous rotation motor, a hand-made custom gear and dental floss (yes). The body of the bot was made with origami techniques to give the movement a very smooth and organic feel, which contrasts with the motor, the Spambot involvement and all the programming facettes.
On the programming side, I’ve created an unprotected form online for spam to take the bait. Once values are submitted, my code first parses to determine if it is a spambot or a human, then, if all requirements are met, the date when the text was inputted and the message itself are added to a database. Then there is the index page, which only displays the database and project information, and the XML auto-refresh page, that calculates with dates whether the Spambot is dead or alive. That same page also, like the name implies, generates an xml file every 5 seconds with updated information from the server.
Then I used Processing to connect to the xml file, do a few calculations and then tell Arduino what to do. I use xml connection with Processing, instead of direct MySQL connection because it is much faster and simpler to do so. When Arduino receives the information from Processing, it calculates how bright the LEDs should be and if the motor should be running.
So here’s a simple example of the panties under high temperature. The fabric is still drenched after 3 days of drying so it doesn’t look very good yet. This goes to show that cheap cotton is not the best canvas for thermochromatic dye. Also, because the cotton absorbs a lot, making one pantie takes an immense quantity of dye, which I have limited quantities of. This means that I will not be able to make 5 of 6 pieces, but more like 2 or 3.
I’ve also tested to see how I can implement digital medias into the project. I’ve made tests with conductive thread, but I’m perplexed about the NEED to use this technology. It’s one thing to put sensors everywhere, it might look cool, but why are they used? I feel like I can embed in this project digital typography in a different way. One that will have a direct relationship with the project. One of the options I have been exploring is of using an industrial embroidery machine. I could take digital text and reproduce it on the fabric with fuchsia thread. When the panties will be worn, the thread will remain the same color, and the fabric will turn baby blue. This, to me, would be a much better approach to this project as the intimate qualities of embroidery would enhance the properties of project.
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.
For this project, I wanted to approach technologies and communications in a different manner than previously explored. At the beginning of this semester, I was already set on the idea of using thermochromic dye as a medium, and wanted to implement that material into my project. This made coming up with a concept quite difficult, since usually I come up with the concept and themes first, then come up with the technology needed. This experience, and restriction in material, was quite refreshing, though, because it made me think about all kinds of interactions, messages and presentations.
My project consists of multiple pieces of underwear, all the same color, on a table. People are encouraged to touch the pieces and play around with them, and they will notice things appearing when they touch the fabric. Ideally, the project would be presented in pictures. When the underwear is worn by models, the dye changes color to make the true message appear.
On the more conceptual side, my inspiration is taken from the Yahoo! Answers website. This site appeals to a wide variety of people who can anonymously ask the world questions of every sort. Therefore, it attracts many teenagers who are troubled with their sexuality. The messages that appear on the underwear to be questions from some of these individuals. Herearesomeexamplesofthequestionsaskedonthesite.
Thermochromic underwear has been around for quite some time now. Contrary to the pieces out there, my project investigates lack of communication, insecurity and misinformation at a young age. It also takes a look at the impact of the internet on youth; instead of asking the questions to people you trust, you are asking a large number of people for their opinion.
**UPDATE**
I have been testing the dye on paper with different ways to make the message appear/disappear. The technique I wanted to use was to use a fabric paint a similar color as the original dye, and to silkscreen on the underwear the messages. This might be hard because of the difficulties in making a paint color the exact same shade as the dye. So I am testing other possibilities but none are satisfactory.
I was also looking at the possibility of embroidering the message unto the underwear with thread the same color as the dye. The issue with this is that from close the thread will create a texture that will make it legible even if it is the same color as the dye.
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.
Spambot is an organism that can only survive if fed from other bots. When it receives spam, it feeds from it and survives, but when it goes a little while without attention from it’s internet brothers, it grows weak and might die.
With this project, I am using something that not a lot of people are very fond of: Spam. We are growing weary of those internet entities that fill our email boxes with poetic messages about nigerian wealth and cheap viagra. After all, spam is useless, and can be the “Cheval de Troi” that puts us in a lot of trouble. But what if bots were used for good? What if they could affect our physical world in a peaceful and pleasant way?
Spambot is somewhat of a satire of this gardening trend going around on the internet of late. People have been using physical computing methods to take care of plants or animals. I think the idea of feeding a plant via Twitter is as ridiculous as feeding a robot via spam.
How it works
The first part of this project was to create a clever trap for spam. Therefore, I created a simple webpage with a form to fool the bots at http://www.iheartpigeons.com/projects/spambot/manage.php where they can do their thing. Before inserting the submitted form to a database, it is first parsed to see whether or not it originates from a bot. This was made by querying the message string for links, as bots really like links, and returning a true or false statement.
Making my trap a cozy bot nest wasn’t that easy. I had to submit the webpage to multiple directories which was long and boring, but all worth the effort.
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.
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.
