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#me too voices

SVA IXD Physical Computing / Code Literacy Final Project Documentation Fall 2017

PROJECT TITLE #metoo voices

TEAM Glenda Capdeville, Paula Daneze, Kate Styer

SUMMARY #metoo voices is an interactive sound installation representing the Twitter #metoo movement.

CONCEPT In 2006, activist Tarana Burke  began the “Me Too” campaign to encourage “empowerment through empathy” in support of women of color, especially in underprivileged communities, who had experienced sexual harassment or assault. Burke believed that survivors could help each other heal by showing each other that they were not alone, that there were other people who had gone through it, too. 

In October 2017, on the social media platform Twitter, actress Alyssa Milano used the words “me too” as a hashtag in a tweet in a response to multiple women coming forward to share their experiences of sexual assault committed by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, and encouraged others to use the hashtag too. The hashtag exploded--it was used more than 1.7 million times within just a few days by users sharing their personal experiences with sexual assault. 

Using Twitter’s API, the installation counts how many times the hashtag #metoo has been tweeted or retweeted. When a participant says “Me too!” into the megaphone, the installation counts the number of instances of the hashtag in the last minute and plays recordings of people saying “Me too!” in that number.

#metoo voices creates a physical representation of the magnitude of the #metoo movement by transforming words on a screen into human voices. It also emulates the experience of sharing a painful story and knowing immediately that you are not alone. 

FUNCTIONALITY

#metoo voices is built with the following electronic components:

- Sound detection sensor module - Arduino  - Music Maker MP3 shield for Arduino - Meteor Javascript framework and node.js - Twitter API - Three 8 ohm speakers The sound detection sensor module reads the volume of sound from the megaphone when a user says “me too”, per a threshold set in our Arduino code. When that threshold is met, the value is sent to our javascript program, which is connected to Twitter’s API and tracking instances of the #metoo hashtag. When the value is received, the program counts how many times it has been used in the last minute, then sends that value back to Arduino. Arduino then plays pre-recorded files of anonymous voices saying “me too” in that value. 

Check out our code here.

PHOTOS

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FINAL PROJECT PROPOSAL OUTLINE

TEAM Glenda Capdeville, Kate Styer, Paula Daneze

OBJECTIVE Raise awareness about domestic violence against women in Brazil. 

CONCEPT In the slums of Recife, Brazil, women use whistles to notify each other when another woman is being abused. The woman in danger blows her whistle, then when other women nearby hear the sound, they blow their whistles in response to get attention from the police and ultimately stop the incident of violence.

Drawing inspiration from this, we will design an interactive experience in which users will blow a whistle, triggering a wave of differently timed whistle sounds and lights in response, mimicking how the women of Recife responded to the problem of domestic violence in their community. They found a way to connect, unite, and protect each other. They literally sounded an alarm in reaction to a criminal justice system that was not supporting them.

PHYSICAL COMPONENTS Arduino, sound sensor module, whistles, LEDs

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PROJECT 6: SERVO SALT & PEPPER

This week I experimented with a a servo motor. After doing a tutorial that connected it to an Arduino with a potentiometer, I liked being able to control the rotation direction of its attached blade. It reminded me of a cylindrical box of salt or a spice bottle, with the kind of lid you can switch between small holes, a large spout, or closed. I decided to make a salt and pepper “shaker” that held two internal, separate containers, one for salt and one for pepper. Using the potentiometer, you could control which container (salt or pepper) you wanted to pour from.

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MIDTERM FINAL PRODUCT: HOLD YOUR HEART

TEAM Glenda Capdeville, Kate Styer, Paula Daneze Del Castillo

CONCEPT Hold Your Heart is a hand-held tool with an accompanying desktop application that guides users through breathing-focused meditation exercises.

CONCEPT DEEP DIVE Hold Your Heart can be used in the moment, during an episode of high anxiety, or as a daily meditation training tool.

The user can choose between one- and three-minute voice-recorded meditation exercises, using a simple desktop application. Each exercise instructs the user to focus on the light inside the tool as it blinks, and to think of the light as their own heart.

Hold Your Heart was inspired by biofeedback therapy, a type of therapy that uses readings of heart rate or brain waves along with meditative exercises to help the user train themselves to calm their bodily systems on their own. The exercises in conjunction with the visual representation of their heart beat aims to help users strengthen the connection between their body and mind.

HOW IT WORKS The sphere-shaped tool has a pulse sensor, which detects the user’s heart beat. The user holds the tool in one or two hands, resting an index finger on the sensor. A light inside the tool blinks on and off with the user’s heart beat. While in use, our desktop application displays simple prompts for the user to choose their desired exercise duration (one or three minutes). After selecting their duration, the application plays a voice-recorded meditation exercise. It also displays the user’s BPM and a simple heart-shaped illustration, which gets larger and smaller with the BPM value. 

When the heart pumps blood through the body, it sends a pulse wave through the circulatory system and all the way to the capillary tissue in the fingertips, where sensor comes in contact with the users. The pulse wave causes changes in the light intensity of the green LED, which the sensor then detects as the user’s heart beat. If the amount of light on the sensor is consistent, the signal value will remain at about 512. If a value greater than 550 is detected, Arduino will count that as a beat, and turn the light in our tool on and off with each pulse wave felt. 

We adapted Arduino and Processing code written by the makers of Pulse Sensor Amped, which calculates both the the user’s Inter Beat Interval (IBI), or the time between each beat, and their Beats Per Minute (BPM). The BPM is found by taking an average of the previous 10 IBI times.

Arduino and Processing Code

WHAT WORKED We tried to keep the overall user experience as simple as possible, from the shape of the tool to the application. The light blinking with the user’s heartbeat was a straightforward and effective way of emphasizing the body-mind connection for the user. The addition of the voice-recorded meditation exercises (as opposed to text instructions displayed on the screen, advanced by the user pressing a key), helped to streamline the exercise for the user. The only action they have to take in our final iteration was to hold the ball and press ‘1’ or ‘3’ for their desired exercise duration.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK WELL As a team, we felt challenged by writing the code to make our program do what we wanted (none of us have much experience). This made it harder for us to think holistically about the experience, because a lot of our attention was on just figuring out how to make things work between the Arduino and Processing. We learned a lot, but felt like we weren’t able to think about the big picture until the last week, after we had the bulk of our application written and could think more clearly about the experience of using the product.

For instance, there were two main components to our project: the hand-held tool with the sensor, and the desktop application. Ultimately, these two components did not interact with each other very much; instead they functioned in parallel, and we struggled to find ways to tie them together. 

NEXT STEPS If we were to work on this more, we would improve on the shape and size of the hand-held object. We aim to create an object that fit the curvature of the fingers in a more natural way. Additionally, we would would work towards making the tool wireless using Bluetooth connectivity. Finally, we would consider more how effective the tool could be on its own, without the desktop application. One issue that came up towards the end of the project was whether computers are inherently too distracting for meditation, and would it be better for the user to close their eyes while doing the exercise, as opposed to looking at the screen.

[katestyer]

MIDTERM PROJECT: HOLD YOUR HEART

WHO WE ARE Glenda, Kate & Paula

CONCEPT Two weeks ago, our concept was an anxiety management tool, used by someone during a moment of high anxiety. A pulse sensor would read their heart rate and play a calming song along with a visualization of their heart rate. The music and visualization would work in tandem to help focus the user and ease their anxiety. In effect, the user would be able calm themselves with their own physical rhythms.

Our class raised concerns about the effectiveness of the music and visualization. Would merely listening to a song and watching your heart rate come to life on a computer screen really ease your anxiety?

So we switched gears. We dug a little bit deeper into biofeedback therapy, a type of therapy that uses readings of heart rate or brain waves along with meditative exercises to help the user train themselves to calm their bodily systems on their own.

We decided to create a tool that a user could use at home to practice using breathing exercises as a way to calm themselves during moments of high anxiety. The tool is an object held by the user that contains the sensor, and a program that displays their BPM through a responsive image and the actual numerical value.

PROCESS

We searched for an object that would be as close to universally comfortable to hold as possible. We also wanted something with a smooth surface that we could attach the sensor to, and that wouldn’t leave it feeling out of place. We settled on a globe shaped object, that fit the natural curvature of a relaxed hand. 

Next, we hooked up LEDs that would turn on and off with the user’s heart beat. Also, we found a soft, lavender colored paper to cover the globe.

CHALLENGES 

The most challenging part of this project for us was writing the code. We had a lot of ideas for how to make this tool make more sense, but felt limited when we couldn’t write the code to bring those ideas to life. For instance, rather than press  a key to advance to the next step of the breathing exercise, we wanted each step to advance on its own after five seconds or so. We also considered displaying a timer, to help the user keep track of the amount of time they should take to do each step. 

We initially wrote our code in p5, but switched to Processing for two reasons: 1.) we realized at this phase of our project, there was no need for the sensor data to be displayed in a web browser; 2.) the code we started from had been written in Processing, and we were worried about running into too many obstacles trying to translate it to p5, which doesn’t have nearly has much debugging documentation available on the web as Processing. 

CODE

We started with Arduino and Processing code written by World Famous Electronics, which calculated BPM. We then adapted it for a our project, removing code for the Processing graph visualization and other visual attributes.  

Here’s our code (Processing and Arduino).

[katestyer]

MIDTERM PROJECT PROPOSAL: Anxiety Management Tool

WHO WE ARE Glenda, Kate and Paula

CONCEPT The Anxiety Management Tool will help users calm themselves in moments of high anxiety.

The anxious user holds the tool, their index finger applied at a specific place where the sensor is positioned. The sensor reads their heart rate, then plays a calming song. The user can also watch their pulse come down by watching a visualization of their heart rate on their computer screen.

The music and visualization work in tandem to help focus the user and ease their anxiety. In effect, the user is calming themselves with their own physical rhythms.

INPUT / OUTPUT The pulse sensor is an analog input, because it reads fluctuating voltage. The sensor responds to light intensity from the green LED reflecting off spikes of blood (from your heartbeat) under your skin. 

Our outputs, the song and visualization, are digital.

MATERIALS

Pulse sensor

Holding object, such as a ball, globe, or other rounded object that fits well in an average sized hand

Project box to disguise Arduino; or perhaps the holding object will contain the Arduino

SKETCHES

INITIAL EXPERIMENTS

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PROJECT 4: COLOR MIXING TOY + SERIAL COMMUNICATION

This week we moved ahead with our color-mixing toy, using serial communication between our Arduino, computer and web browser to mimic the color mixing results we saw created with the RGB and pushbuttons last week. 

Before writing our program in P5.js, we wanted to simplify our Arduino code from last week. This was challenging for all of us but we eventually found a way. [insert code]. When we looked at the code in the Arduino serial monitor, it was behaving erratically, running 10′s and 11′s, when we only had three outputs. We abandoned the code, thinking there was something we were missing, and moved ahead learning P5.js. Hours later, we discovered that dust must have been interrupting the connection between our USB plug and computer--Paula simply blew on the blog, inserted it again and ran the code, and everything was fine. 

When we abandoned our color-mixing toy code, convinced we were doing something wrong, as mentioned above, we decided to simplify our approach, and hooked up one LED with two push buttons, on and off. 

Next, we slowly wrote our P5.js code, with help from Physical Computing TA, Alex (THANKS, ALEX!!!)

Finally, we wrote a simple program, with our original color-mixing toy in mind: one button turns the screen blue, the other turns the screen red, both turn the screen blue with a circle (just experimenting).

After nearly 8 hours at this, we were about to call it a night, when Paula cleared the port on her laptop of dust, and we were FINALLY able to get the revised color-mixing toy running smoothly. With our new (yet still limited) understanding of P5.js, we wrote our program to mimic our toy’s behavior in a browser:

[katestyer]

COOL PROJECT: REFLECTING STARS

Reflecting Stars was an interactive public installation at Pier 49 on the Hudson River in New York, on view August 30 - October 25, 2009. 

With over 200 wirelessly-controlled, solar-powered LED lights attached to decaying pier posts, it’s goal was to raise awareness about light pollution.

On shore, visitors could press buttons that sent a radio signal to the LEDs, telling them to brighten a series of lights to simulate star constellations otherwise not be visible in the night sky. In addition, as the tide rose and fell, lights appeared to be twinkling.

Each pier leg consisted of eight LEDs with four white and four blue lights, a small battery, and an integrated solar panel.

Lights were set in marine sealant and pipe casings that would rust and decay with the wood of the pier posts, They stayed on display as long as the LEDs lasted, about two months. 

[katestyer]

PROJECT 3: COLOR-MIXING TOY

For this week’s project, I joined forces with my classmates, Paula and Glenda. We decided to work with the RGB LED, and to work towards a toy that teaches children about color mixing. 

I needed some practice with pushbuttons, so I hooked up this button using this tutorial by Jeff Fedderson. 

Next, working from the Arduino kit guide’s instructions on creating a 7-color loop with the RGB LED, we were able to configure the LED with pushbuttons to mix colors based on buttons pressed.

When the user presses the red-colored button, the LED turns red. When they press the green colored button, the LED turns green. When they press the blue colored button, it turns blue. Then, when they press the red and blue colored buttons together, it turns magenta; the blue and green colored buttons, cyan; the green and red colored buttons, yellow; finally, when they press all three buttons at once, the LED loops through all colors and turns off. 

Then, we went to Michaels. 

No seriously, we have a plan. 

Halloween-themed color-mixing toy:

BOO!

We mounted the arduino and breadboard inside a box, and the LED and buttons poked through the lid. We used a ghost-shaped shade to cover the LED.

At first, we wanted to include an on/off switch for the entire toy, but we had some trouble making the buttons respond to the code in the ways that we wanted, then later even MORE trouble attempting to assemble the arduino, LED and buttons inside the box. The on/off switch (as well as more than one LED, which is another story), may have to wait until next week.

[katestyer]

PROJECT 2: HOMEMADE SWITCH ENHANCEMENT

Part 1 - Schematic from Week 1 

Part 2 - Bra with potentiometer 

Part 3 - Bra with potentiometer + Arduino

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PROJECT 1: HOMEMADE SWITCH / bra = hacked

Approach

I was most drawn to the directive in the assignment to “hack into stuff.” I really liked the idea of “hacking” into physical objects, rather than computers. The first object that came to mind was my bra. 

Process

I started with some sketches of my bra, placing the LEDs on the outside of the bra, where a woman’s nipples would be. I also knew that I wanted the clasp to serve as the switch. At first I wanted to use the hook-and-eyes already built into the bra as part of the switch, but they turned out to be bad conductors. I thought of using button clasps as an alternative and they worked much better.  

First bra-hack sketches. Thanks to Glenda for help with closing the loop!

Finding out if hook-and-eyes were good conductors. The answer is no. 

Button clasps were much better!

Playing with ways to attach the clasps to the batteries and wires.

First time closing the loop/lights on!

bra = hacked

demonstration