theodorasresearchjournal-blog

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Physical Computing Final Project Reflection and Further Development

Creating this interactive painting was definitely a useful exercise for my future art practice! I have been wanting to tap into working with addressable light systems for a long time now and I think that working towards the prototypes and final product definitely gave me a much better idea of how I can use certain parts to create certain effects - particularly working with the electroluminescent wire and Neopixels has already given rise to many ideas for further development and I already have sketches laid out for a few more pieces exploring light and movement in the field of painting. I think there is a lot of possibility of using Arduino and addressable LEDs or El Wires to create more complex, visually compelling installations and this is something I will definitely be pursuing in my own art practice.

All in all, I think this was a good experiment for expanding into the field of light installations and I have definitely learned a lot - I do intend to keep working in order to create more polished and visually complex light systems; right now, I am experimenting with using the same light strips used in the centre of the piece in conjuncture with various diffusing materials, to see how I could better suggest smooth, organic movement; this experimentation might go towards my final piece next term. 

Here is a video of my further development at the moment, where I am trying the same diffusing material used for light boxes with the LED strips in order to see what light effects I can achieve:

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Research Project Final Artefact Reflection

After having written my essay and compiled all of my research, I sat down to really think through how I would approach applying the material covered to actually making an artefact. My initial idea was to produce a VR environment using the Tiltbrush software for the HTC Vive in order to illustrate some of my findings in relation to sublime experience and cyberspace.

However, after going through the research process, my plans started to expand - in relation to referencing the sublime, I felt like the research was giving way to a much larger experiential space than I had originally planned. I decided to thus focus on outlining a concrete plan for a larger project that would culminate with the creation of several virtual spaces that would have the potential to elicit or reveal the contemporary idea of the sublime, rather than quickly create a small-scale piece that would be relatively rushed and not accurately fit with my findings.

I set about the create the following plans for my VR environments:

Using 3D-created forms and custom software, I plan to create a series of large-scale, monolith-like installations within virtual space that the viewer would be transported into through the use of a headset. The artefact takes the form of these initial “construction plans” for the larger artwork series. I am currently experimenting with altering the Tiltbrush code in order to make it fit my needs but am also exploring Unity VR and other ways of creating a virtual environment from the ground up in order to create a well-rounded experience - custom software would allow for me to implement motion and control the entirety of the environment, as opposed to the limited control in Tiltbrush which only allows for some features to be altered.

The sublime has been a theme of exploration in my art practice for quite a while now and through undertaking this project I feel like I have a more informed perspective on the notion as well as a grounded perspective in relation to how I am particularly approaching and interpreting this concept. This idea of creating a series of cyber-environments to illustrate contemporary encounters of the sublime is something I plan to expand into a larger artwork project and work on in order to achieve a series of polished immersive environments which may then be exhibited or shown in an artistic context. In this sense, this research project has been paramount to rounding up my findings and formulating a new approach to the sublime, as well as laying the foundation for this larger-scale art project which will see through the creation of immersive VR spaces that could facilitate transcendental experience.

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Final Circuit, Schematics + Code

This is sort of a two-part schematic; the first image indicates the connections made to the Arduino itself, outside of the pins used by the shield. The second schematic shows the shield and the respective parts being driven by it. This is due to the nearly non-existent documentation for the Escudo in terms of parts file that could be added to Fritzing. The official schematic offered by Sparkfun seems to detail the individual parts of the board rather than the shield itself as a standalone object (it can be accessed via the link here: https://cdn.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Components/EL/EL_Escudo_Dos/EL%20Escudo%20Dos%20v21.pdf). In light of not being able to implement the actual part, I edited the one photo they offer as guidance for hooking up the shield to fit my own circuit:

I also could not manage to find parts for the screw terminal to DC power adapter and DC power supply anywhere. Essentially, the Neopixels are powered exactly as recommended in the Adafruit official guide, using the same parts:

Circuit overview: 

The gesture and distance sensors are connected to the Arduino via SCL and SDA; this was an ideal setup as the El Escudo shield needs to make use of all the digital pins on the Arduino. They are externally powered with 5V via a 4xAA battery pack. The Neopixel strip is driven from pin A3 and connected to an external 5V supply. The shield itself drives 6 strands of El Wire and makes use of a 12V inverter 

PARTS: 6 x El Wire strands, 12V inverter, El Escudo Dos Shield, Side Light Neopixel Strip, DC Power Supply, Screw Terminal to DC adapter, 1000uF Capacitor, 470ohm resistor, Adafruit VL53L0X time of flight distance sensor, Adafruit APDS9960 gesture, proximity and RGB sensor, 12V power supply. 

Code overview:

The code makes use of switch cases - each case is a different animation effect or a different level of how lit the painting might be (dependent on the sensor, the values either trigger the painting to gradually light up or trigger more complex, dynamic visuals). The values received by the distance sensor make the wire strands light up one by one according to how close the distance recorded is to it through the use of if statements. The code also links the animation sequences to the gesture values recorded by the gesture sensor (up, down , left and right each trigger their own light effect).

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Final Project Design and Fabrication Process

I started out by creating a sort-of fluid, organic-like shape that would fit with my sketches and design page in Cinema 4D and then importing it into Tinkercad and slicing to the desired height: 

Once it was printed, I used a ruler to trace where its outline would be on the board used as the painting support: 

From there onwards, I proceeded to paint the main shape in a uniform matt black colour and add a concrete-like texture effect to the outside of it, using acrylic paste and different substances to thicken the paint, such as marble dust. Here is the a picture of the piece before I started adding the wire: 

Once the support was finalised, I traced where the outline of the shape would fall once again and marked a path for each el wire strand. I then proceeded to glue the wires to the painting using a glue gun - this was a step that posed many unexpected problems, as the nozzle of the glue gun was much wider than the wire itself, making the glueing process very difficult and messy.

 I am not too pleased with how polished the areas around the wires came out looking and although it is not noticeable when viewing the piece in semi-darkness, I am looking into ways of sanding or perhaps even cutting the excess glue away in order to have a more polished final product. 

Attaching the Neopixel strip also came with its own problems: I used half of a side light strip for their extra flexibility and left them in their waterproof case thinking it might be easier to glue that way, as they are quite thin on their own; the plastic, however, did not react to hot glue or silicone glue and only stuck to a significant amount of super glue that required holding the strip in place for over an hour so that that the glue would be dry enough to keep it in place by itself, a process that took unexpectedly long; after about 6 hours drying time, they were finally well-attached. Here is an image of the planning for how the strip is fitted inside the 3D-printed case prior to the actual glueing (a 100-LED strip is used here; I realised I did not need that much for my project as the area was quite small and even though I wanted high brightness, half of it would be enough. the rest will be repurposed in a different project):

After each strand of wire was glued to the surface of the painting, I drilled holes into the surface of the panel in order to hide the cables behind the painting. Holes were also drilled in the bottom beam of the panel frame to ease making the connection and avoid pressure on the wires by having the weight of the painting on them when pulled out from underneath. 

In between the glueing, drilling and cable routing the lights were tested using alligator clips and a simple circuit that ran through all of them. Despite the connections I soldered being protected with heat shrink tubing, some of them still got damaged in the process and needed repair, and a few wires had frayed and nearly broke and required soldering. I found it was best to keep testing after each new action that altered the electrical elements.

After finalising the setup, one last check was done to ensure that all parts were working as they should. I then used a “dummy circuit” (6 small pieces of scrap el wire to replace the ones used in the painting and the small Neopixel strip given to us in class) to create and fine-tune the animations to the sensor and make sure everything was working. I then moved the connections to the actual light systems in the painting and made sure that everything was working to plan. The last thing to be added was a thick paper overlay for the 3D shape in order to diffuse the Neopixel’s light. Paper was chosen due to its flexibility as a material, as I am still trying to devise a method that would allow me to cover the 3D model with a more solid diffusing material but still let me access the neopixel strip if any connections need troubleshooting or resoldering (I would need to use something other than glue, perhaps screws or a latch system).

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Research Project Reflection

After considering all of the research I have gone through in the past two weeks or so, I have started to move in the direction of formulating my ideas. In my previous reflection I mentioned the uncertainty I felt in regards to which perspective to follow or adopt in terms of the sublime - over the past week I have been mulling over one of the guidelines mentioned for the artefact, namely “what does it add to the current debate?”, which has been quite a pressure point for me until now, perhaps due to the multitude of opinions and thinkers approaching the sublime differently. I have decided to focus on this question and, instead of simply grounding my project in someone else’s perspective on what the sublime is or how it is to be encountered, to draw on the research I have been gathering and propose a new way in which to look at and interpret the sublime today. Based on my findings in regards to the status of this concept today, I will propose the idea of the “fragmented sublime” as a lens through which the sublime can be viewed, and perhaps better understood in the contemporary context, whilst also outlining three of its most evident qualities that transpire from the research: fluidity, temporality and subjectivity.

By offering a new perspective on the sublime that directly deals with its fragmented existence in today’s conceptual and artistic contexts, I aim to offer an alternative to rigid, one-sided definitions of the sublime and look at it within a flexible framework, as a notion that needs to be mapped rather than constrained through excessive delimitations. Building on the same research, I further aim to discuss manifestations of the contemporary sublime in connection to cyberspace and the potential of encountering transcendental experience through the use of technological means, a methodology with which I aim to ultimately experiment through the artefact emerging from the research.

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Notes on the Virtual / Real Divide

Jean Baudrillard => “through reproduction from one medium into another the real becomes volatile, it becomes the allegory of death, but it also draws strength from its own destruction, becoming the real for its own sake, a fetishism of the lost object which is no longer the object of representation, but the ecstasy of the degeneration and its own ritual extermination: the hyperreal” (Symbolic Exchange and Death)

Merge Invisible Layers John Beckman

VR environments emerge as the inevitable extension of our screen-driven selves

No longer content to experience the idea of nothingness, we now want to inhabit it directly

A rite of passage => Hakim Bey - “a temporary autonomous zone”

Paul Virilio => “cyberspace is an accident of the real”

“Space”, “Being” and Other Fictions in the Domain of the Virtual Frances Dyson

Heidegger => dual essence, human/technology

Cyberspace as a mode of being

The act of being as an attribute to new forms of media

William Gibson => cyberspace = consensual hallucination

Space - immersion, habitation, phenomenal plenitude, unmediated presence

The recent proliferation of “non-spaces” => immerse the user in a self-conscious form of ritual

“liquid entity”, freed from the bounds of the autonomous subject

Cyberspace => an “other” space to enact the deconstructed self

“as if you are there” becomes “you are there”

Heidegger => “enframing” => the reduction of matter to quantifiable, measurable and predictable terms

Sight is the dominant sense in Western thinking

“the individual becomes the centre of its world, always looking outward with its gaze - god-like - scanning, naming and colonising the universe”

In VR, subjectivity is collapsed into a single point of view

Michael Benedikt => “the principle of indifference” => the felt realness of any world depends on the degree of its indifference to the individual

Cyberspace must produce a voyager

Virtual humans don’t just enter cyberspace, they become cyberspace

The individual and the technology mirror each other

The organising metaphors that make virtual environments places to be are about the future, about transcendence to a technosublime, about disembodiment, about the fiction of pure mind, omnipotence, omnipresence

The Medieval Return to Cyberspace Margaret Wertheim

Kevin Kelly => “I have experienced soul data through silicon”

Cyberspace as a realm for the soul

Gilbert Ryle => “ghost in the machine”

Cyberspace brings the historical wheel of dualist mind/matter philosophies full circle and returns us to an almost medieval position

Changing Space: Virtual Reality as an Arena of Embodied Being Char Davies

‘OSMOSE’ (1994-95)

VR => shift in mental awareness through altered states of consciousness

Gaston Bachelard “The Poetics of Space”

Perceptual “free-fall”

Virtual utopias as a side-effect of expansionist technologies

Heidegger => “techne” - revealing into presence

Hypersurfaces: Socius Fluxus Stephen Perella

the virtual has begun to fold back onto itself in a process of duplication and generation of a complex, mutant socius

Guattari => “chaosmosis”

The concrete realisation of Hegel’s Absolute Spirit

A postindustrialized infrastructure that operates as a place of immanence

Simulation is the height of a debased culture

The topologies of human agency are being re-configured

Emergent forms of representation are unfolding

“This condition may be best understood as surrealism imbedded within the everyday”

The Hypersurface

The Desire to Be Wired Dareth Branwyn

Brenda Laurel => in the world of total immersion authorship is no longer the transmission of experience, but rather the construction of utterly personal experiences

The romantic allure of the cyborg

The emerging techno-mythology of morphing the human body to the demands and opportunities of a post-human age

The fantasy of disembodiment

The desire to be wired as Faustian bargain

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Physical Computing Final Project // Updated Design Page

Here is version 2.0 of the design page, detailing the final piece:

A full resolution, high quality image is available at:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ty8cujpzgrrt2qe/FinalDesignPage.jpg?dl=0

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Physical Computing Final Project // Final Work Plan

Conceptual Research

Although I have already posted my research into audience interaction and light art, I realised that I forgot to expand on the conceptual basis of the actual subject of the piece. Inspired by Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the piece seeks to explore the politics of the real and the increasing intervention of the virtual into our everyday lives. In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”, Plato presents the reader with an allegorical tale in which an individual finds it difficult to discern between appearance and reality, as often times what is presented to individuals may in fact be an illusion.

In a similar manner, this painting aims to create an illusory space, the play on light being a contemporary re-interpretation of the shadows in the cave. Coincidental with the situation of the prisoners, the audience is presented with fleeting images of an alternate space, depending on their interaction with the sensor - what they choose to believe or what they interpret the image as is up to them. This idea of simulation, of playing with perception and depth, aims to turn the age-old Myth of the Cave on its head; by using digital, computationally-controlled light as a symbolic manifestation of the virtual, alongside traditional painting techniques, it aims to offer a dynamic visual representation of how the ‘virtual’ and the ‘real’ overlap today, whilst at the same time playing with spatial configuration and perception.

Sketch:

The visual approach to creating this piece is informed by the Myth of the Cave reinterpreted in a contemporary approach - I aim to create a visual “black hole”-like shape, encased in a surface with a finish similar to concrete or other building materials, a reference to the mass industrialisation of today’s world and humanity’s ever-increasing need for expansion and mechanisation of environments; the shape contains the strands of neon wire, arranged in a decreasing fashion to reference a spatial approach similar to a tunnel. The centre of the artwork is dominated by the 3D printed sculptural object, which emanates light sequences.

Post-prototypes planning

After careful consideration and taking into account the outcomes of the prototypes I made, I created a final work plan for building the piece over the course of weeks 9 and 10. The most successful prototype was that which made use of the electroluminescent wires, so the interactive painting will primarily rely on those as the main light system. As per the following image, the placement of the neon wires will create the sense of a tunnel-like structure, the strands lighting one by one in accordance to the distance sensor and flashes will be triggered at minimum distance - this would constitute my MVP; however, due to the prototype involving a Neopixel ring encase in a 3D-printed structure being so successful, I aim to incorporate a similar idea in order to further develop and build on the MVP; thus, I will be aiming to create a 3D-printed structure at the centre of the shape created by the wires, that will light up and ultimately become animated in accordance to the same ultrasonic distance sensor. This will be subject to whether I can run a neopixel strip off of an analogue pin (as the shield I am using to drive the wires needs all digital pins on the Arduino), but from my current research it should be an achievable outcome.

-even though I used a Neopixel ring for the prototype, I have acquired a Neopixel side-light strip in order to be able to create a more abstract shape, whilst also having flexibility - I found that with regular strips it is very easy to bend them forwards and backwards but nearly impossible to form a curve unless it is extremely large; the side-light allows for the strip to be bent in pretty much any way with ease.

Final technical details:

Size: 60x80 cm (painting board )

Parts required: Arduino, 7x el wire (different shades of white and blue - max 15m combined), El Escudo Dos driver, 12V inverter, 12V + 5V wall adapter, female DC power adapter, JST PH connectors, Neopixel Side Light Strip, 1000uf capacitor, 470ohm resistor

Other materials: acrylic paint, texturising medium, gloss varnish, acrylic modelling paste to fill in holes if drilling will be required for the cables, frosted acrylic sheet

3D printed enclosure for the light strip, laser cut top to diffuse the light

A process post will follow up on the fabrication of the piece, as well as detailing the final circuit.  

Work plan:

Week 9:

build on MVP and finish final circuit

incorporate pixel strip in circuit

test the distance sensor in different settings + fine tuning

print 3D enclosure

laser cut the diffusing top for the 3D shape

prepare the board, paint the sides and shape

Week 10:

final circuit test to check that everything is working to plan

attach the neon wires, pixel strip, 3D enclosure to board

final circuit test once everything is attached to the board to make sure the joining process did not damage anything

documentation of the functioning piece (blog posts on process, final circuit + video of working piece)

blog post

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Physical Computing Final Project // Prototypes

In order to examine my options for creating a “light painting”, I decided to experiment with three different ways in which I could create a dynamic visual display using addressable LEDs and custom enclosures, servo motors to generate movement and finally, electroluminescent wire.

Here is a sketch of the three little prototypes I planned to make:

Prototype 1

This prototype is meant to be an experiment with the ways in which I could generate light patterns and the illusion of movement by using a Neopixel LED ring and a 3D-printed enclosure with different kinds of openings on the sides.

3D model used:

-it was created out of a basic cylinder shape, which was then hollowed out and various other basic shapes used to create openings

Assemblage:

- I started by affixing the ring to a small board and then gluing the enclosure on top. Due to LEDs being so strong in terms of brightness, I used a piece of white felt cut to size to diffuse the light. Final product photo:

Video of working prototype:

- the flashes are due to my changing of the exposure settings on my phone - filming the prototype in darkness conditions has proved very tricky due to the motion of the lights; I have already made a note to source a more powerful camera for documenting the final project.

Video of prototype + diffusion material overlay:

Adding a layer of diffusing material (in this case felt) on the top of the prototype proved to work wonders in terms of how the light was distributed - the interplay between colours was much more apparent! This is definitely something I will be keeping in mind for the final project! In addition to this, felt was quite a volatile material to work with; using frosted perspex or some other type of material that can diffuse light but is rigid would be a better option.

Prototype 2

For the second prototype, I printed a 3D part that would allow me to affix an 8-LED Neopixel stick orientated towards the ground to the arm of a servo, in order to create a “sweeping light” kind of effect:

The aim was to see what kind of light effect could be achieved; I also painted a few random lines using light-reactive pigments, to see how they would react to the light washing over them.

Assemblage:

-the servo sits at the top of the board, allowing the LED stick to sweep from one side to the other.

Video of working prototype: 

- although the motion and interchange between darkness and light effect was achieved, the experiment to use light-reactive painting in conjuncture with this contraption seems to have not been as successful; my opinion is that the high brightness of the Neopixels and the colour change override the effects of the paint - however, there is a chance that the paint was not luminous enough - this is something I would definitely be interested in experimenting with further.

Prototype 3:

For the third prototype, I decided to use electroluminescent wire to create a changing display. I wanted to test the bending limit of the wire as well as what would work best to fix it to a surface and whether glue or other bonding materials would affect the proper working of it. 

I started by preparing and soldering the wires to fit the Arduino shield I am using to run them, then glueing them to a small board: 

- the wires responded to glueing very well, both super glue and hot gun glue did not affect their functioning. 

Picture of lit wires in the dark:

I then experimented with interchanging the wires and managed to achieve strobing and a somewhat animated effect: 

Here is a video of the prototype in semi-darkness:

And here is a video of it in complete darkness + first experiments with strobing and animating it:

- I thought this experiment did a very good job of creating a sort of “painted line” using light and it could be definitely used to create an interactive visual piece; at the same time, I think it’s a very versatile material and could have applications in larger-scale installations, perhaps spatial ones.

Conclusion

To put it all in a nutshell, after having experimented with these three possibilities, I have decided to definitely base my project around the electroluminescent wire in relation to the sensor. It was, in my opinion, a very malleable material that I could use in a multitude of different ways - the way in which it can bend to almost any shape desired and gives off a gentle light (Neopixel strips and rings would need some sort of extra diffusing material to not be jarring when looking directly at them) makes it ideal to work with; the thinness of it, as well, would allow for more complex uses. However, I also thought prototype no. 1 was quite successful, especially when the LED ring had the diffusing material on top - I am currently thinking of using Neopixels in combination with the neon wire, due to their higher brightness level - a shape overlay could be used, made out of frosted or diffusing material, to create interesting “light objects”. As for prototype no. 2, I thought it was the least successful of all - although I really entertained the idea of using kinetic lights, I feel like motors in combination with addressable lights is a topic that’s quite sufficient in itself, and one that I would be definitely interested in exploring down the line; however, for this project, I feel like using any other light system in combination with the motors would be ‘too much’ and as one of my aims is to create dynamic, yet harmonious visuals, this idea will be shelved for now. 

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Research Project Surgery +Reflection

Research Projects Exercise 1

What existing work already exists in your field of research?

The topic of ‘the sublime’ has been around since the times of Ancient Greek thought, and it has been revisited numerous times throughout history - partly, in my view, because of the definition of the sublime changes as the nature of the times it is thought about in changes in itself. Therefore, there is quite a wide base of philosophers, thinkers and artists to choose from - for this project in particular, I aim to focus on contemporary perspectives regarding the notion of the sublime, particularly in the context of techno culture and in the virtual/real divide, particularities which themselves bring in new areas of research.

What are the shapes that are normally made in this research?

A lot of the research I have encountered in terms of the sublime seems to focus exclusively on defining it and debating its existence, whether the author is for or agains the belief that the sublime is “real” (or as real as an abstract feeling can be).

What are the shapes that you might make?

I am not particularly interested in offering a new definition of the sublime, but rather I aim to focus on investigating it from the perspective of technoculture - examining the way in which technology may or may not be able to aid humanity in reaching the sublime and what the consequences of that might be. Although I will pay attention to the ever-changing definitions of the sublime, my primary aim is to explore how such a definition situates itself in the wider landscape of opposing forces between the physical and the digital today, in an attempt to reveal and bring attention to computation as not just a functional sum of processes, but one that can also elevate and perhaps transcend.

Research Projects Exercise 2

What are the "pain points" so far in your research project?

There is quite limited research in terms of the digital or technological sublime - so far I have a few books and papers, but quite little material in terms of these two concepts investigated together, particularly within an artistic context (most material deals with technology and the sublime in the fields of politics, economics, communication).

How can you address these or investigate them further?

In order to investigate further, I will be separating the two concepts; I will look at “the sublime” as a stand-alone general concept as well as from contemporary artistic perspectives, and approach thinkers discussing the virtual/real divide in order to see what parallels can be made. I think this would be a good way to expand my research whilst accumulating material that is relevant to the theme.

Reflection

So far, I have been immersed in researching contemporary perspectives regarding the idea of the “sublime” and its potential relationship with technology. Vincent Mosco’s book on the digital sublime has been particularly helpful, as well as a few scholarly articles found online - although the research material is quite limited, I have expanded to looking at these two ideas separately and seeing what parallels could be made, or perhaps revealed. 

I became very interested in the idea that the sublime, myth and cyberspace are intertwined, and I am currently reading around virtuality and ideas of “liminality” or “in-between space”. 

As I will be attempting to use cyberspace as my literal medium for the creation of the artefact, I am trying to amass as much information on this topic as possible in order to decide how to approach the artefact. My main concern right now is related to my readings on certain thinkers that argue that the sublime is an instance of subjective experience - in this sense, my main focus right now, after having amassed all the research, is planning the artefact and finding a way in which to express or reference the sublime (what I mean by this is how does one influence subjective experience?). I a sense, it is a matter of not knowing which philosophical perspective to adopt: some argue that technology is the only way to achieve the sublime, others that the sublime is so subjective it can go unnoticed for most while others revel in it’s magnitude; others further argue that the sublime is a fleeting, random moment that cannot be controlled, whereas there is research on the idea that it can be referenced directly through an artwork or creating a particular setting. I guess, to an extent, this uneasiness is related to the doubts generated by having so many discrepancies in the definitions of the sublime currently circulating.

Having finalised my notes and my research, I plan to take a few days and disseminate all the information - perhaps those aforementioned discrepancies will take centre stage in my search for referencing the sublime. In terms of time management and project planning, I am currently on schedule with the plan outlined in my proposal - it is week 8 and I am finished with the research (or the vast majority of it); next week I plan to commence work on the artefact and the essay, in order to finalise everything in a timely fashion. A further post detailing plans for the artefact will be made next week.

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Further Notes on the Digital Sublime // Cyberspace, Myth and the End of History

Chapters from  The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power, and Cyberspace by Vincent Mosco

Myth and Cyberspace

Today, we are witnessing the early turbulent days of a revolution as significant as any other in human history. A new medium of human communications is emerging, one that may prove to surpass all previous revolutions—the printing press, the telephone, the television, the computer—in its impact on our economic and social life.

Focusing on myths about technology, it [this book] suggests that by understanding the myths that animated the spread of earlier technologies, such as electrification, broadcasting, and telecommunications systems, we can deepen our under- standing of cyberspace.

Such a revolution achieves its real power when it leaves mythology and enter banality

It is particularly important to view the computer with one eye on mythology today because the technology, in spite of early boom-and-bust cycles, is still in a strong mythic phase.

Lanham argues that we must transform our conception of language in general, because all the old ways of thinking, writing, arguing, and valuing change with the epochal transformation we popularly know as the information society.

it is useful to avoid technomania, which shouts “It’s gonna change every- thing. It’s gonna be here next Thursday. Watch out or you’ll be left behind.”

embodied physicality = the unrecognised sibling of the more popular notion of virtual reality.

virtual reality has more purchase on our mythic consciousness

myth seen as a captivating fiction, a promise unfulfilled and perhaps unfulfillable

David Nye => the “technological sublime” = a literal eruption of feeling that briefly overwhelms reason only to be re-contained by it

Edmund Burke => the sublime so fills the mind with its object that it cannot entertain any other or apply reason to it

Nye and James Carey => “electrical sublime.” Transcendent virtues were associated with the telegraph, the telephone, and radio. Today, as science and religion are increasingly intertwined in what one author calls “sci/religion,” we encounter some- thing like “the scientific sublime”

Today, cyberspace has become the latest icon of the technological and electronic sublime, praised for its epochal and transcendent characteristics and demonised for the depth of the evil it can conjure.

A myth is alive if it continues to give meaning to human life, if it continues to represent some important part of the collective mentality of a given age, and if it continues to render socially and intellectually tol- erable what would otherwise be experienced as incoherence.

The Internet provides the basis for a powerful myth because it goes a long way toward satisfying these characteristics. It is a story about how ever smaller, faster, cheaper, and better computer and communication technologies help to realize, with little effort, those seemingly impossible dreams of democracy and community with practically no pressure on the natural environment.

Cyberspace is not just the space in which myths are enacted; it also con- tributes to mythic thinking today, because it embodies the sense of betwixt and between (or, more formally, what cultural theorists call liminality).

But there is also another side to liminality: the sense of power and possibility that comes with the release from cus- tom and the loosening of traditional ties.

Today’s grand narra- tives tell a similar story as they move heaven and earth (as well as hell) to inspire us, terrify us, and incorporate us into a new Chain of Being in Cyberspace (Wertheim 1999)

the myth encourages us to ignore history because cyberspace is genuinely something new, indeed, the product of a rupture in history, the Information Age.

According to myth, the Information Age transcends politics because it makes power available to everyone and in great abundance.

In Being Digital (1995) he argues for the benefits of dig- its (what computer communication produces and distributes) over atoms (us and the material world) and contends that the new digital technolo- gies are creating a fundamentally new world that we must accommodate.

=> defies history and admits of no alternative

-“Like a force of nature, the digital age cannot be denied or stopped.”

the myths of cyberspace => two versions: myth as a distortion and myth as an attractive vision or template of perception

Aristotle described metaphor as “the transport to one thing of a name which designates another.” In fact, we are begin- ning to see the transport of the computer metaphor on a spectacularly grand scale as a model of the universe.

Six prominent metaphors populate the language of cyberspace today:

the digital library (instant access to information)

the information highway (cyberspace as transmission belt)

electronic commerce (boundless marketplace)

virtual community (genuine social experience)

digital ecology (“the Internet grows on its own like an ecosystem”)

narrative stream (David Gelernter => a story that describes the history, the present needs, and the future requirements of each specific user)

These metaphors offer useful visions of how to think about cyberspace but are less than myths because they lack the transcendent and moral force of mythology.

Cyberspace and the End of History

time plays an especially prominent role for modern societies => Mircea Eliade

there are few more powerful challenges to what passes for common sense in the contemporary world than the view that there is no fundamental difference between the ancient and contemporary mind.

Latour - we have never been modern

Lévi-Strauss’s equally challenging conclusion - we have always been modern

Myth is not a gloss on reality; it embodies its own reality. These views are especially difficult for people to swallow as the chorus grows for the view that we are entering a new age, a time so significant that it merits the conclusion that we have entered “the end of history”

the rise of computer communication marks another departure, the creation of a new time, the Computer Age (or Information Age, etc.), and a new (virtual) space we call Cyberspace

The end of history is, of course, not about the end of events, nor is it about the apocalypse. Rather, it means that all the fundamental transformations in ways of thinking and acting that marked the great shifts in history are over.

Erik Davis’s Techgnosis is particularly interesting because it is a whole- sale attempt to argue that mystical impulses, at least as much as scientific ones, propel the West’s infatuation with technology, especially communication technology.

McLuhan => electronic media would create “the universality of consciousness foreseen by Dante when he predicted that men would continue as not more than broken frag- ments until they were unified into an inclusive consciousness.”

Nicholas Negroponte => the end of the world of atoms => a coming age in which we all must learn to “be digital”

=> contrary to all the enthusiasm for the digital world, the technology “is already beginning to be taken for granted. . . . Like air and drinking water, being digital will be noticed only by its absence, not its presence.”

Negroponte re-launches his mission by identifying five fundamental changes that the world beyond digital will experience because of computer communication. And they all turn out to be variations on familiar myths of cyberspace including the ability to completely control our time. History will no longer oppress us with its ceaseless march. We will control it as we control resources like air and water today.

The world of physical things and the world of cyberspace will provide a growing cornucopia of individual pleasure and satisfaction.

At the beginning of The Age of Spiritual Machines he announces what amounts to the end of death as we know it.

the “I” will reside in a software file, that is itself part of the interconnected software system of the planet and eventually the universe.

The thorny questions arising from all the limitations that make us human were once addressed by myths that featured gods, goddesses, and the variety of beings and rituals that for many provided satisfactory answers. Today, it is the spiritual machines and their world of cyberspace that hold out the hope of overcoming life’s limitations.

Silverstone => “our high-technology world is essentially a magical one. By whatever mechanism, the boundary between reality and fantasy is constantly being transgressed.”

Frank Tipler => envisions the universe as a computer. “As it eventually collapses upon itself in the final space-time singularity, the universe creates infinite energy and there- fore infinite computer power capable of simulating precisely the entire historical universe, thereby permitting the resurrection of all minds and bodies that have every lived”. Unlike Teilhard, Tipler is not a religious man, but like the French priest, he calls this the Omega Point.

Since history provides no precedent, it offers no value for understanding cyberspace. The end of history means the end of history’s value. But it also means the end of history as the period before this transformative development made everything differ- ent. The end of history means the end of time as we used to know it and the beginning of a new time—the computer age. History, the rough and tumble analog narrative of bodies, classes, and power gives way to a new digital beginning. Or does it?

[theodorasresearchjournal-blog]

Physical Computing Final Project // MVP

For my minimum viable product, I wanted to achieve linking some sort of spatial input from the audience to the neon wires, so that the viewer could interact with the light display and ultimately generate different imagery based on their interaction with the sensor. 

In order to achieve this, I initially experimented with a standard ultrasonic sensor, but found the values recorded by it to be quite jittery and the output with the light system was not as smooth as I would like it to be. I therefore decided to experiment with other options as well and looked into using the Adafruit APDS9960 Sensor to link my display to proximity and gestures.

For creating the lighting systems, I used 4 pieces of El Wire in conjuncture with the El Escudo Dos, a shield for the Arduino which allows for up to 8 strands of electroluminescent wire to be driven.

Here is a video of the light strands lighting up in accordance to proximity values:

And here is a video of the wires responding to gestures:

-left to right triggers and animated display, whilst right to left makes the wires light up but remain static

Circuitry:

- I am not sure why, but Tumblr refuses to save my post when I add the image of my circuit. A high quality photo of the circuit used in the above videos can be found at:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/z30cum0d89rkceh/MVP_Circuit.jpg?dl=0

- parts: proximity and gesture sensor, electroluminescent wire, 3V inverter, El Escudo Dos shield

Conclusion

I am quite pleased with how the MVP turned out - the final product will essentially be a more elaborate version of this, running more strands of wire at greater lengths; it will also hopefully make use of another light system. The Adafruit sensor was definitely more accurate than the standard ultrasonic one I initially experimented with and allowed for smooth transitions according to the right proximity values.

The gesture feature was more of a test, but I really liked the effect and would like to implement such a feature, perhaps in conjuncture with strobing or a more dynamic approach to the wire - I have encountered a few problems when trying to run both the proximity and gesture features on the same sensors (they override eachother and only one functions in the end); due to this, my current plan is to implement either an extra time-of-flight sensor, or to fine-tune my ultrasonic distance one and have both gesture and distance as interaction - this additional feature will, of course, be time-permitting, but I feel strongly at this point that it is an extra implementation I could manage.

Below I have added my notes on working with these materials, as well as useful links for quick reference for further down the line:

The Adafruit APDS9960 Proximity, Light, RGB, and Gesture Sensor

- a little breakout that offers quite a lot of possibilities in terms of interaction; I was very attracted to the idea of implementing gestural interaction into my piece as well.

- has an integrated IR LED and driver + four directional photodiodes that sense reflected IR energy from the LED

- four IR sensors means that it can measure the changes in light reflectance at each of the cardinal locations over time and turn those changes into gestures

- can detect directional gestures (left to right, right to left, up to down, down to up)

- a guide I found very useful for understanding how to make full use of its capabilities (particularly its use of I2C):

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-apds9960-breakout/pinouts

Notes on working with the El Wire

Overview

EL Wire, also known as Electroluminescent wire, is a stiff wire core coated with phosphor and then covered with a protective PVC sheath. When an AC signal is applied to it, it glows a blueish green colour. For it to appear another colour, it is covered in coloured plastic in order to achieve the effect. It is very bendable, keeps its shape and you can pretty much make any shape with it. Its not as bright as LEDs, but glows similarly to neon in a semi-dark environment - and uses a lot less power. To turn on, EL wire needs roughly 90-120 volts of alternating current from an EL wire driver. 

Here is a short FAQ from the Adafruit website which I found extremely useful:

EL is 'cold' - the wires generate no heat!

EL wire requires a driver/inverter that can provide 400-2000 Hz, 60-120VAC (that's RMS not peak-to-peak!)

Higher frequency/voltage results in a brighter wire

Running the wire brighter will lead to a reduced lifetime (how many hours it takes until its half-brightness)

Our high-brightness/long-life EL wire can be driven at 100V/2000Hz for 3000 hours before it is half the original brightness

EL wire is capacitive, and cannot be PWM'ed or easily dimmed (unless you can adjust the voltage/frequency of the inverter)

The more wire you connect to an inverter, the more 'loaded' it is and the dimmer it will be

Our AA pocket driver can drive about 2.5 meters before it starts dimming significantly. 2 meters is a good amount, 3 is OK but wont be as bright.

If you 'split' and connect more than one piece of EL to an inverter, count the total length of all the pieces

The AA inverter works best with fresh batteries, but you can use rechargables - it'll just be dimmer because the input voltage is lower.

The capacitance 'load' of the EL is required to stabilize the inverter so never run the inverter without at least 1 foot of EL attached!

Understanding how to work with the El Wire was a bit tricky in the beginning - for example, the standard JST 2-pin connectors they come fitted with need to be replaced with mini JST PH connectors in order to be able to link them to the board - the wiring of the El Wire itself was quite confusing at first; I could not figure out the polarity of the wires, until I read all the documentation on it and realised that, due to it being AC powered, I did not actually need to worry about polarity. 

I also practiced cutting the wire to specific lengths (which I will be needing for the final piece); this meant I needed to solder to it directly, a process that can be quite tricky. El Wire is made of three wires, one large middle wire and two very thin corona wires, which are wrapped around the core. These two sets of wires are the leads.

I found Adafruit’s tutorial on soldering to El Wire extremely useful:

https://learn.adafruit.com/el-wire/soldering-to-el-wire

+ Some useful overviews on working with the El Wire in general:

https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/404

http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=2992

https://makezine.com/2010/04/27/programming-el-wire-fashion/

One piece of El Wire requires an inverter and a relay to be driven via Arduino. Wanting to create a display that involves at least 6 pieces of wire, I turned towards Sparkfun’s El Escudo Dos board, an Arduino shield created for controlling up to eight strands of El Wire.  The El Escudo Dos contains circuitry to safely switch high-voltage AC on and off.  It also requires an inverter (either 3V or 12V, depending on the total length of wire it needs to run).

These guides were essential for understanding what the components on the board do and how they all work together, as well as provided valuable information on how to select the appropriate inverter: 

https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/el-sequencerescudo-dos-hookup-guide

https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/353

https://github.com/sparkfun/EL_Escudo_Dos/tree/V_2.1

http://www.digitalmisery.com/projects/halloween/el-ladder/

[theodorasresearchjournal-blog]

Physical Computing Final Project // Conceptual Research

Here are my notes and relevant extracts from the conceptual research supporting the final project for this term - they range from light art to audience interaction and hybrid approaches to art and technology.

Light Art, Perception, and Sensation Tim Edensor

illumination is always more than representational

light glows and radiates, it transcends the cognitive and moves into the non-rep- resentational, the realm of the affective and sensual.

James Gibson, for instance, contends that we never see light itself, but rather the effects it has on the surfaces and textures in the landscape: color, shade, and luminosity. For Gibson, the manifold textures of the land are speci ed by the agency of light while the sky is light refract- ed by innumerable particles in the atmosphere.

However, as Tim Ingold (2015) notes, this is to foreground the external effects of light as if it is an agency beyond our perception. As he contends, there can be “no experience of light without the incidence of radiant energy, or without the excitation of photoreceptors in the retina, but as a quality of affect – of what it feels like to inhabit an illuminated world – light is reducible to neither” (Ingold 2015).

As in all cases of seeing, light “gets inside and saturates our consciousness to the extent that it is constitutive of our own capacity to see or feel”

In seeing light in a focused form, not typically, as it tints and tinctures the object, we acknowledge the centrality of light to perception and thus to our perception of the object, in which light reflects, is absorbed, deflects, and refracts off the textures of the earth and its multiple features.

The object is continuously animated by the changing light that falls upon it and would be indiscernible by sight without it.

Colors cannot exist independently but as Beveridge states, “are relational, rather than intrinsic”;

In designing events such as this, Tino Sehgal is guided by an anti-materialistic ethos, moving away from the display of art objects and toward human interaction, creating “constructed situations.”

Constance Classen has written that we see in particu- lar cultural, social and historical contexts: “we not only think about our senses, we think through them” (Classen 1993: 9), according to norms which prescribe what is sensually desirable and accept- able, for “sensory values not only frame a culture’s experience, they express its ideals, its hopes and its fears.”

Who’s Afraid of the Audience? – Digital and Post-Digital Perspectives on Aesthetics

it is impossible to essentially pin down a specific work of art as something that exists as one clear-cut object/phenomenon/process/action/relation ready for ‘pure’ interpretation and analyse

The digital perspective’s notion of aesthetics (3 main categories):

cross-disciplinarity

“…challenges the borders between traditional institutions and disciplines, and, hence, does not seem to distinguish between, for instance, ‘art’ in a strictly institutional sense, ‘aesthetic artefacts’ in a broader sense, and ‘cultural artefacts’ insofar as, overall, these terms are used more or less synonymously to describe new experiments or practices that make use of digital technology.”

=> the cross-disciplinary practice allowed by the incorporation of digital technologies in traditional art methodologies is a crucial aspect in the wider discussion surrounding art created using technological means

technological essentialism

“digital technology and media are the elements that fixate the meaning of a digital perspective – or constitute it – whereas art and aesthetics do not play central roles. Therefore, when art or aesthetics are considered from a digital perspective these concepts are subsumed – along with other cultural/social/political modes of expression – under the primacy of digital technology and not as governing concepts in themselves.”

=> the digital technology aspect overrides those of art&aesthetics

!!! Interesting perspective on the role of the audience in the art dissemination process:

“the subject position of the audience seems to be neglected in the digital research discourse insofar as audience experiences are assumed in aesthetic analyses to be identical to the artist’s intention, curatorial/critical framing, or theoretical accounts of technical characteristics and potentials of new art types. Considered from the digital perspective, if the use of a specific technology in a work of art is considered to have interactive, or critical, or alienating potentials it is more or less automatically assumed that the audience/users’ experiences correspond to those potentials without paying much attention to the fact that different contexts and subject positions invite different aesthetic considerations.”

=> the audience’s experience is directly related to the potentials of the technologies used rather than the intention of the artist

artistic creation

"A digital perspective, as well as a post-digital one, both relate to the former understanding of aesthetics. But as suggested, a digital perspective does so from the point of view of a poetics of technology more than from a point of view of aesthetic experience in a Kantian sense.”

=> should the classic discourse of aesthetics be replaced by a new discourse focused solely on the field of digital technology?

“The problem with this replacement is that aesthetics, then, becomes certain properties of a work instead of being a philosophical perspective applied to a work (and its technical properties). In this sense, aesthetic research within a digital perspective is governed by techno-essentialist focus, which is both unavoidable and important when exploring the poetics of new digital technologies or media in their emergence. It is, however, important to acknowledge that this is a matter of poetics, which limits aesthetics experience to the subject position of the creator and leaves out an audience.”

On post-digital aesthetics:

“a post-digital perspective takes a post-technological and post-media point of departure. The post-digital perspective is not anti-technological or pre-digital, since it does not seeks a romantic return to a stage before new technologies and media entered the realm of art. On the contrary, a post-digital perspective on art can be considered a sub-category of a more general post-media discourse (see Quaranta) in the sense that it fully acknowledges the ubiquitous presence of digital technology in art and the fact that new media and technology may facilitate or prompt aesthetics experience.”

“how do we elaborate on the fact that the same work of art potentially gives rise to different kinds of aesthetic experiences depending on which subject positions (artist, curator/critic, user, audience) engage with the work and in what manners (as intended by someone else or not)?”

On users and audiences:

“in the realm of so-called interactive art, the overall audience subject position is often divided in two, since – as lucidly accounted for by Dominic Lopes – in interactive art we may distinguish between the ‘user’ (who explores a work by generating displays in a prescribed manner) and the ‘audience’ (who explore a work by watching users generate displays by interacting with a work).”

“Exploring a work, one physical person may (at different times) hold the different subject positions of both user and audience.”

a discrepancy is highlighted between the user and audience, identifying the user as the one actually interacting with the work and the audience as the witnesses of this process of interaction - this is an interesting concept to think about in the wider landscape of how an interactive artwork is received and the way in which it can generate aesthetic experience

‘glitches’ in aesthetics experience

many of the objects, designs, events, phenomena, hacks, etc. considered in a digital perspective have tremendous potential for prompting aesthetic experience due to the institutional and cultural ambiguity they (still) possess

a post-digital perspective allows us to acknowledge the subject positions of an audience when we conduct aesthetic research and analysis.

Some Ontology of Interactive Art Dominic Preston

Lopes offers his account of interactivity in art: ‘a work of art is interactive just in case it prescribes that the actions of its users help generate its display.

-  MULTIPLE DISPLAYS: The first concern with Lopes’ account of interactive art is an ambiguity between the two possible senses in which an artwork’s display might vary, namely between cases where a display varies over time, and cases where a display varies because there are multiple, varied instances of it. Lopes himself acknowledges this ambiguity, but I believe it extends further than he considers. He accounts for it by distinguishing between repeat- able and non-repeatable works of art.

For non-repeatable works, display variation doesn’t come through repeating multiple versions. It comes instead through variation in the succession of states that make up the one event.

Does the artwork (in itself, as concept) posses all of the properties of its display?

Contemporary Art and New Media: Toward a Hybrid Discourse? Edward A. Shanken

New media not only offers expanded possibilities for art but offers valuable insights into the aesthetic applications and social implications of science and technology. At its best, it does so in a meta-critical way. In other words, it deploys technology in a manner that self- reflexively demonstrates how new media is deeply imbricated in modes of knowledge production, perception, and interaction, and is thus inextricable from corresponding epistemological and ontological transformations.

At the core of Relational Aesthetics is the claim that, “... artistic practice is now focused upon the sphere of inter-human relations.... So the artist sets his sights more and more clearly on the relations that his work will create among his public, and on the invention of models of sociability.”

This concept is restated and elaborated in various ways, for example:

"this generation of artists considers inter-subjectivity and interaction .... as the main informers of their activity. The space where their works are displayed is altogether the space of interaction, the space of openness that ushers in all dialogue.... What they produce are relational space-time elements, inter-human experiences trying to rid themselves of the straitjacket of the ideology of mass communications, ... places where alternate forms of sociability, critical models and moments of constructed conviviality are worked out.” (Bourriaud, p. 44. My emphases)

Part of the hurdle to the mainstream acceptance of New Media Art is the difficulty that audiences have in seeing the everyday appliances and vernaculars of computing, including computers and their peripherals, such as operating systems, applications, websites, monitors, and drives, as aesthetic objects. Similar difficulties were faced by the visual banality of conceptual art, the ephemerality and objectless-ness of performance art, and the remote contexts of earth art, yet these tendencies managed to overcome their hurdles, in part by the clever marketing of saleable objects by dealers, a practice that, as is the case with net.art, can be interpreted as antithetical to the conceptual underpinnings of the work.

Technological media may offer precisely the tools needed to reflect on the profound ways in which that very technology is deeply embedded in modes of knowledge production, perception, and interaction, and is thus inextricable from corresponding epistemological and ontological transformations.

[theodorasresearchjournal-blog]

Notes On Contemporary Perspectives Regarding the Sublime

To give a sense of the reading that I am doing and the thinkers that I am looking at in preparation for writing my paper, I’m attaching my notes on some readings I have done to better understand contemporary thinking in regards to the sublime - I have previously studied the work of ‘old’ thinkers on this theme, raging from Longinus to Kant and Burke, but for this project I am interested in researching contemporary perspectives on what the sublime is in today’s context.

‘Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’ Fredric Jameson

camp or hysterical sublime

Today it might be possible to think of the sublime in a different way due to the radical eclipse of Nature itself (see Heidegger) => ‘the other’ of our society is no longer nature

Our own period as the Third Machine Age

=> a re-introduction of the problem of aesthetic representation (shifts with technological development)

the computer as machine of production

It makes different demands on our capacity for aesthetic representation

“the production and reproduction of the simulacrum”

“beyond all thematics or context the work seems to tap the networks of the reproductive processes and thereby to afford us some glimpse into a postmodern or technological sublime, whose power of authenticity is in the  […] evoking a whole new postmodern space in emergence around us”

William Gibson

The need to theorise the sublime in accordance with the reality of economic and social institutions

‘Sticky Sublime’ Bill Beckley

the sublime depends on what it means to be human, because it is the response of a human - physically, emotionally, intellectually - to the the expansiveness of literature, art, or nature

=> makes possible the ‘hyposus’ or ‘state of transport’, which is considered to be the spark of sublimity

In postmodern times, humanism itself is a point of contention

Lyotard - “The Inhuman” - ‘Can thought go on without a body?’

The sublime is not simply sublimity, but rather the loss of a self, which first must be acquired through the impulses, memories, principles and energies that evolve into a sense of self

The multifarious self

To acknowledge the sublime is to admit that there is something, God or nature, that defines and  transcends human culture and what it means to be human

“this sort of sublime [contemporary] won’t take itself seriously”

Transcendence as the key to the sublime

=> Longinus’s treaty - still relevant after two millenia? (thomas McEvilley)

“sublimity carries one up to the majestic mind of God”

painting, poetry, television, computers seen as surrogates for this

Their “blankness” embodies empty spirit in vacant space => a manifestation of contemporary sublime

‘On the Track of the “S” Word: A Reporter’s Notes’ Anthony Haden-Guest

James Turell: ’an almost excruciating beauty - on the edge of reality’ - ‘something created between what is there and what we perceive’

The sublime seems mostly to have survived in our facetious times in commercial media rather than ‘high art’

If beauty has been rehabilitated for high art ( David Hickey ), what of the sublime?

The risk of producing spiritual kitsch

Gaps between the idea and the object that is meant to convey it - can the sublime be physically referenced?

What is the relationship between the sublime and personal subjectivity ? (see pp.53-54)

Fred Tomaselli: ‘It’s one of the last taboos’

Chuck Agro: ‘the sublime is something that points outside of itself’

The sublime as space untouched by men - manifestation in Hubble photographs (pp. 56)

Turned Upside Down and Torn Apart Thomas McEvilley

“mysterium tremendum” - theological philosophy

The sublime exceeds representational categories

Its discourse can be seen as underlying to the Western abstract art tradition]

Crowther: “whilst the concept of beauty seems outdmoded -passé, even- in relation to the current practices of art criticism, sublimity has become fashionable

Modernist sublime encompasses the destructive power of modernism => what does the postmodern sublime contain?

Kantian sublime - destroy the individual’s sense of self

Post-modernism is no worshipper of the end of the world (i.e. terror-sublime)

“one could not find the sublime now where it was to be found two hundred years ago”

=> if the sublime consists only in a type of subjective reaction => the sublime is ever-changing, as consciousness itself

“one is free to propose whatever one wishes as the type of stimulus which, today, supposedly elicits the sublime response”

Today’s discourse is dominated by confusion between beauty & the sublime

=> perhaps part of postmodernism’s policy of overturning the hierarchies of modernism

Adorno: ‘it might be better to start talking about the sublime completely - the term has been corrupted by the mumbo-jumbo priests of art religion”

“the technological sublime” as cyber-reality

McEvilley believes that the techno-sublime is being confused with manifestations of the beautiful

Postmodern sublime as the Kantian other-as-sublime

“It seems really we are dealing with a kind of post-sublime”

=> !!! what could succeed the sublime?

“In the post-sublime every otherness is sublime - the concept sublime has become a universal blank”

The sublime in the context of capitalism?

Conclusion: we are headed towards a “post-modern blank” - a mass culture of irrelevance

[theodorasresearchjournal-blog]

Computational Art and Sensory Interactions // STANZA’s Countdown to The End Of Time

Reading about the programmability of the Earth was an interesting exercise in looking at how developments in sensing technologies allow us to represent and interpret environments through the use of distributed and networked sensors. Monitoring nature itself is a fascinating topic, particularly in terms of how this act of sensing can manifest itself in the realm of artworks. Building up on the reading around sensing environments, I attempted to research a contemporary art piece that uses sensor data collection and environmental monitoring as its basis, in an effort to see how art practitioners today approach the notion of concretising environments.  

One project that stuck out to me was Stanza’s ‘Countdown to The End Of Time’, a six-foot tall sculptural piece acting as a countdown system in the form of a tower that measures data related to issues of climate change, through the monitoring of its immediate environment. Made of computer components and custom made real-time sensors, the piece measures the pollution levels and status of the climate it finds itself in; the aim of this project is to provoke thought around the events being invisibly played out in a space, as well as to provoke thought on how our actions are impacting on our surrounds. The sensor system affects the LEDs on the piece, the colour changing in accordance with the data being received. The data interpreting system has been designed to capture real-time information regarding nitrogen dioxide, carbon dioxide and even alcohol levels in the air surrounding the sculpture, in an effort to create a physical representation of the air in its vicinity. The name plays on current issues surrounding global warming and climate changes, alluding to the precarious state of our environment and humanity’s impact on its habitat.

“The installation represents the complexities of the real time space as a complex system.The data and their interactions – that is, the events occurring in the environment that surrounds and envelops the installation – are translated into the force that brings the artwork to life by causing movement and change – that is, new events and actions – to occur. In this way the environment also performs itself in real time through its own physical avatar or electronic double. Cause and effect become apparent in a discreet, intuitive manner, when certain events that occur in the real time cause certain other events to occur in its completely different, but seamlessly incorporated, double. The avatar artwork is not only controlled by the space in terms of its function and operation, but also utterly dependent upon it for its existence.”

[Extract from: http://www.stanza.co.uk/The_Measure_Of_Us/index.htm]

This project represents an intriguing way of concretising and capturing an environment’s data and overall status in a physical object that perpetually changes in accordance to the input from its sensors. Whilst researching this I could not help but think about how the various techniques we study in physical computing that could be employed in order to create an artwork that responds to direct input from nature itself, something I would definitely be interested in exploring further down the line.

[theodorasresearchjournal-blog]

ATTiny85 Prototype // Deus Ex Machina

Although tricky in the beginning, programming the Attiny85 turned out to be an interesting task, particularly in terms of creating small objects that do not require the full power of the Arduino - I can imagine several applications in the area of wearables, but also in terms of creating small, self-sufficient parts for a larger installation.

Prototype Concept:

After following the tutorial and toying around with the blink sketch, I started thinking about the possible applications in order to create a prototype. I have been recently reading about object-oriented ontology and alien phenomenology, so I started thinking about ideas of giving an object agency and to what extend this could be done. I have also been inspired by the “deus ex machina” (’god in the machine’) literary trope - a plot device where a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved by the inspired and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object -, whose function is to resolve an otherwise irresolvable plot situation, to surprise the audience, to bring the tale to a happy ending, or act as a comedic device. 

Drawing on these notions, I’ve decided to create a physical application of the god in the machine idea - to create an object that when used, can potentially have full agency over decisions or choices, in an effort to explore randomness and chance and their real-life manifestations.

The prototype will consist of a small box (portable enough to be carried around in a pocket), fitted with a button and an RGB Led. Pressing the button will trigger a random colour out of three; the colours represent three answers: ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘unresolved’. The device is meant to be, effectively, a “decision-maker” - from not being able to decide on what to get for dinner to creating an abstract art piece, the objects could have agency over the life or choices of an individual and introduce and element of chance into situations and events. 

The ‘unresolved’ options builds up on theories of object-oriented ontology; although use of the device requires the user to relinquish control to the machine, the third option gives back a fragment of agency - when undecided, the god in the machine prompts the viewer to choose themselves - in an effort to highlight the contrast between cognitive-based decisions and randomised selection of options. In this sense, the object gives back agency to the user, but only when randomness dictates it. 

This small experiment has an element of play to it - what would happen if someone let the box make all the decisions they are faced with in a day? What kind of unpredictable changes could occur if we relinquish control to an object that draws on randomness? Similarly to the ghost in the machine plot device, it can unexpectedly intervene and offer a resolution that is in no way affected by feeling or human systems of cognition. Moreover, what if one were to use it in an art-making setting - for example, creating a drawing where the gesture is guided by this device?

Design:

For the design, I am thinking of creating a simple box with custom LED and button holders placed on the top. The circuitry will be housed inside, and an easy access opening will be placed on the back in order to be able to change batteries or make changes to the circuit board. The top of the box might feature a geometric design, depending on time restrictions.

Working circuit on breadboard:

- both breadboards have the same project set up on them, in order to be able to easily switch from Arduino to the ATtiny85 for debugging purposes

- the 2 PWM pins on the ATtiny are being used to generate the red and blue colours, and a combination of these is used to achieve a third, whitish hue

- switch cases are used as part of the code to detail the 3 colour options and then implement them into the random( ) function

Schematics:

I first started out by creating circuit schematics for the project in Fritzing:

Parts:

Circuit:

PCB schematic:

After completing these, I decided to experiment working with Eagle, as I had not previously used this program to generate schematics. Although quite tricky in the beginning, I was able to find my way around it and create a schematic and PCB design:

*the pins are meant to connect to VCC and GND on the power source; my line of thinking was that designing it this way (rather than have the battery holder integrated on the circuit board) would allow for more room in terms of arranging the parts inside of the prototype enclosure.

PCB board design:

Notes on PCB milling process

Although daunting at first, after a few tries I got the hang of using the milling machine and setting up the table, changing drills, engraving, etc. Making the actual PCB has, however, generated a few problems - the biggest issue encountered was not with the actual process, but with the problematic exporting out of Eagle - exporting PNGs directly returned images at the wrong scale, generating files that were two or three times the required size; this was evidently a major issue as the parts would not fit on the board (particularly in terms of placing the ATTiny85 for my project, as the button and LED need wiring to fit in their respective places anyway). After trying various methods suggested on forums, I found that exporting the file as a PDF returned the right size - however, this method presented itself with new issues: even though the dimension and scale were perfect, processing the different layers in Photoshop as per the VLE tutorial before importing them into fabmodules encountered problems in terms of line width (the traces were too thin and the milling stripped the copper away from some of the connection lines) as well as with processing the holes layer (fabmodules seemed to interpret the exported PDF’s data differently, drilling extremely large holes that did not fit their connections). This been said, experimenting with printing the PCB is an ongoing process - I will continue to try and fine tune my files in order to print a proper PCB and learn how to make custom boards.

However, due to time restrictions and the necessity to focus my attention on completing and delivering the final project for this term, I have decided to port the circuit to a protoboard in order to have a reliable, functional prototype to present - I will be using the ATTiny85 ‘holder’ provided in class, so as to be able to move it to a circuit board, should I be successful in printing an appropriate one by the end of the term.That said, I will continue to try and fine tune the files for the PCB and hopefully will be able to print a functioning one by end of term.

Protoboard circuit:

Fabrication:

Creating 3D models for the box, using TinkerCAD (as the shapes are quite simplistic):

Final printed parts:

Assemblage:

Here is a sketch of how the prototype will be assembled:

Final product photos and video:

[theodorasresearchjournal-blog]

Physical Computing Final Project Proposal

INTERACTIVE PAINTING 

CONCEPT

For the final project this term I will be focusing on creating an art piece that fits within the wider scope of my artistic practice, which is centred around a cross-disciplinary approach to new media and painting. My aim, therefore, will be to use light as the primary medium in the development of a painting that changes in terms of visual representation through its interaction with the audience. By using a distance sensor in combination with different light systems, such as neon wire, LED strips and LED rings encased in custom 3D-printed enclosures, I intend to explore the possibilities of creating visual patterns and dynamic imagery within the field of painting, as well as play with the physicality of light and notions of spatial awareness and perception, through the use of geometrical structures and movement simulation.

Here is a rough sketch of what I envision the final result to be:

INTERACTION

Audience interaction is essential in the scope of this project; through the use of a distance sensor, the viewer essentially “activates” the painting and triggers different visual responses in accordance to their position. The painting will respond to the viewer’s direct spatial coordinates, changing as they move around the room; at maximum proximity, the lighting in the piece will become dynamic, creating a more complex visual effect.

DESIGN PAGE:

- Full resolution, high quality image available at:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/aux82mmjmqctrez/DesignPage.jpg?dl=0

TECHNICAL

INPUT: distance sensor 

OUTPUT: electroluminescent wire, addressable LED strips/rings

PARTS: 

multiple El Wire strands 

El Sequencer (or some sort of breakout that allows multiple wires to be driven by a microcontroller)

Neopixel strip/ring

ultrasonic distance sensor

12V inverter 

wall adapter (12V + 5V)

 2 pin connectors

 jumper wires

     ? Servo (subject to experimentation)

     + 3D printed structures to house the lights and create visual patterns (will investigate the possibility of using semi-transparent filament)

Other materials: 

wooden painting panel 

acrylic paint 

light-reactive paint, 

hot glue gun, silicone glue

     ? light diffusing fabric or some other sort of material that will ease the harshness of the LEDs up close 

My MVP would be achieving response from a light source in accordance to the values received by the distance sensor. Ideally, I would like to build further on this and have 2-3 different light systems that respond and ultimately become animated at the shortest proximity, in accordance to the user’s position. 

The final result will largely depend on the experimentation for the prototype - it is hard to tell right now what the final result will be; after the testing the different options I have discussed above, I will choose the best option to go with in order to create a visually complex light installation.