I came with the idea of making a playful device at the island. I brought this 3D printed google looking glasses with no lenses.
The first 2 days I was exploring the island, walking around and recording a lot of sounds.
When I was putting my materials together – arduino, glasses, sensors, speakers – I was talking to Mika and she just put one speaker in one of the lenses and it fit perfectly, so I decided to do a sound experience device with the glasses. I like the idea of ‘seeing sound’ or having an object made for one sense to feel another one.
With some of the bits and pieces put together, I still felt I needed a concept to put everything together.
One day we went to the boat to spend the day – it was amazing. We arrived to a beach at the other side of the island and we stopped there to walk around and swim. Suddenly it started raining, I was a bit cold so, funny enough, I went inside the sea which was much warmer.
I laid in the water, floating, with my eyes closed, and felt supper happy. I could hear the waves and see the lights from the clouds moving in the sky with my eyes closed. I wanted to take that moment home, so that’s what I did through the glasses.
One Arduino, 2 speakers (one for each lens), LED rings and a sound card reader made this simple device that allows you to bring the island home with you.
Tech wise, I recorded sounds of waves and compress them so they could be played by the Arduino. I placed the speakers in the lenses and, behind them, 2 LED rings that would fade in and out randomly with yellowish colors representing the lights in the sky.
The interaction works very simple: you just lay down, put on the glasses with your eyes closed and you just feel the island wherever you are.
Enjoy! (I’ll put some videos as soon as I have better internet connection)
P.S. oh! I also got a Dinacon dinosaur tattoo from Valerie 🙂
06.18.18 – 07.01.18 // Palm Reading // generates abstract visual art in Unity from the bioelectricity measured from palm tree fronds on Koh Lon island
BIO // Jessica + Sebastian make digital art together at their studio in Atlanta called INTO OUTOF
Sebastian Monroy has an MS in Computer Graphics and makes generative art and interactive art in Unity. Check out his work @smokelore
Jessica Anderson has an MS in Digital Media, helps direct the Spelman College Innovation Lab, and tries to keep it real. She claims to be a thinker + maker + designer + lover. That means she’s head-first in concept art, fabricating installation stuff like domes and projection surfaces, designing interactions that are meaningful, and loving with her whole heart. Check out Jessica’s work jessicology.com
///////////////////////////////// We were inspired by @DrBeef on twitter //
We’re also inspired by the bio-diversity on the island, and how different tropical plants might express themselves through the patterns in their electrical activity. To understand how to get the most accurate measurements of electrical activity in plants, we used non-invasive extracellular recording using Backyard Brains’ Plant Spiker Box.
We're using this thread on electronics stackexchange
to learn about how to measure the electricity from foliage.
https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/85342/
detect-electrical-signals-from-plants
We test the hardware at home. This gives you an idea of what the measurements look like on screen. The output is an audio file.Spiker box prep on siteWaterproofed and ready for monsoon (in a ziploc kind of way). Here, the ground wire is pinned into the trunk and the sensor wire is wrapped around a frond that is lower on the tree. The board is zip-tied to the trunk. We got a good, pretty clean readings from lower, middle, and higher fronds.
We tried recording from the board into a field recorder with an audio cable. That data was too noisy. We tried recording with the app using my Android phone — not quite readable. We ended up using the USB to record right into the laptop. This gave the cleanest results.
We wanted to record for days at a time, but the constraints put us at recordings of 3-5 hours at a time. Because the recording is a wav file, Sebastian parsed the data before we had values that we could use.
Tasneem got a shot of us in the act!
https://www.instagram.com/p/BkjoI8Jj_gZ/?taken-by=digital.naturalism.conference
After moving out to the SY Diva Andaman workspace, we were inspired by the movement of the waves in and out, leaving saturated traces, and iterated through a few visual styles.
These are some of the results, with the plant’s electrical data determining the colors on the first video and color along with more attributes on the second as well as lighting.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bkhgm4PA5pK/?taken-by=smokelore
https://www.instagram.com/p/BkkI2Vsgd_7/?taken-by=smokelore
This is the final draft (for the moment) —
https://www.instagram.com/p/BlA7_rrApJf/?taken-by=smokelore
/////////////////////////////////
And the best part is sharing our process, wandering, and inquiry with the creative, intelligent, open-minded fellow DiNasaurs 🙂
We’re planning to complete the same experiment with a potted palm that lives on our terrace in Midtown Atlanta to compare how a city palm and a jungle palm might differ or resemble one another when their electrical activity is compared using the same parameters. We want to print these Palm Readings and show them off. We’d like to use the art prints as a target for an augmented reality component that shows the animating 3 dimensional aspect of the piece. Stay tuned. We’ll be kicking off the urban Palm Reading soon!
Some old/fossilied DINAsaurs are compiling a cookbook! Not just any cookbook; one with a guide to forageable ingredients and how they scatter over space.
Why visualise plant scatter? Maybe because plant proximities intrigue us, or we’re seeking insect friends in nice ecological habitats, or a specific murky mud-water mix for a salty nightcap. Working through plants to find these other things has a zoom-out effect: seeing individuals in interconnected spaces.
But isn’t it also amazing how rife with life small patches are? And how much more we can learn to see?
More scatter(d) musings coming up. For now, we also consider:
use and property relations: who “owns” the plants? How can we use them knowing that others in the forest also use them ? How do we create objects or extension tools to sense what stuff belongs to others? Fun maps aside, a map is great to plot out things in space, but use relations shift constantly. Sometimes the best maps are still in our heads!
If maps are still a good viral way to spread ecological awe, what other functions could we place on the map? Categories of usability? Animal habitats? Shades of green? Land elevation?
I am interested in how we image and imagine continuities of space, as an abstracted aspect of life. Life is spatial in so many ways we intuitively get. So messing around with space/sight means messing around with ourselves!Here are resources and ideas I’m/we’re continuing to work on with others, and resources you are free to build on and share-alike:
Are your bowls too small to catch your coconut water? Do you struggle to prevent spilling valuable electrolytes? Is your refreshing beverage filled with gritty husk?
For the amazing price of pretty much nothing you can catch and drink your coconut water in comfort and style!
You will need to prepare:
– A 5l water or oil bottle
– 2 rubber bands
– Some filter cloth
– A knife
– A sharpie
– A coconut
– A good bashing rock
– Your official Dinacon survival water bottle
1. De-husk your coconut as demonstrated in the official Dinacon documentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xOJsgy8HTs
2. Hold the coconut against the bottle in one hand, and trace its circumference using the sharpie with the other, leaving 4-5cm from the bottom of the bottle.
3. Cut away the plastic area you have traced.
4. Remove the top of the bottle, and fasten your filter cloth over the opening with the rubber bands. Replace the bottle top.
5. Congratulations! You have completed your Better Coconut Water Catcher v1.0
NO MORE SPILLS!!!
Crack your coconut over the catcher and collect your coconut water in comfort and style!
Remove the cap and pour out refreshing filtered coconut water into your official Dinacon survival water bottle!
Enjoy! (I’ll put some videos as soon as I have better internet connection)
