Digital Shadows is a tangible interfaces that allows people in different places to create a collaborative shadow puppet show.

Each participant can join using their webcam and simple household objects (paper, fabric, lamps, etc.) in order to generate to the system sketched below.

Take a look at this video for the imagined experience and this video for the testing process.

For a more in depth explanation, take a look at these system details.

The software includes a series of gesture-activated interactions including multiplication, scaling, and mirroring, that allow physical objects to be digitally manipulated as shown in the short clips below.

Multiply:

Scale:

Mirror:

huminterface-presentation

Introduction

Choreography in the context of performance is, for the most part, a set of movements and patterns that is staged and rehearsed. To some degree, it is a performance that is hierarchical in nature; a choreographer teaches dancers how and where to move with their bodies and within the given space. Dancers then mimic these movements and steps in a predetermined fashion. They work together as a unified collective to achieve an artistic vision predefined by the original choreographer.

If dance is meant to be a medium of creative self-expression, why not return the creative agencies back to dancers? In an effort to address this question, we propose a new way to give dancers the freedom to showcase their native creativities while also making decisions and movements symbiotically with a partner. Our goal is to discover new possibilities of democratizing choreography and performance-making in the context of digital information and interactive technologies by constructing choreography through unchoreographed moves.

The idea is that each dancer is placed in individual spheric membranes. Within each membrane are pressure sensors embedded around the inner surface walls. Pressure is then captured and reported to a bluetooth Arduino, which serves to control the other membrane by directly manipulating the shape—e.g. having the wall concave—of the corresponding area. This forces the second dancer to react to the new change in the physical environment of the membrane.

Thus, we envision a social dance, choreographed in real-time, where each dancer serves as mutually dependent parts of a single artistic narrative. Digital information and enabling technologies can serve to enrich the body’s communicative powers. The membrane becomes a new stage environment. Given the circumstances, each dancer must learn to collaborate interdependently and adapt to one another’s expressions and choices. Ultimately, this feeling of physical and emotional connection has the potential to transcend beyond the current performance and space.

Conceptual Design

The spherical membrane serves as a conceptual metaphor of a baby in the womb. The womb creates a natural space for a baby and mother to develop an intimate relationship during the nine months of pregnancy and a connection that lasts well beyond birth. Unchoreo’s spheric membrane is designed to foster this similar sense of intimacy and explore the interplay between performance art, biology, psychology, and new technology.

A thin, stretchy, translucent sheet of fabric—i.e. silicone—is used to design the membrane structure. The fabric is intentionally semitransparent to allow enough light to pass through and create a shadow effect by the dancer’s movements. The design of the membrane structure is a geodesic dome, large enough to fit a human inside. The short struts that make up the framework of the dome are bendable in order to be capable of curving outward or inward when activated by the Arduino. In our demonstration, we use a shape memory Nitinol, such as Muscle Wire or Flexinol, and attach it to different chords on the triangular face of the the icosahedron to either flex or contract when activated through pressure.

Membrane Prototype

Muscle Wire

Muscle Wire with Pressure Sensor

Demonstration

People across cultures connect over coffee. It is often the catalyst that brings people together. But in America, coffee tends to be “on the go” and consumed alone. But what if you still wanted to enjoy the company of another while “on the go”? How can we experience the presence of another in the ritual of coffee drinking without them physically being there?

Cafe au Connexion is  a pair of coffee cups that allow the users to be aware of each other’s presence while still maintaining the quiet of being by yourself.

The design is a pair of digitally connected coffee cups that allow the users to see touch interaction the other person is having with the cup. This creates the illusion that the other user is there without physically being present.

Touch input and outputs:

1. Blowing into one cup causes ripples in the other cup.

2. Touching the body of one cup causes a light imprint on the other cup.

The users become aware of each other, and in effect, are enjoying  a cup of coffee together.

Laya

Ali

Qi

Rebekah

Karishma

Google Slides link (Includes all videos): http://bit.ly/2eewNMS

Individual Youtube Videos:

• Cover Video link
• Flex Sensor Video link
• Pneudino Reaction link
• Flex Sensor Video 2 link

Dear You first started off as a tangle of random ideas related to writing, reading, expression, thought, and air. After our preliminary project proposals, we found the common themes of writing/reading and emotions. We also all wanted to do something with pressure and pneuduino. So with those broad topics in mind, we started to brainstorm. We thought about modifying one of the digital pens you can buy for $100 or so. We thought about creating some tangible object that could be modified to convey some meaning to someone else. We thought about, for example, making a sphere that could have different meanings associated with it depending on how it was pressed. We thought about different form factors for this. We even briefly thought about doing something related to water. Our ideas grew and grew and we kept getting further away from our original intentions. That’s when we decided to go back to our roots and really work on making some sort of journal interface that could connect two people who could be anywhere in the world. 

There are many people who have looked at pens and digital paper interfaces, but we wanted to do something with physical paper. We wanted to return to the feel of handwriting in a journal, because that’s such a powerful feeling. We were also quite inspired after seeing Jie’s work with paper circuits. 

We still knew we wanted to use pneuduino and air/pressure, just cause we thought it was interesting. 

We thought more about the things we do when we write in a journal. We turn pages. We might vary the pressure of the pen on the page depending on how stressed/angry we are. We might draw things. If we are responding to comments, we might want to send an emoticon. If we are sharing a journal experience with someone else, we might want to know when they are starting to look at or write in theirs. We might want to color things. Keeping these things in mind, we thought of ways to make these tangible interactions.

The most intuitive was the turning pages. We knew we wanted some sort of interaction where, if person A turned their page, person B’s page could be turned or could at least move slightly to indicate where person A was. For this, we used a flex sensor and actuator. 

We also knew we needed some way to notify person B that person A had picked up their notebook and started writing. We thought about doing something with the cover. Slightly inspired by ___, we thought of creating a cover that could change form and shape so that it changes enough to notify a person that it is being used on the other end. The notebook’s cover raises itself when someone else touches a different notebook. In this way, two people can know exactly when the other person is using it. 

A very tricky component of our notebook was the pneuduino element. We wanted it to be such that a person could input whatever drawing or sketch and someone on the other end could receive an inflated version of it. This, we realized, would be rather tricky to accomplish, and so we moved towards thinking about certain emoticons or images that could be very representative of response and emotion. We thought of the heart symbol and decided to work with this. 

Figuring out how to work the pneuduino took quite a bit of time. From understanding the code to understanding the actual physical components to understanding how to heat seal properly to understanding pressure in/pressure out, pneuduino really did take quite a bit of time.

Once we figured out pneuduino, we heat sealed a paper with a heart embedded into it and were able to show an example of pressure from one end causing the heart to pulsate. 

These were the interactions we were able to do for the project. And we are happy with them because we think they show a promising beginning to creating two journals that can truly connect two people across space and time.  

In the future, we could imagine building a system where the paper could transform such that any shape is represented based on pressure or based on how the person is feeling. For example, say I’m feeling sad. Based on the pressure of the pen and perhaps the words the person is writing, the paper on the other side would shape shift to display a sad face or tears. In the future, we could also imagine a system with great localization of pages such that a person could know exactly what page someone else was on. We think there’s a lot of potential, and we’re glad that we were able to create the concept ideas and physical prototypes behind a journal that truly connects people across space and time. 

Cover

• Capacitive Touch
• Activated when owner’s hand has been placed on the cover
• When one book has been activated, the couple book will either vibrate, move, or light up

Page 1

Flex Sensor 1: Notifies reader the location of the incoming message in the journal

Flex Sensor 2: Notifies writer what the reader appreciates/likes or even if they like it

Page 2-10 (Incoming Messages)

The “incoming message” display will be done through projection.

Page Feature (Responding)

The coloring in is similar to the feedback the black color changing mugs can provide. Once heat is applied to the mug (through hot liquid inside) the mug changes colors/shows up with an image. The same thing happens when we color in the squares.

It was important to us as a group to create a writing “experience” where the writer and reader could interact with each other through a variety of senses in real time. This creates a sense of bond between two people. Be it friends, couples, family members, parents, etc.

Questions/Notes

• How will the 2 notebooks connect?
• How can we create the color changing for the “Love, Unfortunate, Explain More” boxes at the bottom of our page?

H20TONE

Lily Gabaree, Alethea Campbell, Siya Takalkar, and Poseidon Ho

Videos

Gifs

H20TONE is a remote shared experience and communication device, that pairs water and music in a new, organic language.

One unit would contain the visualization expression container, along with multiple input water bowls. Touching the water in each of the water bowls would make a peculiar sound corresponding to the frequency of the sound wave, which would create the related pattern at the other remotely located units. The speed of the movement would translate into amplitude of the wave.

Process and Mechanisms

H20TONE started as the Fountain of Beats, a community resource and interactive art and atmosphere piece, in which a park fountain is responsive to the collective action of drum circle players. When played, each drum spurs a squirt of water from the basin, forming a fountain, given enough players and beats. Intensity of drumming increases the height of the fountain, and a variety of drums and beats produces varied and unique water displays. The spectacle grows with more participants. 

Our group’s initial meetings focused on developing the input, a set of drums that detect drumbeats and translate it into a visualization in Processing. We found that a piezoelectronic sensor was the most effective way of detecting drum strikes, as it is highly sensitive to vibrations. Secured the the underside of a drumskin, it can detect individual strikes, and the intensity of the strike. We met with a local drummer, who advised us on the acoustics of hand-drums and the mechanics of playing. 

We were hoping to hack a fountain, to program particular water patterns in response to the drum input. Dissembling a small fountain speaker helped us figure out one possible mechanism for building a larger-scale version: a rotating motor compressing a small water trove, pushing it through holes and into the visualization chamber.

Sealing inflatables in the Tangible Media Group

While this work was in progress, we continued evaluating different possible outputs of the circle beyond water, including fire, sand, and air. Udayan gave us a tutorial about using the Pneudino and pumps, and making inflatables. We were considered making an inflatable shape that would be “conjured” by the drum circle, gradually inflating and distorting into unique shapes, depending on the rhythms played. As it turned out, creating adequate air pressure for a large inflatable public piece would require significant pump power. Udayan encouraged us to consider ways of making our interaction circular – having responsiveness on both ends, as opposed to pure visualization.
After our material explorations, we decided to stick with water, as it was pleasant to interact with, and seemed to naturally pair with music, public spaces, and the physical input of hand movement (a drum strike mirroring a water splash). We were particularly fascinated by the effect of wave frequencies on water and other liquids. One of our first experiments was with a mixed purple liquour that contained powdered mica, which formed unique patterns when frequencies were applied beneath.

After our conversation with Udayan, we decided to merge the interaction in one medium – water – as opposed to both drums and water. Water would act as both an instrument and a visualizer; it would be a communication device between individuals and groups.

To achieve this, we needed to make water react to touch. Our prototype system uses alligator clips and a Makey Makey circuit board, which allows the user to complete the circuit and activate a signal by touching the water in a vessel.

For output, we used a metal dish on top of a glass vibrating speaker, which was particularly suited to transmitting frequencies in the water. We staged an example of how this output might be realized on a large scale – as a fountain-sized vessel in a public space or village.

Finally, we found frequencies that were particularly interesting when transmitted through water, and used Processing to program the relationship between touching a vessel of water (input) and the resulting frequency being transmitted into the output vessel, forming distinct patterns.

The system currently works for small scale vessels, but we’ve modeled larger applications.