Type of Project: Prototype for Installation/Textile Art

Project Description 

The five senses (smell, touch, taste, vision, and hearing) are responsible for how we as humans perceive the world. Stimuli from each sense organ (the peripheral nervous system) send the spinal cord and brain (the central nervous system) electro-chemical information through a number of pathways. These pathways are also responsible for how we perceive feedback to our daily interactions. For example, when a user touches a smartphone screen, the screen lights up/or the phone speaks, and invites the user to engage in an activity. This visual/auditory feedback is instantaneous and affords the user the knowledge that they are proceeding in a chain of events towards their objective. 

The aim of this prototype for an art installation is to use sensors to play with notions of distanced feedback, and how it may act as a stimulus for an action. Interact/Feedback examines an indiscernible state of cause and effect with the use radio signals between two BBC micro:bits. These two micro:bits are placed in very tactile materials—crocheted yarn and cloth. The crocheted yarn invites the user to interact with through touch and near motion. As the user interacts with this piece a radio signal indicating either “motion” or “touch” is sent to the hanging cloth. The cloth illuminates in response to the activity at the other station.  

Instructions

1. Create radio based signal codes for the micro:bit in the Python Mu Editor or the micro:bit web editor for Python. 

2. Table Top Micro:Bit

   • To this micro:bit three sensors are attached: the PIR motion sensor, the capacitive touch sensor, and a digital white light. Place the motion sensor so that it is uppermost but not readily visible. 

   • If the micro:bit is not sensing activity near it, it will attempt to generate some by illuminating the morse code for ‘Z’. 

3. Radio

   • On test to understand the range of the radio, I found that on Power 4 the radio were still communicating with each other while separated approximately 530 feet outdoors. 

4. Hanging Micro:Bit 

   • To this micro:bit conductive thread was used to connect three LEDs and a resistor. 

Challenges & Lessons 

As this project was designed and executed during from my home during the rapid quarantine of NYC due to COVID-19 in the spring of 2020, there were a number of changes in design due to available materials and/or material shortages. First, the scale of size of the two stations due to available materials. I did not order enough conductive thread for testing and for fabrication prior to the lockdown. During my first two tests with conductive thread, I short circuited my sample pieces and had to salvage what remained. This salvaging and learning how to use a new material took more time than I had anticipated.

Similarly, while I found a few LEDs left over from another project, I did not have enough. Of the ten I had, four of them never worked, three were damaged in earlier tests, which only left three for use in the final design. As it was my first time working with these materials together, the experience was definitely challenging. However, these material challenges were also jumping off points to play with Python code and the sensors. In fact, the idea to incorporate a capacitive touch sensor came from an impromptu user test. One of my neighbors saw me working on the blue pseudosphere (the blue squishy crocheted thing) while waiting for clothes in the dryer. He asked me about it, and as I had half the piece (micro:bit, motion sensor, and light for the tabletop station) I gave a demo. This user is actually the one who suggested that the station needed to be reactive to touch since the piece provoked a “touch response”. While that had been on my mind from the beginning, I was so involved in working on the radio and light signals that I completely forgot. 

One of the biggest lessons I learned from this project was to be more open to quick iteration. I never fully realized how obsessed I am/was with developing “the ideal,” that I often neglect the lessons in the process. Though they may not be the most beautiful things, as a sketch model/prototype, they hold a lot of potential for future projects.