Updates from danielagill Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • danielagill 2:08 pm on May 23, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    Final / Series of Toys controlled by iPad + Bluetooth 

    The Gadgets of Lola

    Youmna and I developed an interactive art installation that transports you into the life of a dreamy copywriter named Lola. She lives in a world where dreams and reality blend into each other.

    She is an inventor, in order to deal with her everyday drab, black and white, life she experiments everyday at her cubicle, she invents fantastical artifacts for transporting her into magical worlds.

    One of these fantastical artifacts that she has created is the Twirly. A device that looks like a gigantic camera, all made out of scraps she has found lying around her office (paper, cardboard, felt, pins) that when used transports you into a whimsical environment.

    Lola uses it to record her dreams. The camera may sort of look like a “normal” one but it doesn’t function like one. The contrary. It takes the pictures and videos from the person who’s holding it and viewing through the lenses. Meaning that it works the opposite way. When one sees someone holding the camera as a regular one pointing to any direction, he/she is actually taking pictures of her/himself. It takes them from inside.

    Later Lola realized that in order to watch her dreams that she recorded in the camera she needed another device. She invented the Eye – TV. An artifact that feeds wirelessly from the camera and plays all the pictures as a movie. The screen is very particular. It shoes a roll with all the pictures collaged. The experience of the narrative is surreal and non-linear.

    For both objects we used materials such as: cardboard, felt, paper, tape, glue gun, pins, led’s, servo motors, foam board, elastic bands, acetate paper and arduino.

     

  • danielagill 8:19 pm on March 21, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    Diary writing / Midterm / Building Cubicles by Daniela & Youmna 

    Building Cubicles by Daniela & Youmna

    One thing you found surprising about making your project?

    We decided to build a set of mini cubicles all embedded into one single structure, a building. We wanted to have different characters living in there. The piece is like a small scale installation in which the public interacts with it in two ways: In an analog form (the public manually opens various doors in order to see the characters) and the second interactions comes from sensors. Once they open the doors, the characters react to the person’s presence and they start to do something.

    During the building of one of the characters, I researched about different ways for making the gears and cams and the whole structure to move the way I envisioned it and surprisingly it was extremely hard. Surprisingly because even I have been practicing with different gears and cams and structures with the other paper toys, when I started playing with other materials such as chipboard I encountered naturally new challenges. I had to built three structures before I got one working the way I wanted it to work and still it is not completely functioning as good as I want it to function.

    One thing you really like about your project?

    I really like our aesthetics choice. I am very happy with the way our characters turned out and the look and feel that the materials we used give. We wanted for the piece to look animated, comic like, funny and unique. I think by using chipboard and combining it with thread and different textures we achieved the sketchy look we were looking for.

    One thing you think is unique or important about your project?

    I think the fact that we put both our automates (the characters) in a a building, having them live somewhere makes it unique. We really wanted for them to be shown in their cubicles and I am glad we did achieve that.

     

  • danielagill 8:11 pm on March 14, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    Midterm ideas / Youmna & Daniela 

    PROTOTYPE4_moodboard_11-11-11

     

    IMG_1193 IMG_1194 IMG_1195 IMG_1196 IMG_1197 IMG_1198 IMG_1199 IMG_1200 IMG_1201 IMG_1202 IMG_1203

     

  • danielagill 9:22 pm on March 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    Free Writing 

    1-What did you find surprising difficult in the Embedded Arduino Paper Automata project?

    Even though I’ve had some practice with building paper toys with the last two projects, this one in particular was very hard. The construction of the automata, the Weight of Bureaucracy, was very challenging. The pieces were very small and even though in the book everything is explained very well still there’s a lot of logic and attention that needs to be applied in order for the automata to work well in the end. Also, even though all the pieces one need to construct it are there in the book, I found helpful to be creative and change one or two pieces in order to make it function. All of this helps a lot for understanding the mechanics and system that goes behind it.

    As for the technical part with the micro Arduino, servo motor, Ultrasonic range finder and the battery it took more time than before to make it all work. The reading of the micro Arduino was inconstant. My UBS port for some reason kept loosing it after a while. I had some technical issues with this and it took patience and trying repeatedly to make it work. It seemed to confuse it with Leonardo Arduino. It was frustrating and still is.

    Also making the structure to present everything neatly and to hide the board, motors, cables, battery, etc was challenging too. The solution was to have a mini box underneath a platform where the model and a mini box with the servo hidden is next to it.

    And last but not least the code was challenging too for me because it is somewhat new to me. Figuring out the values and how the paper automata responded to the movement of the servo was hard.

    2-What did you find surprisingly easy?

    The wiring, making the circuits since I am now familiar with these two the range finder and servo motor. Also getting the power from the battery.

    3- Did you get inspired with any derivative work from doing this project?

    Overall these last three projects have been very inspiring and instructive. A good practice in construction with paper. I’ve been thinking about how to make them with a collage of materials and embedding different electronics. I think also the knowledge and practice of understanding the mechanics behind these paper automatas is helpful for a lot of things in design in general. Production of artifacts and of course physical computing. And also makes you aware of the huge potential paper has.

    dg

     

  • danielagill 8:08 pm on March 4, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    Daniela Gill / Bio 

    I am originally from Caracas, Venezuela. I got my B.F.A. Degree in Communication Design from Parsons. I worked for a few years at a marketing agency and later on I moved on to the world of design studios. Most recently, I have been working at a brand and design consultancy specializing in strategic design communications.

    I decided to take this class 1. because I love toys! and 2. because I feel that it will be very helpful for the production of my thesis. I am collaborating with Youmna and we are making an interactive installation, one that will feature a series of fictional stories that will critically comment on the everyday life in a cubicle office space.

    The installation consists of a cubicle workspace where users interact with the main character’s, Lola, everyday office objects. These unexpected elements gather evidence about Lola’s life within her cubicle. They represent her identity, personality, frustrations and role within the workplace.

    I feel that everything I learned so far and will continue to learn in this class we can apply into the technical production of our objects. We have been using physical computing in order for them to provide the necessary interactions we want for them to offer in order to communicate our ideas. And I am looking forward on expanding my knowledge and learning new tools in regards to this.

    I would say that my favorite thing to play as a child was a gameboy. I enjoy video games very much. As an adult I still like to play although nowadays I seem to enjoy more physical stuff, like for instance  ping pong.

     

  • danielagill 11:08 pm on February 28, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Assignments   

    Penguin Paper Automata 

    Paper penguin automata: controlling Servo motor speed with an Ultrasonic Range finder. Whenever one is less further than 1′ the penguin stops moving. When someone gets closer it starts to flap it’s arms and move up and down.

    Here is my video: https://vimeo.com/60803711

     

    photo     photo2

    photo3 photo4

     

  • danielagill 10:59 pm on February 28, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    Dog Paper Automata 

    Dog paper automata with Servo Motor (Continuous)

    Here is my video: https://vimeo.com/60786063

    photo2                          photo

     

     

c
Compose new post
j
Next post/Next comment
k
Previous post/Previous comment
r
Reply
e
Edit
o
Show/Hide comments
t
Go to top
l
Go to login
h
Show/Hide help
shift + esc
Cancel