Projectseven

[projectseven-blog]

In order to scale up my prototype to the necessary size I need to use an external source of power. This involves learning about ohms, amps, resistors etc. so that I can use an external power supply to provide the necessary current to the LEDs. I have literally no experience in electrical engineering but I doubt that it will be too hard to get what I need given the relatively straightforward nature of the project.

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Here is a list of the aspects that I will be focussing on as the I enter the development and final construction stage of the project. Coding and Design are the two clearest categories to use. 

One very important aspect of the development of the project which is was mistakenly omitted from this list is the key phase of user testing. It was stated clearly in my proposal that user testing would not just be an afterthought but that it would be genuinely used to refine the final design of the installation.

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MILESTONE: Prototype Review - Week 7

Today was the  second major milestone of the project with the prototype review. This was carried out in the same style as the review in week 4 where we presented to our peers and explained our progress and plans for going forward.

Although no major flaws were highlighted there is still an awful lot of work to be done. Below is a sketch of the actual final installation as it is envisaged at present.

It will be a cabinet of about 1 meter in height (not 2m, despite what it says on the sketch!) and will be constructed with wood (for the frame) and glass (for the individual sections/squares). This is only a preliminary sketch so the process of making this cabinet is going to be an iterative process. Experimentation & adaption will be necessary and aesthetic considerations will be dealt with as they arise. Criteria for making these decisions will be specified before the process begins and will be centered around the project proposal. This will help me to avoid poor decision making based on personal preference rather than for the deciding based on clear criteria.

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Here is a video of my fully functioning prototype. Having successfully connected the Arduino and some LEDs the core infrastructure of the project is ready.

Every time a specific phrase from the bible is mentioned, a corresponding light is turned on. This is a smaller scale mockup of the necessary framework for my final Installation.

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Here is a simple test that I did to get to grips with the necessary code to make an LED fade on and off. This fade will soon correspond to the usage/frequency/popularity of specific biblical phrases on Twitter. Further progress will be documented as it happens.

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Manuel Chantre 2 Day Workshop

Manuel Chantre is a music and immersive video installation artist. In this 2 day workshop, which was held in conjunction with the Cork French Film Festival, Manuel gave an overview of his work process and installations (day 1) followed by a practical set of tutorials into the technologies that he employs (day 2). 

For me it was the second day which proved to be most beneficial. Manuel spent the first half of the day looking at Max MSP - a flexible multimedia platform that allows you to mix sound, visuals and more to create interactive media.

Max MSP uses a fairly intuitive user interface which is very similar to Pure Data. By forming links between objects, you can create projects as diverse as your imagination (pretty much).

The second half of the day focussed on experimentation with projector's and multi layered platforms for projecting onto. Manuel's own style uses layers of tissue or fabric to project onto. This creates a layered effect and allows for a greater physical depth to the piece. Although my own project did not benefit greatly from this technique (I tried but it addd nothing to my work at this stage), it did look great for others. Clemens using 2 projectors to create a composite projection (see pic below) and there was a lot of projects that worked well with this technique.

Other work...

Even though the specific techniques that Manuel's uses are not directly applicable to my project I still benefitted greatly from attending his workshop. Getting a good introduction to Max MSP and layered projections was a great experience and certainly worth the time investment.

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This little graphic that I made shows my thought process over the last 3 months.

Having thought a lot about my previous categories of showing how the bible influences culture, I have begun to look at it a little differently now. I was looking at the bible's influence on culture in terms of music, language and politics. However as I have continued to work through the project it appears to me that the category of language in a sense embraces the other two categories (music and politics) in that songs contains phrases from the bible and politicians quote directly from the bible.

So really what I am looking at is how the bible is quoted in everyday life. This is close to where I was at the beginning of the semester but I am happy with the process that I went through. I feel that I have simplified my concept a little more coming to this conclusion.

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An intriguing use of lightbulbs as art.

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This is the first link that I have made between all the main components for my Prototype piece. I finally got the Twitter4j library working for me by using an open source example from open Processing sketch.

It searches Twitter for predefined phrases/words and then charts them out on a histogram. The more frequently a term is mentioned, the higher its respective bar will be. There are 5 categories in this example:

 "Whitney Houston","Jedward","Justin Bieber","Chuck Norris" & "Rihanna".

Every time the sketch loops it searches twitter for new tweets containing the above terms. I have represented the loop via the Arduino using LEDs to represent when each term is searched for.

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Big Update on Processing Prototype!

Following a very busy week with seemingly endless trawling of forums and example codes I have managed to hack together a sort of Frankenstein Processing sketch from this an open source example that I found on OpenProcessing.org that will listen for certain keywords on Twitter. It then Compares these results to each other and shows which one is most popular by way of a dynamic histogram. During my workshop with Manuel Chantre we got the chance to experiment with different configurations of projectors and materials. In this shot I'm just showing the sketch being projected onto a blank wall:

The sketch I am using does not make use of Twitter's API which I found surprising. Instead it is using JSON and Twitter4j. In reality it does not matter to me how it works so long as it does work. In my project proposal I stated that coding was not my forté and that it was simply a means to a creative end.

My next step is to get the sketch to talk with the Arduino so that I can start to link all the individual pieces together to complete my prototype. This involves lighting up bulb depending on which phrase from the bible is mentioned.

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Interface Design

Here is a little video about the 'Wall of Sound' app. It provides a purely visual way of browsing the iTunes Music Store.

This interface is an interesting way of displaying information that would otherwise be quite boring to look at (ie lists of songs and a small picture of the album's cover). This may help regarding the method of displaying a large selection of tweets, which is the content that I am dealing with at the moment.

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Twitter4j Library Trouble

The Twitter4j library which is pretty much essential to the workings of my project is proving to be very difficult to implement and understand. I have requested help on the usual processing forums and hopefully that will return something useful. At present however I am making very slow progress - if any!

I stated clearly in my brief that technology - particularly that which involves coding - was simply a means to an end. However at present Twitter4j does exactly what I want - I just need to figure out HOW to use it!

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Working Twitter4j Example

Using the Processing sketch found here, I have gotten a working example of a sketch which incorporates the Twitter4j library. This particular example allowed me to update my twitter status from Processing. This is another small step in getting to a working prototype but nonetheless it is an important one. 

The next step is to use Twitter4j to access the Twitter API stream so I can listen out for specific phrases on Twitter's public stream.

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Tweet Stream Library for Processing

Right now I am just starting to work with the Tweet Stream library for Processing which allows for the consumption of the twitter stream in realtime. 

The ultimate aim here in relation to my project is to listen out for the use of specific biblical phrases (ex. 'the apple of my eye') in tweets and then to alert processing when they occur. Processing will then send a cue to Arduino when this happens which at the moment is going to be a bulb flashing on. 

This relates clearly to my proposal because it provides a visual representation of the way that the bible has influenced our language.

Progress with the Tweet Stream library will be document here on the blog.

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Week 4 Presentation

Today was the first major milestone of the project where everybody in the class gave an update on their work to date with particular reference to practical work and experimentation.

For my presentation I showed my progress with the Processing platform and the Twitter API which has already been documented over the last few posts. Regarding the next step for my practical experimentation process, I will be creating a REALTIME twitter feed aggregator which will 'listen' to Twitter for certain user defined words. The goal then is to make an LED light up (via the Arduino) whenever any of these words are mentioned on Twitter. Following this I will endeavor to incorporate some user interaction so that it forms a better prototype/basis for the final project.

I'm not entirely sure how all this will happen but I do know that I will be starting with this tutorial. Progress will catalogued here on the blog.

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This is a basic Processing app which searches and lists all the Tweets that have both the words 'bible' and 'lonely' in them. Some of the results are interesting. This is simply another step on from the last exercise, with the updated visual effect of showing the results in a looped fading list.

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PHP and Processing

This is a screenshot of a tiny experiment that I did to test Processing's ability to handle PHP files. This would give me added flexibility in terms of moving information around the place because it allows me to store information on web page first, and then I can bring it into Processing.