Week-13

This week I had planned on conducting p5js experiments. Past two weeks I had been stuck on one experiment and I kept failing, but the silver lining is that I have a bit more understanding of the arduino tools and to set it up for anything doesn’t feel so overwhelming as before. However, I still feel like I should take a step back. First work on digital interactivity and then progress towards a physical medium that is the arduino. And simply just explore and not think about the outcomes for now.

Planning the next experiment

What I mainly wanted to happen in this experiment is an animation playing through interaction. In simple words, maybe pressing a button that would trigger the animation. First goal here is to get p5js to animate a sequence, now that can either be done by importing a video that plays or by adding different frames which trigger with different button, I also found an example: (link) This example has the illustrations coded while I wanted to make the illustrations separately and import them.

Preparing for the experiment with p5.js

When I am learning something or experimenting something, I have this habit of already imagining that I have proceeded with the experiment when I actually haven’t. Sometimes it works in my favour as it helps me pre-analyse any challenges I may encounter while experimenting. However sometimes it instead builds up expectations that may not be fulfilled due to any challenges that I encounter that sort of also puts a pause on my progress. In those cases it often leads to disappointment. Which is what actually happened with the LED experiment. Even though I have good enough practice with p5js, to make things simpler for myself I started animating one part of the narrative that I will be portraying through this experiment.

Back to the experiment - As I mentioned I had already imagined what I want the experiment to look like, I have already started animating a part of the narrative that I want to use.

The narrative: " It’s the story of Manek Baba. Manek Baba was a powerful Yogi who lived in the forests by the banks of the river. He was angry that this land had been chosen for the building of the city. While Ahmed Shah began building the walls of Ahmedabad, he was faced with a strange problem. Everyday, his workers would raise the city walls, only to find that they collapsed in the night, and next day, they would have to start again from scratch. This happened for a while, and the Badshah was determined to find out why. It turns out that it was old Manek Baba, using his impressive yogic power. During the day, he would knit a blanket, which he would then unravel at night, causing the city walls to collapse! In order to pacify the Yogi, the Badshah decided to dedicate the main square of the city in his honour. That’s how Manek Chowk got its name. Then there is Manek Burj, a part of the old wall that you can see near Ellisbridge. They say that as long as Manek Burj stands, Ahmedabad can never be destroyed."

Narrative reference from the book People called Ahmedabad by Nisha Nair-Gupta

It is not complete yet, but I think it is enough for the experiment. Goal number 1: Just to work with this part of the animation. (I already have another part of animation in my mind but first I just want to try working with one). Since this narrative highlights the connection of a blanket to the city established by yoga powers, I drew an image of a building which Ahmedabad is quite recognised for,

Overall I want the interactivity to be enabled by movement on or with a thread. But for starters, I am trying to achieve it digitally. During my consultation with Jake last week I had already shared it with him and he mentioned that to achieve interactivity with thread I could use servo motors but more on that later. First I want to focus on digital experiments. Once I am done working on the first part which is the animation I will later talk about the second part of the experiment.

To work with the video file of the animation here are a few features I wish to explore:

1. As the button is pressed the animation progresses forward but as soon as it’s released it rewinds to the first frame.
2. We have to keep pressing the button to keep the building from falling apart. As soon as a button is released the animation plays
3. Something completely advanced and maybe not for now, but not off the table - Camera detecting our hands, making a fist to keep the video paused and as the fist is released the animation plays.

Getting Started

Interacting with the video via keys on the laptop

I used help from ChatGPT, p5js references and youtube tutorials to do this experiment. I had decided to approach this experiment in a bit more organised manner.

Making a coil shape to represent a string

I had made a sketch in Adobe illustrator and uploaded it to chatGPT, and asked it to create a p5.js code to sketch the same.

Inputting visual interaction

Exploring with hand detection

I enabled the camera for this experiment to be able to see when the code is detecting hands. Actually my direction isn't exploring with hand detection and webcam but I still wanted to try it out. I used ChatGPT for the code

First I learned how to enable hand detection via this tutorial. I wanted p5 to detect the index finger tip and thumb tip and once I did that I got chatGPT to incorporate into my experiment sketch.

Weekly Consultations

During the consultation I had a lot of trouble presenting my chain of thoughts, and not just during studio consultation, but also for dissertation consultation. I presented my experiments, but what about it? What was my goal for the consultation? Where do I see this going?

Andreas said that the experiments are good however I need a final vision of my artefacts to know where my experiments are directed towards. The concept needs a bit more development and while the current experiments are good, they need to be in a more presentable format.

To be completely honest, I think I am at a point where I am panicking a little about my work. One thing that used to bother me before was I used to overthink everything and not just simply experiment and now that I am experimenting, I have sort of stopped thinking about concept development. The consultation was quite perceptive however at the same time the amount of thoughts I had felt a bit too much to take in. It happens quite often that when I can’t envision the direction my experiments are going, it starts to feel like I am not working enough or I haven’t worked at all. My concept is ‘Interactive Storytelling’ but I have been more focused on the ‘narration’ part of it than the narratives - but Andreas said that the narratives I already have could help me define a style for my artefacts.

Reflection

I was slightly overwhelmed after the consultation so I started to just write things down

The ones marked (?) are the things that are missing in the studio work. The point of making the tables is to think about the connection between my dissertation and studio. To get the style, material and structure of my artefacts, the first thing I need to do is figure out the narratives. Second, highlight how is symbolism reflected in my outcomes? Third, to make a storyboard for options of where these experiments could direct towards. Improvements - I need to improve in the way I present my ideas, progress and outcomes.