Etch-a-Sketch
For the Telepresence, not Appearance project, my group decided to remake the idea of the classic Etch-a-Sketch toy. We are going to use two bicycle wheels as the control wheels. The wheels will be in different rooms. One wheel will control the x-axis of the drawing, whereas the other wheel will control the y-axis. The drawing of the line will depend on the speed and rate in which the user is turning the wheel. The visualizations will be done in processing and displayed on a set of computers (so the user can see what they are doing). We will use a set of sensors and gray patterns to have the computer determine how fast the user is spinning the wheel (to control the speed of drawing in the Processing sketch) and also to determine the current position of the wheel.
To connect our project with another classmate’s project, we have decided that we will take data from someone elses’ project (still to be determined which). We need raw numbers that we can map to certain values required for our sketch. We are thinking of linking to Adam and Paul’s project. They have something that will become either sad or happy in relation to data from yet another project. In our case, when their project gets sad, it will influence the drawing on our etch-a-sketch. For example, the sadder their piece gets, the more difficult it is to draw (the line gets squiggly instead of straight, the wheel has to be turned faster for it to actually draw, etc) on the etch-a-sketch.
We were originally going to create a mechanical etch-a-sketch using motors and tracks that would act as the Processing sketch. While this is surely possible to build, due to time constraints of less than a week, we thought it best to keep it simple and stay in Processing at this time.
Here are the answers to some of the questions we had to ponder:
- Paint Chip Colour: We picked yellow, although we did so more because of the name of the colour, which was Railroad Tracks. The tracks relate to “direction” which we felt emphasized the drawing aspect of our project.
- Which human sense does the piece focus on: Mainly visual (since the user will be seeing what they sketch), however it will also focus on touch (touching and playing with the wheels).
- What does the piece want to share: Shares a drawing experience between multiple people. The only data transmitted will be as peed, provided in numerical values.
- What does your work want to receive: Since we are thinking of using Adam and Pauls’ project, we’ll need to access the information given off by their piece depending on it’s state of emotion.
- Is the piece an introvert of extrovert: We aren’t too sure. The piece will ask for information, which isn’t something an introvert would do, so it seems it is more of an extrovert.
- What emotion most strongly characterizes the piece: Confusion and curiosity, because you really do not know what is going to happen (knowing how the line will be influenced by external factors [eg. other users, the other data feeds], for example).
