The final works include four objects, which are triggered by movement in one of the spaces. I originally planned to have about 6 or 7 different things happening at the same time. Multiple lights turning on and off, a heater and the fan. After viewing the rooms I thought this amount of things would be too much happening at the same time. I often work like this, planning lots, but then realising that simplify things are better than over filling them. In the end I have two PIR sensors in the space, controlling a large 400watt light, a floor fan, an air freshener and a sound player/speaker. I have tried to place the items in places, which are integral to the sensor. So the sensor above the door controls the light near the door. Because you can view the offices when outside the other, i thing it is interesting to allow people to be able to see the illumination of the 2nd office when entering the first. The first office lays dormant, nothing is switched on, no lighting or fans turning. Whilst the second space, springs to life, lights shine and sounds emanate. I decided to try this out on this work. In a previous work I made in Max/Msp I also created two spaces using video and a camera. The work allowed both people to effect the others video and when testing it I realised that people had no idea who was affecting what. Although i think this could be interesting, I thought it would be interesting to see how people perceive there interactions on a space when there is non. In the second space will people think it is they who are controlling the fan or the light? I put much thought before how load the clicking of the relays would be in the work. They click every time someone is detected, adding a clear indication when someone’s presence has been picked up in the first room. The hair on the fan is prominent part of the work, its taken from a dream I had several months ago. An image which has stayed with me ever since. Altered states and dislocated space are to things I would like to continue to explore. The audio track selected is Popal Vuh’s Il Songa, I included it to heighten the sense of been in a dream and possibly another reality. At the end of the exhibition I intend to interview people and gage their impressions of the work, asking them how there presence controlled the turning on and off of the different objects and if how they experienced the different spaces.
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After painting both spaces I had to wire the two rooms together. I first wired up for the sensor which included enough cable to add mroe sensors if i wished. I took apart the pir sensored light and separated them by the 16 meters distance of the rooms. The main thing I had to do was to make where two parts to a control the switching. Because I’m controlling a mains power lead, I had to make sure everything I did was done to a safe standard. I spent allot of the time checking and re-checking my circuits. I used a relay circuit to control the fan and the audio. I also made an Arduino shield to connecting everything together. I had problems with my sharp IR sensors and had to resort to using a PIR sensor instead. Although after finishing I preferred this choice. Before starting this I didn’t think about the difference between them. Now when some moves the fan turns on, but if they stand still, even for just a second the fan stops. There is a much closer connected between what what movement is happening and and the person effect. Finally I placed the wiring into a boxes to make sure its safe and helps keep everything tidy. The code is simple and only needs to control a pin on the Arduino when movement is detected. This is similar code as learned when using led to turn on a off. The PIR had 3 connectors, A 5v, Ground and the pin its connected to, in this case pin 11. //Jonathan Munro
//OfficeOffice code for controlling a relay connected to mains power cord and an arduino
//The relay inpin is connected to a 1N4004 Diode
//This is connected a 2N2222 NPN Transister
//A 1K resister is used on the Arduino RealyPin
int relayPin = 11; // Pin 11 connected to the relay circut
int pirPin = 0 ; // Pir connected to Ardunio pin 0
int val = 0; // variable to store the read value
void setup()
{
pinMode(relayPin, OUTPUT); // sets the digital pin 13 as output
pinMode(pirPin, INPUT); // sets the digital pin 7 as input
}
void loop()
{
val = digitalRead(pirPin); // read the input pin
digitalWrite(pirPin, val); // sets the LED to the button's value
delay(1000);
}
I finally came to a decision on what spaces to use for the final piece. Originally I though i would use small cupboards or a couple of corners to the rooms, but i’m not sure how I could get enough things into them to make this work fully. So I decided to using two office spaces at the back of the church would allow me more space and to try something new for me. They are not identical, although this would have been interesting to try it in identical spaces. If I wanted this I would have needed to create my own spaces from stretch. In a two day install this would have been much harder to achieve. The spaces have a few similar features, they are both plain, with cork boards and no furniture. I will dress the rooms as offices and and add a simple amount of objects, filling cabinets, swivel chairs and letters on the tables.
Connecting the hair to the fan took sometime, I had to fid he best way to attach, after trying a few different methods I ended up tying the hair on I had to use super glue to make sure it didn’t come loose. This ended up being a little bit of a compromise, as I’m not sure it looks as good as I’d like it too, although I’m not sure I’d be able to get it looking like its literally growing out the metal grill.
Video of testing the first few strands of hair. The hair moves much better than I expected. The first thoughts I’ve been having about showing the work, have been what type of the space do I want to use. The first time we heard about using the church it seemed like a good idea from been able to try out different things. I could have an open space or a closed off space or a large room. My first thoughts have been to make it intimate, so there is a directness between the person and the object/s. There are small cupboards and mini rooms available I have thought about using. Although the options for allowing people in could be restricted if people don’t feel comfortable entering such small spaces.
Testing the fan turning on and off using the relay switch and an extension cable. This way I won’t have to hack opne the fan and will be able to plug in anything I want as long as it doesn’t exceeded the maximum amps. The relay I am using is 16Amp and 250V, plenty for my needs.
Cutting the Live wire in half and connecting this up to the relay, this is what switches on and off depending on the trigger. Video of Fan turning on and off using the basic blink code on the Arduino. One of the main technical challenges I faced with this project was how to turn on mains powered appliances using the Arduino. Although the circuit is relatively non complicated it need seem to faze me for some time. I tired many different things after finding lots of different diagrams online. This is one of the things I’ll be hacking into to turn the power on and off.
The relay is a mechanical switch that clicks either way depending if there is a small amount of current sent the coil. I’ve connected the Arduino pin13 and the Gnd pin to the left and right coil pins on the Arduino. The relay is normally closed NC and becomes opened when the relay is triggered. Its important to make sure i use the right relay and that i cut the right wire on the cord the mains light. I have split the neutral wire on the card and wired these to the two different pins on the relay. Finally in the images you can see I have added a switch to turn the light on. The circut for that is the basic button diagram.
Turning the relay on and off using the blink code. Turning the mains light on and off using the push switch connected to the Arduino. After the original problems of the constant signal sent to the air freshener i decided to look back at my last project using the arduino. I found that i had used a NPN transistor when controlling the led’s in the dynamic spaces circuit. [left image]
I tested this with a simple push button and found it worked perfectly using the example code. Although thinking how much this stinks, the last thing i want is it going over every minute, it wouldn’t even last a whole minute. My thought so far is that I will place a sensor mat under a door mat and when it is stepped on the air freshener is activated. [right image] This is the glade sense and spray air freshener from the advertistment in the other post. The aim of taking it apart is to see if it would be possible to connect two of them together so they trigger each other in the different rooms. Or connect a different sensor up to them, maybe a blow sensor would be interesting, so blowing a sensor in one room would release the “supposedly pleasant” oder in another. Connected up to an Arduino, using the same blink code to see if the blink triggers the on button. Although i discovered that this doesn’t work as expected, I thought the Arduino was just connecting the ground and voltage together from the switch on the circuit. Instead I get a constant amount of hits which makes me think the Arduino is faulty or i need to investigate further. I wasn’t planning on involving the fly catcher in the rooms, but then when i was shopping around for thing to hack i found this on special offer. Always one for a bargain, so i thought i would try it out. Not on flies but on connecting the circuit on the bat using a piece of metal. I’ve never used one of these and was pleasantly surprised at the loud noise and flashing lights. It would like to get hold of one of the large fly zapper you get in restaurants kitchen. The video below is just the first time i tried it out. Pressing the switch and holding the metal into the front. The next step is to decide what form of interaction to include in opposites room. I’m thinking about some kind of blowing to activate the air freshener, a cause and effect but you don;t get the immediate effect, someone else does. So what type of interact should trigger the fly catcher? After a shopping trip for home gadgets i discovered an automatic air freshener which also has a motion sensor in it. My mum uses these in lots of the rooms and I find them the most disgusting smells, but i guess some people like the smell. It seems way too powerful and seems very un natural. It works by detecting motion and also on a three different timer intervals. The advertising makes it sounds like the motion sensing will enhance your lives and that its some advanced technology, when in fact its a very simple electrical circuit. An advertising by Renuzit who make air fresheners in America have gone for male models to sell there products. A assume a ploy to get woman’s attention. Does it work?
Published this month under the American scientific journal Nature. The artists talking about their fictional multi-installation Dead Meat ii.. An interactive space where the public wear plastic coats and boots to avoid getting their hands and clothes bloody. The meat covers the walls and there are computerised like systems to control the doors opening and closes. “Blood oozed from the ceiling more freely in the next room. A few splashes landed on the hood of one patron. After a whispered conversation with his partner, they headed back towards the entrance. I pitied them for their squeamishness. I’d refused the plastic coverings, preferring to wander the halls in a mini skirt and tank top. I wanted to feel the blood on my skin.” Reading the story I can smell the blood and relived the touch of the meat on my hands. The meat i imagine is beef, a meat I don’t eat. I find it too tuff, not liking the feel of it on my teeth and it upsets my stomach. But this is cooked meet, not the raw meat the article talks about. I can clearly imagine the horror or seeing a room of meet and blood dripping from the ceiling. It reminds me of the great Fredrick Pohl story The Space Merchants, about the workers in the future who harvest the meat from a giant chicken. The walk around the inside and look after the different parts of it, cutting off parts of it before they went off. “It was a great concrete dome, concrete-floored. Chicken Little Filled most of it. She was a gray-brown, rubbery hemisphere some fifteen yards in diameter. Dozens of pipes ran into her pulsating flesh. You could see that she was alive. I’ve been thinking about moving away from creating an installation for the final project, several reasons, one is to make something smaller, other reasons could be to make sure I can place the objects in different places. Symbols within dreams Recently I had two dreams with two very potent symbols within them. The first was a humanoid figure which was cover from head to foot with hair. The person seemed to have no arms or shoulders, it looked over me whist I slept and created a very uneasy feeling within the dream. Although the object/humanoid didn’t move much of say anything I began to panic, I woke up literally short of breath and sweating profusely. Although it hadn’t returned in my dreams, since then the object has recurred in my thoughts regally and so frequently I am forced to re-live the experience over and over. Although the original sinister feelings have been replaced with a craving to de-code the dream and object. I have talked with others about the dream and find myself going back to it over and over. I wonder if it would make an interesting creation for my work. I have never tried to incorporate something like this into the development of a piece of work, even though I find it very interesting in my personal life.
Above is an attempt to make a drawing of the object/person from my dream. The work could be two of these objects, when one of the other is touch then the other responds, similar to the room works. In this one maybe the hair could be growing out of the top of the object and when it is touch it stops growing and the other one starts. I would expect the works to be human scale and to be grow the hair at a very slow rate, where it may take a full 8 hours for it to reach its full length.
Servet Kocyigit Made in 2005. I like the aesthetics of the broom, how the the stands of hair are binded and even in images creates an arresting image of someones who head cleaning the floors. It was only looking further thought the artists portfolio did i realise the work was also using a convert typing hanging device for an automated movement of the moment. The rig has been setup in different spaces and of different scales, also in various locations. This one an empty apartment with wooden floors, and in also in a church with concrete flooring. The work attracted my attention as it reminds me of a awkward over the top robotic cleaning devices. Although if this is the intention of the artist. It seems excessive for the basic task in hand!. The flow of the broom is also interesting, organic moments create a very specific choreographed dance. In my last post I was thinking about the way a room’s temperate could change and how each work would be working with or possibly against the space. The work may respond to people being too hot for this time of year or cooling the room to a chill. The difference possibly between indoors and outdoors. The possibility of adding humidity, rather than heat could be a clear way to reference climates. Why only constrain the works for display in the gallery setting. I should explore the opportunities for creating outdoors too. Hacking a part of the urban landscape. Taking control of a water fountain, or a street lamp. Using the park benches to create a link between the different structures in a park. Installation or sculptural works. Although my main aim is to create installation works, I would like to consider the idea of starting this project creating smaller sculptural objects which retain the same two-unit idea but in a more fluid piece which can be picked up and placed in different places, without the strict confides of a built up room. The initial space the work will be displayed is a the final group show in a church. There are few identical spaces I feel would work for a two room installation, so my alternatives would be to build two cut of spaces within one of the rooms or create smaller works which can be placed around the space. I will explore both at the moment.
Two identical rooms, either next to each other or could be placed on different floors. There is no explanation of how you can interact with either room. By sitting on the different chairs, different things happen in the other room. For example sitting on the chair furthest away could turn the heating to a large amount in the other room. If two people people sit on the chair opposite each other then the heating increases further. The change in temperature would have to happen quickly, so a sudden rise may be needed. Extra ways to heat and cool the rooms may be needed to allow this.
Would the audience of the work be aware of there changes on the other room? This would form the bases for inquiry. I believe if the rooms are identical this will trigger the audience to question whats is going on. But there would also be a large amount of people who would not realise the effect they have on the pieces of work. Could there be a way of communicating this information subliminally? So far i have draw the room in the first sketches has simple and practical. The spaces could be understood to be places for the audience to sit and rest there legs or read the exhibition program. It also has the feel of doctors waiting room. Could this be an important part of it. People changing the work without any awareness what so ever. I’m not sure thats my aim at this stage? What if the waiting room was completely out of character to the building or gallery it was in?
The words I have chosen are a reflection on what my work is about, both in the past year on the MFA course and also as a way of picking apart what is most important for me to continue with for my final year project. When i read through the words in isolation (without looking at the video documentation of the work it applies to) I notice certain linkages. The “Inhale”, “Exhale” and “Observe”, is a system and a loop, repeated action takes place in the first row of words. The word “Infinite” is very apparent throughout. Action words are another which keep coming up. “Wave”, “Shake”, “Blow” and “Inch”. The third category is Touch and body words. Press, Cut, Extend, Flatten, Hold and Blow. Building, making and creating a physical sculptures/objects/artefacts is always important in my work. Looking further at the video documentation of my work I have tried to create work which focuses on extending the computers abilities into the physical world. For example, the Processing project building fractals by blowing them eventually turned into a performative piece where the loop of inhaling and exhaling is evident in full on my own body, albeit only temporally with the projected imagery. The body again plays a prominent role in the dynamic spaces project. By the end of the project the piece became more about the way you would navigate a space that was unpredictable and always changing, Whether you were inside or outside and if you travel between the danger space. In preparation to work on my final project for year one, I thought it would be useful to go back and look at the past years projects and explore the inherent qualities of the projects. Looking at them in a descriptive way and writing a list of words as they come to mind. There a very little rules, just try and be spontaneous and descriptive. Eleven words where chosen for each. I have three months to develop a final project for year one. I’ve been thinking of incorporating my ideas from the first two terms projects and also looking back at previous projects I’ve not fully realised yet. I feel like i have a range of idea but am trying to think of way to analyse the projects I’ve done so far and critique them sufficiently. I have written a basic project proposal but feel like this will be reworked on over the next two weeks and honing down to several key elements I would like explore and progress. Project Outline My proposal is to develop a project, which questions the nature of what audience members perceive their interaction on certain elements in an installation. Creating two spaces I will explore placing different objects, some useful such as furniture and others decorative or ornamental in different locations. The specific interactions will come from the different placing and movement of those objects by the user/audience. The spaces are directly linked by the other, when one item is touched or moved it will control another aspect in the convening space, and vise versa. The initial ideas of the effect, are going to be starting with controlling the specific environmental conditions or each spaces, this could be hacking into the heating or air conditioning unit or the water supply. The following stage I will explore bringing in previous elements from past works, the inflatable objects [1] been the first part. Exploring different ways for the audience to react to objects that can be different sizes and shapes. I would still like to print one of the fractal shapes from my processing fractal sketch, but find it hard to see how the layers would work on the printing process. After speaking to others they suggested using a program to cut the 3d shape up and see how looks after that. I used a 3d program called nettfab to do this. The video shows 133 layers of the fractal shape, moving from top to bottom. I decided to make a drawing of some of layers on a piece of paper, to see if there was a way of gathering the different layers into one image. I chose an image after around every ten layers.
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© 2013 Jonathan Munro - All Rights Reserved |
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