Building the sculpture for exposition

I set my deadline for the final sculpture a week earlier for an exposition of Noorderzon called AValanche in the Grand Theater in Groningen 24th of March.

Instead of building two sculptures where the audience could interact with (by choosing which mutation the like the most) I'm building one sculpture. The way audience can interact with the work is going to change as well.

I started by painting all materials and constructing a new frame for the servo's. This frame has to hold 10 servo's for controlling the movement of a pentagon shaped screen.

Servo frame

I've made changes in the Arduino code (Firmata Servo sketch) and added an ultrasonic range finder (SRF02).
Right now I can control up to 10 servo's and recieve range data at the same time through just one Arduino.

I might add two more range finders but I need to do some experiments with it first before I install those as well.

Cutting triangle Polystretch projection screen

For this trial exposition I'm gonna use the triangle shaped screen, basically I'm adjusting the prototype to fit the final sculpture column.

For the Night of Arts & Science the code and screen shape will be adjusted as well as the interaction.

Electronics test

The column with the backside open. There's some space at the bottom of the sculpture to hide the laptop and power cables.

The frame holds 10 servo's now, thought they're not all connected. It holds the Arduino and is the support for the cube which goes on top of it with the projection screen.

Below he final result of the column with the prototype. As well as some links to the adjusted Arduino sketch and MaxMSP patch.

Arduino sketch:

Servo_I2C_Firmata.pde.zip

MaxMSP:

Servo_I2C_Maxuino.zip

Final result for Noorderzon Festival, AValanche

GenerativeShape through Syphon and OSC

I got the syphon server running now from Processing. Because I'm using beginShape() endShape() I need to render the frame offscreen in a separate void and then call this thing and draw the texture again for Syphon. The Max patch has been updated, it got range sliders to adjust incoming and outgoing values.

I'm really happy that the workflow works the way I thought it should work. I'll start writing my genetic patches soon, but first I need a moving mask sketch which sticks more accurately to the sculpture.

The only error I'm getting now is upon stopping the Processing sketch.


Here are the patches/sketches:

Processing:
GenerativeShape.zip

Processing Libraries:
codeanticode.glgraphics.*
javax.media.opengl.*
processing.opengl.*
jsyphon.*
oscP5.*
netP5.*

MaxMSP:
Servo-Maxuino.zip

Externals:
maxuino
osc-route
c74
lp.stacey

Max/MSP MeetUp, Groningen (NL)

There's a Max/MSP MeetUp Groningen, Monday 12 March, at 14:00h!

It's an exchange for people who already work with Max, a possibility to ask questions for those who are curious about it, a chance to see what people do with it.

Share your ideas, show your patches (and what you did with them), discuss your patching problems!

There'll also be some performances; one by Kasper van Hoek (self-built instruments / chaotic live sequencing) & Jan Klug (pataphone / theremin, non-rhytmical live looping), one by Nenad Popov (audiovisual generative organism taming).

For those who're not sure yet what Max is: the Cycling '74 website explains it.

[btw, Nenad also has experience with PD, the open source sister of Max].

The event is organized by the Max users group Groningen, and hosted by the IME (InteractiveMedia&Environments) department of the FMI (Frank Mohr International Masters), Academy Minerva. Location: IME_Lab in the basement of Praediniussingel 59, Groningen. 

Hope to see you there!

Workshop: Dimeb EduWear - Bremen (D)

Last Thursday & Friday I went to a workshop EduWear at Bremen University research group Dimeb together with my colleague from Viesueel Geweld 
The objective of this research group is to develop an educational low-cost construction kit for wearable and tangible interfaces. This educational kit is especially made for kids. The workshop we did at the Universty Bremen was an introduction to their method and software Amici.

Amici is a visual programming language especially build for children and those who can't write the Arduino sketches themselves. The Arduino code is written automatically when you drag and connect your building-blocks into the Amici interface.

Amici is free and you can get the software and more info about their workshop method over here: http://dimeb.informatik.uni-bremen.de/eduwear/

Amici programming interface.

Reconsidering the first sketches

A lot has happened lately. I went to a Genetic Algorithm workshop, had some talks with scientists, read a lot about Genetic Algorithms and there are some festivals interested to exposition the sculpture.

Time for me to reconsider the first sketches of the Generative Sculpture and see where it could go. But what exactly is the goal of my sculpture? Is it going to be a research into design where the code will generate several solutions for its shape, color and movement.
Or do I want to give the audience an insight in what happens in when we use genetic and generative algorithms in a design process.

At first I had the idea to make one sculpture which continuously would evolve and grow. But soon I realized that the audience wouldn't see what is happening. The sculpture wouldn't been seen as a generative one and the process that it's undergoing.

Two sculptures and computational interaction

What will happen when I make two sculptures? How will it work, what will the audience see?

The drawing here shows a setup without audience interaction. The two sculptures are evolving and mutating their own way, when one grows stronger the other one tries to mutate to beat the other one.

I like the setup of two sculptures standing opposite of each other. But I wonder or the connection between the two will be seen.


What if I add the option for the audience to choose between the two. Will this give the audience an insight in what is happening? When I make it this way the audience can choose which one of the sculptures is the 'fittest' or esthetically best, most beautiful solution.

Two sculptures and human interaction

The workflow of this idea would be more or less the same except that a human decides which is best.

The two sculptures are mutating, audience decides which 'phenotype' is the best. That sculpture will be the survivor, the other one dies.
The genotype of the survivor copies itself to the sculpture who died.
Now both sculptures are the same again and start mutating again until the audience decides which one is best.

To give an insight in the family tree of this genotype a third column has to be build with an iPad or other touchscreen device.


On this screen the audience can see the genome and they see where mutations happend and/or are happening as well as it's recent history of mutations.
I think that with this setup the audience will see the work his intension and understand to some degree what is happening within evolution and the use of genetic algorithms in design.

genetic organisms

Generative Gestaltung

Today another much wanted book arrived. Generative Gestaltung 'Entwerfen, Programmieren, Visualisieren'. It describes the use of Processing within design and art with loads of examples, techniques and approaches.

About a year ago I saw this book somewhere in Berlin. I didn't bought it because it was in German and I thought there was an English edition available as well. But soon I found out that there wasn't an English edition, I left my e-mail at the publishers website for being updated about the upcoming release of an English version.
It's been a year now and there's still no English version available (and think there never will be) but lets hope that when there's a second edition in the making it will be in English to serve a bigger public.

I haven't read that much from it, but I'm loving it already! Learning Processing and German at once.

GenerativeShape through OSC

I started coding in Processing to look for a solution getting computational generative shapes in sync with the sculpture his servos.

I found a GenerativeShape example on the Processing website and wanted to get x/y coordinates of the generated triangle corners into MaxMSP.
The sketch posted here is an edited example with OSC (for x y coordinates corners triangle) and will eventually output over Syphon. When I got the Syphon running and the OSC noise smoothed I'll upload a video of this code running along with the sculpture.

** edit 19-03-2012 replaced processing sketch **

Here is the adjusted Processing sketch:
GenerativeShape.zip

** edit 19-03-2012 replaced maxpatch **

And a new Max/MSP patch:
Servo-Maxuino[Max6].zip

(It's a Max6 file now. Finished: Smooth the OSC input and get rid of the noise (float zero's). Clean this patch and make all comments in English, Save settings file for scaling etc.)