So, the Arts degree show has now kicked off! I’m really happy with the placement of “Headache” right outside of our course area, spotting it’s victims. Also the laser project “Self Reflection” Ollie and I built is inside the area. Really chuffed having two projects in the exhibit! It has been a manic few days leading up to the degree show, me and my small team were in charge of the print and branding of the DAT degree show. Somehow we pulled it all out of the bag just in time with the tight 4 day deadline! Happy days. Come and check out the exhibition and look at some of our work - Digital Art & Technology Degree Show
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So, the Arts degree show has now kicked off! I’m really happy with the placement of “Headache” right outside of our course area, spotting it’s victims. Also the laser project “Self Reflection” Ollie and I built is inside the area. Really chuffed having two projects in the exhibit!

It has been a manic few days leading up to the degree show, me and my small team were in charge of the print and branding of the DAT degree show. Somehow we pulled it all out of the bag just in time with the tight 4 day deadline! Happy days.

Come and check out the exhibition and look at some of our work - Digital Art & Technology Degree Show

HEADACHE ABSTRACT Within a technological society, an increasing number of people are expressing themselves online via personal websites, blogs and social networking sites. Headache is an interactive installation that portrays human emotion expressed online. Through interacting with Headache, you get a glimpse into the emotions and feelings of unwitting contributors, as it speaks out and displays uncensored fragments of text from peoples blogs and social networking profiles, in real time. The concept behind Headache is to show the link between human emotion and technology; not only showing the way in which we use technology to express ourselves and connect with each other, but also the way in which technology can have an emotional effect on us. It gives us a sense of the humanity behind the data though the contradiction of an emotionless object. 
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HEADACHE ABSTRACT

Within a technological society, an increasing number of people are expressing themselves online via personal websites, blogs and social networking sites. Headache is an interactive installation that portrays human emotion expressed online. Through interacting with Headache, you get a glimpse into the emotions and feelings of unwitting contributors, as it speaks out and displays uncensored fragments of text from peoples blogs and social networking profiles, in real time.

The concept behind Headache is to show the link between human emotion and technology; not only showing the way in which we use technology to express ourselves and connect with each other, but also the way in which technology can have an emotional effect on us. It gives us a sense of the humanity behind the data though the contradiction of an emotionless object. 

I now have really fine tuned the installation. I’ve stopped it from wobbling all over the place, the speech has been set to a good speed, the delays have been fine tuned and lots of other little things. Anyway, now all of the bugs were fixed, it was time to film the installation. I was able to convince my friend Rich to come along and interact with the installation along with myself. I spent a long evening getting the right shots for the video following what I had storyboarded. Prior to this, I had created a title and end sequence already (as I love playing in After Effects). It’s all coming together nicely!
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I now have really fine tuned the installation. I’ve stopped it from wobbling all over the place, the speech has been set to a good speed, the delays have been fine tuned and lots of other little things. Anyway, now all of the bugs were fixed, it was time to film the installation. I was able to convince my friend Rich to come along and interact with the installation along with myself. I spent a long evening getting the right shots for the video following what I had storyboarded. Prior to this, I had created a title and end sequence already (as I love playing in After Effects). It’s all coming together nicely!

After designing the box to contain the Arduino and all of the wiring, I went back to Cornwall to build it with my Dad in his garage. I already had all of the card for it, so all we had to do was purchase the wood and get to work. It turned out really sturdy in the end and all of the measurements were fine. The only problem is that once the head is stuck onto the circular plate, once the servo starts to spin, it becomes quite unstable. I’m planning to fix that today by lowing the fixture of the motor a little, thus giving the head more support.  The next stage will be to attach some LEDs to the eyes of the head! I will need to purchase some coated wire as if the ground and 5v wires touch the lights will short. Also, I will need to buy some resisters if I choose to use the 5v pin. Might be a bit of a fiddly job! I will also need to attach the ultrasonic sensor onto the head. To do this I will cut a small groove for it to rest inside, no glue or tape needed.
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After designing the box to contain the Arduino and all of the wiring, I went back to Cornwall to build it with my Dad in his garage. I already had all of the card for it, so all we had to do was purchase the wood and get to work. It turned out really sturdy in the end and all of the measurements were fine. The only problem is that once the head is stuck onto the circular plate, once the servo starts to spin, it becomes quite unstable. I’m planning to fix that today by lowing the fixture of the motor a little, thus giving the head more support.  The next stage will be to attach some LEDs to the eyes of the head! I will need to purchase some coated wire as if the ground and 5v wires touch the lights will short. Also, I will need to buy some resisters if I choose to use the 5v pin. Might be a bit of a fiddly job! I will also need to attach the ultrasonic sensor onto the head. To do this I will cut a small groove for it to rest inside, no glue or tape needed.
Zoom Info
After designing the box to contain the Arduino and all of the wiring, I went back to Cornwall to build it with my Dad in his garage. I already had all of the card for it, so all we had to do was purchase the wood and get to work. It turned out really sturdy in the end and all of the measurements were fine. The only problem is that once the head is stuck onto the circular plate, once the servo starts to spin, it becomes quite unstable. I’m planning to fix that today by lowing the fixture of the motor a little, thus giving the head more support.  The next stage will be to attach some LEDs to the eyes of the head! I will need to purchase some coated wire as if the ground and 5v wires touch the lights will short. Also, I will need to buy some resisters if I choose to use the 5v pin. Might be a bit of a fiddly job! I will also need to attach the ultrasonic sensor onto the head. To do this I will cut a small groove for it to rest inside, no glue or tape needed.
Zoom Info
After designing the box to contain the Arduino and all of the wiring, I went back to Cornwall to build it with my Dad in his garage. I already had all of the card for it, so all we had to do was purchase the wood and get to work. It turned out really sturdy in the end and all of the measurements were fine. The only problem is that once the head is stuck onto the circular plate, once the servo starts to spin, it becomes quite unstable. I’m planning to fix that today by lowing the fixture of the motor a little, thus giving the head more support.  The next stage will be to attach some LEDs to the eyes of the head! I will need to purchase some coated wire as if the ground and 5v wires touch the lights will short. Also, I will need to buy some resisters if I choose to use the 5v pin. Might be a bit of a fiddly job! I will also need to attach the ultrasonic sensor onto the head. To do this I will cut a small groove for it to rest inside, no glue or tape needed.
Zoom Info
After designing the box to contain the Arduino and all of the wiring, I went back to Cornwall to build it with my Dad in his garage. I already had all of the card for it, so all we had to do was purchase the wood and get to work. It turned out really sturdy in the end and all of the measurements were fine. The only problem is that once the head is stuck onto the circular plate, once the servo starts to spin, it becomes quite unstable. I’m planning to fix that today by lowing the fixture of the motor a little, thus giving the head more support.  The next stage will be to attach some LEDs to the eyes of the head! I will need to purchase some coated wire as if the ground and 5v wires touch the lights will short. Also, I will need to buy some resisters if I choose to use the 5v pin. Might be a bit of a fiddly job! I will also need to attach the ultrasonic sensor onto the head. To do this I will cut a small groove for it to rest inside, no glue or tape needed.
Zoom Info

After designing the box to contain the Arduino and all of the wiring, I went back to Cornwall to build it with my Dad in his garage. I already had all of the card for it, so all we had to do was purchase the wood and get to work.

It turned out really sturdy in the end and all of the measurements were fine. The only problem is that once the head is stuck onto the circular plate, once the servo starts to spin, it becomes quite unstable. I’m planning to fix that today by lowing the fixture of the motor a little, thus giving the head more support. 

The next stage will be to attach some LEDs to the eyes of the head! I will need to purchase some coated wire as if the ground and 5v wires touch the lights will short. Also, I will need to buy some resisters if I choose to use the 5v pin. Might be a bit of a fiddly job! I will also need to attach the ultrasonic sensor onto the head. To do this I will cut a small groove for it to rest inside, no glue or tape needed.

I’ve been flying along with my final year project installation. I’ve been coding until the early hours of the morning, not in a rush, but because it’s been fun to work on! So far, attached to the Arduino board is an ultrasonic sensor, a 180 degree servo motor, a sensor shield and a motor shield. I have coded it so the motor randomly turns from 10 degrees to 180. Once the ultrasonic sensor senses someone within 25 inches of it, the motor will stop for around 10 seconds then turn. The ultrasonic sensor pings every time the motor goes to turn. While this happens, each time the value is updated, it is sent to a processing program. If the value is below 25 inches, a feeling will be drawn from the wefeelfine API. The sentence from this feeling will be displayed on processing sketch (as shown above) and also read out loud through the speakers. The voice used is either a male or female, selected at random. To achieve this I managed to utilise the Macs text-to-speech through processing. A few coding problems I had encountered were as follows. The sync between the Arduino sketch to the Processing sketch was a little off. I’m still not sure how this is possible as the Processing sketch only runs when the value is below 25. To fix this I add in a few small delays here and there. Initially, I used every text-to-speech voice the mac had. A lot of these voices were a bit comical and hard to understand. To fix this, I tested each voice, one by one and narrowed it down to the best male and female voice. Once the ultrasonic sensors value was below 25 inches, the value kept being read and the processing sketch would keep drawing out feelings and reading them out, even if the ultrasonic sensor was not sensing anyone. To fix this, I made a small change to the if statement. If the value of the ultrasonic sensor is NOT equal to what it previously was, then continue. This also stops the head from looking at the same person twice if they stand still. As you can see from the image, there are also issues with what is spoken out and displayed. I’m not sure if this would be suitable for younger people, however, I feel that censoring the data coming through the program would ruin the point of it.
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I’ve been flying along with my final year project installation. I’ve been coding until the early hours of the morning, not in a rush, but because it’s been fun to work on!

So far, attached to the Arduino board is an ultrasonic sensor, a 180 degree servo motor, a sensor shield and a motor shield. I have coded it so the motor randomly turns from 10 degrees to 180. Once the ultrasonic sensor senses someone within 25 inches of it, the motor will stop for around 10 seconds then turn. The ultrasonic sensor pings every time the motor goes to turn. While this happens, each time the value is updated, it is sent to a processing program. If the value is below 25 inches, a feeling will be drawn from the wefeelfine API. The sentence from this feeling will be displayed on processing sketch (as shown above) and also read out loud through the speakers. The voice used is either a male or female, selected at random. To achieve this I managed to utilise the Macs text-to-speech through processing.

A few coding problems I had encountered were as follows.

  1. The sync between the Arduino sketch to the Processing sketch was a little off. I’m still not sure how this is possible as the Processing sketch only runs when the value is below 25. To fix this I add in a few small delays here and there.
  2. Initially, I used every text-to-speech voice the mac had. A lot of these voices were a bit comical and hard to understand. To fix this, I tested each voice, one by one and narrowed it down to the best male and female voice.
  3. Once the ultrasonic sensors value was below 25 inches, the value kept being read and the processing sketch would keep drawing out feelings and reading them out, even if the ultrasonic sensor was not sensing anyone. To fix this, I made a small change to the if statement. If the value of the ultrasonic sensor is NOT equal to what it previously was, then continue. This also stops the head from looking at the same person twice if they stand still.

As you can see from the image, there are also issues with what is spoken out and displayed. I’m not sure if this would be suitable for younger people, however, I feel that censoring the data coming through the program would ruin the point of it.

For my final project - after all of the experiments that I’ve gone through - I have finally come up with a project in which I am happy with. I’ve gone back to looking at emotions which I’m pretty glad about, as I had previously put months of work into using an API to gather emotions to then create a drawing though a machine. So most of that previous work can be applied to this project. The general idea is to give the internet a physical body in which it uses to express peoples online emotion. For the “body” I will use a polystyrene head as there is a strong link between emotion and human facial expression. This will scan the room for people to express emotion to, once it’s spots someone who is within 25 inches of it, it will speak out an emotion as well as project it onto the wall behind it. Once it’s expressed this emotion, it will start looking for another person to interact with. All of these emotions will be found on blogs around the internet. The concept of this project is to look into how emotions expressed online are different to someone in person as well as showing a strong link between emotion and installation art.
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For my final project - after all of the experiments that I’ve gone through - I have finally come up with a project in which I am happy with. I’ve gone back to looking at emotions which I’m pretty glad about, as I had previously put months of work into using an API to gather emotions to then create a drawing though a machine. So most of that previous work can be applied to this project.

The general idea is to give the internet a physical body in which it uses to express peoples online emotion. For the “body” I will use a polystyrene head as there is a strong link between emotion and human facial expression. This will scan the room for people to express emotion to, once it’s spots someone who is within 25 inches of it, it will speak out an emotion as well as project it onto the wall behind it. Once it’s expressed this emotion, it will start looking for another person to interact with. All of these emotions will be found on blogs around the internet.

The concept of this project is to look into how emotions expressed online are different to someone in person as well as showing a strong link between emotion and installation art.