Newsletter #9 & 10
We presented our project on Monday (3/18) for our Halves milestone! We were very excited to share our progress throughout the first part of the semester with the faculty and with the other students here in Pittsburgh. Moreover we chose our two prototypes for fabrication: Jars and Mirrors! Our presentation went really smoothly, except for one sticking point: is our project art?
When we pitched our project, we identified our deliverables as “interactive, art installations.” As we started to brainstorm, we felt like we ran into some issues with calling our work “art” directly because it led us down some swampy paths: What is art? Are we actually making art? What do we need to add to this so that it can become art? We all felt like we were still doing art, but it was liberating to put the label aside. When we explaining this during our presentation, the faculty felt like we were abandoning our artistic exploration. They wanted us to step up and declare that we are making art!
It was a good thing that our presentation was on Monday because we went into overdrive for the rest of the week! We knew that the Game Developers Conference was coming up next week so we wanted to square away as many details as possible. That way we could also place our parts orders before we left for a week. We spent the rest of Monday and Tuesday in long meetings hammering away at the fine details of the projects and defining the directions for the Jars and Mirrors installation. The PCB that Elwin and Jason designed also arrived and Jason promptly tested it.
Yotam and Anisha met with Ali at ArtFab to discuss further fabrication arrangements. We wanted to make sure things would all be ready since we are operating on a tight schedule! We also spoke with him about the infrastructure for setting up his laser cutter (which is our exchange for using their equipment to fabricate our project).
Anisha spent the rest of the week designing the interior construction of the Mirrors installation, down to the specifics of the aluminum framing and the mount to hold the mirrors inside of it. Elwin researched what type of servo we would need to drive the mirrors and Anisha designed a mount so the servo could turn the mirror without bearing any weight. Finally, Jason identified all of the electronics we would need for these two installations, as well as for the reserve of spare parts.
On Friday of that week, we put in the bulk of our orders including: the 8 panels of mirrored acrylic, servos with the associated servo mount, the newly designed PCB and associated components, power supplies, white LEDs for the jars, a raspberry pi, speakers, and SD card readers. Our remaining parts include the construction materials such as the aluminum framing and exterior wood.
GDC!
Our entire team was gone for a week in San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference. After sorting through all of our email, we found that all of our parts successfully arrived in Pittsburgh so we were all anxious to get back to unbox everything!
Looking Forward & Current Challenge
When we return we will verify the shipping manifests to make sure all of our parts arrived safely and then test the components so we can report any faulty parts immediately. Our chief concern at this point is if all of our parts work and if our designs work as intended (like the servo mount specifically). We are looking to front-load our electronics and software work so we can start user testing the interactions. We’ll be busy over the next few weeks but we couldn’t be more excited!