Turk: 2010

• Social Sculpture : Fall Quarter 2010 : Ricardo Rivera
• Final Project: Turk
• Stanford University

placeholder: pics of robot

Recap: The main goals for this project was to capture \interactions that are unique to the new social culture that is being created from web communications. Many times, we find ourselves bringing high-level social gestures to the system-level abstractions. Whether it be linking through webs of friends, "writing on walls", or skyping with a friend studying abroad, a key element prevents this interaction from being interpreted as "real", but rather is given a class of its own. 

The project breaks that class by bringing concrete physical interaction from the virtual space. A robot was constructed from the repurposed remains of a toy remote car, and Arduino that handled electronic functionality with remote signals, a laptop that hosted a Java server that relayed OSC (open sound control) signal from a MAX/MSP/Jitter patch and a Flash front-end. The flash site was uploaded to a web server. The robot could thus be controlled through any computer connected to the the same network router.* A live webcam feed was connected to the robot and streamed through means of the media server on Justin.tv.

The laptop display also handled OSC receiving of messages from the user.

The current flash interface can be found at:

http://stanford.edu/~ctorres7/TEST.html

The current interface currently contains an instructional, however from preliminary tests with the robot, this will be removed. In order to bypass network control and see the full interface of the robot (unconnected) hit CTRL+ENTER on the homescreen. A button will be placed for easier access.

The robot was set up at Stanford and was allowed given a test drive. Almost immediately, we found that a question of a virtual person or body within the confines of a photography free zone is constituted as a person. Many bugs and further functionality need to still be worked on, but I hope to further explore this area with this art piece.

SKIP TO 2:15.

 

* Consideration were made for world-wide access to the robot controls, however this required port-forwarding and MAC cloning of university internet configurations that we protected by multiple firewalls. Testing will be done to reconfigure a more accessible network connection to provide full access. Perhaps even a network card from a phone 3G service..

Project Redesign

Download now or watch on posterous

video-2010-11-14-20-55-31.3gp (5728 KB)

So, last week I realized I did not like the direction this project was going. I felt that much of the interactivity capable by the MAX/MSP/Jitter language was being limited by computer vision problems and inaccuracies. Instead, after seeing ACCESS, "an interactive installation that lets web users track anonymous individuals in public places, by pursuing them with a robotic spotlight and acoustic beam system" by Marie Sester, I decided to do a redesign of the project.

 

I particularly still wanted to keep this concept of virtual space and idenitity (two places at once) and the idea of interacting physically from a distance. This project will deal with constructing a "robot" from a toy remote car which will be receiving OSC messages from a server locally hosted on my computer. The robot will have a camera for guidance and an LED ticker that can be used to display messages. 

I feel this project has a lot of potential due to the anonymity of the beholder and the forced interaction of passerbys. It really test the bounds between the 2 dimensionality of social web applications to a less human exterior, but far more human interior of a human-guided robot.

 

Goals for this week:

Redesign UI and get FlashServer running for video feeds. 

Design robot. I am thinking to make it out of cardboard similar to the architectural topographic models (the ones that look like level sets) to get past the robotic stereotype (chrome and lights).

 

 

Untitled

Download now or watch on posterous

video-2010-11-08-16-11-30.3gp (1887 KB)

Silhouette Series & Colors Idea w/ Presentation mode

See the full gallery on posterous

Thought the superposition could best be modeled by series.

Outer columns and singular. Inner columns are merged.

Max Silhouetter Refined

Used cv.jit mean and got the absolute difference. Colorbias was added to alter color. Multiplied by two, concatenated together. Having trouble with patcher for text. Still working on voice recognition.

Me and a waterbottle.

Paint Spill Lamp

I finished it!! It comes in two colors!!! lol

Founding of Arizona

Made for the Bringing Home the Border event , this piece takes into account the story of the founding of Tenochititlan, current day Mexico city, where a eagle was devouring a serpent. In this composition, the roles have reversed in a new hostile environment.

Digital Language Lab Mural

Made it for their tenth anniversary. Misspelled the University motto. lol.

Raza Day Mural

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This 40"x150" portable mural was painted in the space of four hours with the help of high school students at MECha de Stanford Raza Day Conference. The mural still needs a final run through to incorporate shading, stylized color selection, and a thumb on a diploma, but the basic intention I feel was captured.

It should be done in time for An Art Affair.  :)

RGB Wheel

Final Project : Art & Electronics

After some many hours of soldering and couple of burnt fingers, the final project is complete. 

The paradigm that occurs with skill acquisition has several distinct characteristics; most notably the effect prior knowledge can have on the form, content, applicability, and belief in a hypothesis. Anything barring the title of Traditional is subject to this paradigm. As such, these different standards inhibit further progress and innovation. This project aims to address this concept of the traditional, the very core of the influence of prior knowledge, and turn it on its head, in the head. 

Automatically, the piece is expected to produce a aural cue based on the identification of the piano keys. Instead, the system attempts to present the spectrum as a compilation of its three component parts - red, green, and blue.

Each pod has binary wiring to account for the over 21 input streams and reduce them to a manageable eight to allow for the Arduino microcontroller to send the proper serialized signal to the RGB matrix.

Each key represents a certain intensity of a component color and "mixes" with the others to produce yellow (high red, high green), teal (high blue, high green), magenta (high red, high blue), and every color in between. 

The modular design is an abstraction of the Aztec sun calendar. 

Larkin Mural

Made over the weekend with Larkin dorm in Stanford, California. The RAs are the foosball players.

Formaldehyde Uterus

Fetus!!!

So this was my first Art & Electronics piece for class. I made the fetus out of some dinky clay I had, pierced its center with solder to act as an umbilical cord, and embedded a couple of transistors and IC chips into half its body.

The base was crudely constructed from some foam core and painted with a circuit board-like design. The electronic component is a couple of warm colored LEDs attached to a potentiometer that controls light intensity (there is a knob on the side that makes it almost glow)

I wish the glass was a bit more beaker-like, but alas the cafeteria cup had to do. I was experimenting with different ways to catch that light and found that a salt solution (technically a suspension which allows the dispersion of light) captures the light and gives this piece an ominous effect.

The overall idea was to comment on the turn towards a biotechnological emphasis on industry. The piece is intended to stimulate a person's reaction to the intersect between human and synthetic devices.

Sun Mural @ Home

This is a special mural created for my mother's Christmas present. It is located on the back porch area and once GoogleMaps updates, I'll post the aerial view.

The design was inspired from my parent's collection of suns and moons amassed from their travels in Mexico. They certainly have a fascination with the sun and moon duality, and this mural serves to acquiesce the inner Nahua in each of them.

The moon will be part two of this operation.