< week.1@martin.magal@fabacademy.2013

week 1: principles and practices, project management (Jan 23)


1st assignment: build a WEB SITE

after playing with wordpress i took my instructor's (ohad) advice and went for direct html editing with BRACKETS, a (new) tool by adobe (free).
update: eventually, after working with BRACKETS for the first weeks, i left it and went to straight text coding with a text editor, NOTEPAD++
i had no choice but to learn some basic HTML and CSS to get the site to look like i needed, with dynamic width columns, etc.

some tools i used

  • wordpress
  • brackets
  • www.oswd.org (html templates)
  • www.w3schools.com (html tutorials)

    • 2nd assignment: propose a final project

    during class, ohad (our super-instructor) told us that the final project requirement was "to make something that makes something." i asked, half jokingly, if something that makes you smile counts.

    the truth is that it was only part joke. i thought that the project could be an opportunity to check out ideas i had about interactive design and installations. specifically, i wanted to explore installations that caused interactions between people, even strange to one another.

    the basic idea

    the idea is to make an installation, in a public/urban setting (like a street, public square, etc) that has to be interesting enough so as to rise people's curiosity and attract them, and then involve them in a social game. the interaction between the people and the installation should be wireless and digital (smartphones), but the result will (hopefully) be a direct and "analog" interaction between the partcipants.

    how the system would work

    i have not yet decided how the installation will look like, i have many ideas (see below) and will choose by later on by feasability, cost, interest, etc. i know it will have output devices to engage the senses - especially sight and hearing. by that i mean: lights, text, video, sound, music. voice.

    to participate in the game, a person should need only his smartphone. at first i thought that users would need to install an app to participate, but then i saw THIS, and it opened the possibility of using TWEETS or text messages (SMS). here's their schematics of the mechanism:

    from twiter to billboard

    the mechanism for MY system would look like this (i think):

  • 1. participant tweets or sends sms
  • 2. web server running some piece of software collects the tweets/sms
  • 3. a raspberry pi based computer next to the installation, running another piece of software, extracts the information from the web server's data base
  • 4. the raspberry pi then gives the instructions to the electronic system the runs the installation: lights/sounds/music/video etc.
  • 5. everybody is happy

    • brainstorming possible social games for the installation

  • writing a story/a sentence. each participant adds a word as a response to a previous partcipant's input. the words are displayed with some kind of billboard/screen/projector.
  • participants text words that are spoken by a text to speec synthesizer, maybe after adding sound effects or songifying. words are also displayed.
  • playing scribble.
  • if instead of tweets or sms there was an app installed in the participants phones, there would be more possibilities, like drawing or moving.

    • examples of interactive installations

    marlin
    marlin by usman haque

    audio grove
    audio grove by christian moeller

    sonic garden
    sonic garden by inbal gil/roy roth

    things i want to explore

    something to make you smile. a smile fabricator. interactive design. human interactions. urban intervention. installation. social games. online vs offline. digital vs analog.

    things i think i will need

  • get web server space
  • install tweet/sms collecting software/programm the web server
  • a raspberry pi
  • program the raspberry pi
  • build the electronics/controller
  • build the installation, including fabricating things and components needed
  • get video, audio and sound equipment needed, etc, etc ...