Creative Tech Studio

Over the past few weeks, I had to have an honest conversation with myself in the time and energy I have left to put into this project. I decided that I cannot do the entire piece (each Pheonix stage), but instead, I will focus on the aspect of compiling ashes from the past to create substance for new ideas to rise from it. In this blog, I instead of a video of that stage piece. I still want to incorporate light using the ultrasonic sensor, but I have been having a lot of trouble with the code and the particular sensor that I am using. I still want my piece to be interactive where the audience engages with the piece, I need to brainstorm how. I have been thinking about incorporating sand in the piece where people can add it, but I'm not sure how that could be measured or sensed for an input to lead to a light output.

The last few weeks I have been looking into different LEDs that I could use for my project. I have looked into LED strips (short and long) and spent most of my time playing with them to understand how I could use them in relation to the Ultrasonic sensor. I also wanted to fine tune the type of code I was using to enact the LEDs with the input from the Ultrasonic Sesnor. I learned that you could cut and re-solder the LED strips, but I am still pretty unfamiliar with them and I am scared to break/short circuit something. But I spent a good amount of time understanding the connections and how I would potentially connecct it to an Arduino board. Also, LED strips require a lot more pieces such as a capacitor, direct current, and specific battery packs. I believe the connection and coding process is a little different that working with other objects and arduino. I began working on the physcial computing of my LED lights for the physical art work. I found a diagram on how to connec...

In the past few weeks, I was able to add color to my second sculpture. Painting the wrinkles was difficult because the fabric was the same color as the selected swatches for this phase of the piece. Phase two represents a Pheonix setting its own nest on fire, which includes the color orange, red, and a rose gold pink. I want to spend more time bringing out the colors of the wrinkles in this phase before I move on to the next one and then complete the fourth.  Especially since I have not selected a form, or set of swatches for this project. Adding orange Adding red and rose gold pink Top View Bottom View I also did some research on ultrasonic sensors by looking at controlling LEDs with an ultrasonic sensor and found a  good tutorial.  It also provides another option for programming Arduino called "Webduino Blocky" which is a form of block code like Scratch. I plan on working more with the ultrasonic sensor and ...

I started to begin working with my sculpture  again. I added on to the color palette that translates into the different stages that I have focused on. And I also worked with heat and the fabric I had choose to make sure that I am showing a transition with the fabric.   Short Term Action Plan : I plan to finish heating the fabric and the begin adding paint to the groves of the fabric   Long-term Action Plan : Repeat these processes for the other three stages and begin building my Arduino board using the ultrasonic sensor and lighting again.

Last spring, I began building my physical computing skills, which I would like to continue to fortify, and have been over that past semesters. I also want to build my coding and code remixing skills through processing. The two projects I have are already linked to how I can build these skills are rich in concepts....  1. Thesis Topic:  Creative Technology and the Ability to Bounce Back from Failure: The Journey of an After-School Program Focusing on Art and Technology Main Concepts: Color coding qualitative and quantitative data to think about it in complex ways using data from the Daily Questionnaire I give my students after each Creative Tech Club Session ( see below) Daily Questionnaire Filled Out by Student Materials   Laptop Lynda.com Downloading Processing 2 . Exhibit:  Midnight Phoenix Show : focusing on personal growth, layers, and movement. Materials Arduino LEDs HC-SR04 Ultrasonic Distance Sen...

The past week I have brainstormed different ideas based on concepts that I wanted to further extend from other work that I am doing. I want to work more with coding and want to learn a bit more about certain sensors. Below I made a digital mind map to show what I was thinking about.