Author: Adam Myers

Hey everyone,

This week I finished building the structure of my piece. Here are some pictures and a video, this time featuring a better camera than my phone (unfortunately for the video I had no stand to place the camera on, so I had to make do with interacting with the piece and filming at the same time so it is not the greatest but it shows what it need to):

And here is the video (no sound): https://youtu.be/NqG4dshcxG0

Overall thoughts:

I am happy that I was able to setup the system that I desired – where one can place an object on a platform and see it change the piece’s color and lighting. If I had slightly more time one immediate change I would make would be to get a brighter LED light or set up a second light just under the platform the object is placed on. Currently in the light, the LED light is less interesting but whatever you place on the platform is clear to see. And under the dark the led light is more interesting but it is hard to see what is on the platform. I would hope a brighter light or second light would make it see both can be seen clearly under darkness (and maybe look better in the light as well).

If I had much more time or a do over, knowing what I know now, I would consider using a material that wasn’t LEGOs. I am not exactly sure what material, but I think LEGOs did not look as good as I hoped.  Additionally with this I would try to build something closer to my original concept had multiple platforms (3-5) and could hold common desk items like staplers, a calculator, etc.

I plan to bring this in tomorrow with coins and a few little figures for people to test with.

Hey everyone,

Last week I got my RBG led working with my setup and force sensor to change color based on force. Currently its setup so that there is a color for LIGHT, MEDIUM, and HEAVY weight (with respect to what the sensor is able to detect). These colors are RED, PURPLE, and BLUE respectively. I also began assembling the structure of the base, and the single platform. While constructing, I had some thoughts and I might have another part of the structure instead of the platform light up instead of the platform itself. At the moment I am a roof like structure for where the light will be (will describe more with the pictures). So because of the work I still have to do properly hiding wires as best as possibly while creating an interesting enough structure, I am going to stick with this single platform with one light changing. Two more platforms would have more wiring to try to hide/organize and result in a less interesting/nice piece with the time I have left.

Here are the pictures of the structure/setup I currently have (under light, so light does not show as well but I have video for light in the dark):

LIGHT PRESSURE

NO PRESSURE – NO LIGHT

MEDIUM PRESSURE

HEAVY PRESSURE (as you can see platform is quite small, I will probably try to make it wider/bigger so I can place/fit more interesting objects on it)

And here is the video of the light in proper darkness!

 

For this week: I will complete the structure, hiding the most wire/internal bits as possible.  Any suggestions/comments are welcome and appreciated!

Hey everyone,

Last week I assembled a little lego cage (not exactly how the final platforms will look like) around my light setup to see how it looked, and these were the results:

In a lite room

In dark room

And here is a video of how it looks at different brightness:

https://youtu.be/AQeMv7Hk4uQ

Overall I think it looks good at max brightness, which makes me think I will just focus on changing the light’s colors and not brightness AND color. Which as of recently I can now do as I got my hands on some RGB LEDs similar to the colored one I have in my current setup.

For this week I hope to get much more done with these new lights. First I will change the light with one of the RGB lights and get it to change colors with force instead of brightness. Then I will finally get to building the lego structure with the three platforms, where I hope to get AT LEAST one of the platforms functionally changing color with force by the end of the week. This leaves next week (our final week I believe) for me to get the other two platforms functional and resolve any final issues before our final presentation day.

Hey everyone,

Last week I got all the parts I needed to test out my force sensor and learned how to get it to work with a colored LED light. It is setup so that the more force that one puts on the sensor the more bright the light gets (these lights I had on me were just basic colored ones, so I couldn’t play with changing colors yet).  Here are some images and a video:

light on with force

no force no light (for my project, I will likely have some default light color/brightness however).

link to short video, since pictures make it hard to show the brightness changing: https://youtu.be/EgSDkfKE3JI

For this week, I will try to focus on what lights I will be getting (such that I can change their color and could be placed under the lego platforms) and working on changing colors based on weights. If I complete this early I will try “testing” the lights with my prototype from last week to see how I can attach said lights to the platform in the best/most interesting looking way.

I welcome any suggestions in regards to the type of light(s) that would work best for this project.

 

Hey everyone, this week I built a miniature model of my piece out of legos and did some looking into the type of parts I might need.

Here is a picture of said model, I tried using only transparent pieces.

If I commit to using legos for this as someone suggested I hope to get many clear pieces, like the platforms in the above picture, to build the structure out of. Instead of the dark semi-clear pieces you see here.

Here is my rough shopping list, I hope to get some suggestions from everyone in our next meeting as my search results have overloaded my with options and I am not sure what exact part or material is right for me.

Shopping List:

• Force-sensitive resistor (or a few based on how many platforms I have for my piece which will probably be 2-6) https://www.adafruit.com/products/1075
• The led lights that can have color changed
• Any circuits/circuitboards/whatever I will need for the lights/resistor to function (very unfamiliar here)
• Arduino software or something similar to create my program that will change the lights colors/brightness based on force
• The building material used for the piece itself. I am leaning towards continuing with transparent legos and getting more of those so I can make my actual structure (which I am planning to be about the size of a desk lamp, nothing too large but large enough to hold more than what you see in my pictures)

I will probably add more to this list after the upcoming meeting as I hear our suggestions/discussions and as I do more research on these parts.

Link to presentation (view only) CLICK HERE

Summary:

Piece will be an interactive structure.  It will be made of some translucent/transparent material such that light can be produced and seen from within it. These lights may or may not already be randomly changing colors (undecided as of this post). The color and intensity of lights will change in response to the pressure put on the different parts of the structure. So the main idea will be the viewer places objects on the structure (or rearranges current ones on it) and this will change the piece.  It may also be possible to interchange parts of the structure itself (undecided as of this post). A very basic idea of what the structure could look like can be seen below:

The leftmost structure shows what it would look like with no objects placed on it. The second (middle) structure shows on object placed on one of its parts, changing the color of that part (undecided if this will influence other parts of the structure). The rightmost structure shows how one could change the position of one of the structure’s parts.

Ideally this piece will already look interesting and colorful on its own and be an enjoyable piece to view. The main goal/idea however is that the viewer will improve his or her own experience by customizing the piece in the viewer’s own image. And if this piece were to be public, it could tell the current viewer a little about the past viewer(s) based on how the structure was changed and the objects that have been placed or rearranged on it.

 

Here is a link to the presentation of my chosen Light Artist, Leo Villareal (view only):

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1nJ6JoJXmjMBlNs_GubU_OPA3XZjQ3scXI4bQ1ROTy10/edit?usp=sharing

Summary:

The presentation discusses four of the works of Leo Villareal. The first work is the Columns 2(4) which is one of Leo’s first explorations of architectural environments created with LEDs, circuit board, micro controller, and plexiglass tubes. It is pictured below, and randomly changes its color sequence based on a computer program written by Leo himself.

The second work is the Multiverse, which originates from Leo’s desire to create spaces in an already built environment. This piece uses 41,000 LEDs, circuitry, and a computer. Similar to his first piece, he wrote a program which instruct’s the lights colors to change in random sequences. It is pictured below

The third work is the Buckyball, which was an inspired by geodesic sphere/dome shapes. It has 4,500 lights, and a computer used to shift the colors dynamically between over 16 million colors similar to the last two pieces. It is pictured below

The fourth work shown in the presentation is The Bay Lights. Inspired from his desire to use the Bay Bridge as a canvas for light, Leo and the group that helped bring this dream to light (no pun intended) ILLUMINATE  spanned 25,000 LED lights across the western span of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, CA. The lights alternate on and off in random pattern and sequences with no color change. It is pictured below

And here is the link to the video of it shown in the presentation:

The presentation concludes by going over all the key ideas and concepts in these pieces. Leo wants to understand system by stripping them down to their lowest structure, and not only focus on its physical framework but its spatial framework as well. Central to his works are elements of chance, where he programs his works to display random but compelling sequences of lights and his programs serve as a common tool among all his works.

Picture of Leo Villareal used:

Picture of other work, Cosmos, used:

Hello, my name is Adam Myers and I am currently a senior who plans to graduate this year with a double major in IMGD Tech and Computer Science. I love programming, playing games and making games.

My experience with art making includes: Photoshop, Maya, Blender, ZBrush (classes: Digital Imaging & Computer Art, 3d Modeling I)

Here is an image I made in photoshop for Digital Imaging that I quite like:

And here is my final model for 3d Modeling I, a crab humanoid creature(I like crabs):

My experience with programming/electronics includes: C/C++, Java, Python, Unity, Unreal Engine 4

I have created a bunch of programs and a few games, but the one I am most proud of and contributed to the art of (by that I mean I chose what art style we would go with and what assets we would use from the Unity Asset Store :P)  and programming of would be my recent MQP project with a group in Japan which is a game that teaches the player how to write hiragana (one of the syllabaries of the Japanese language) fluently through a rougelike mobile game. Here are some screenshots of it:

My other creative arts: Less often now, but I enjoy assembling and painting models from Game Workshop (Warhammer/Warhammer40k). Unfortunately I have none of my models with me and no pictures handy to show off.

As someone who has been interested in creating games for most of his life, my inspirations are often the games I have played, from Super Mario 64 to Dragon Quest to Dark Souls and so on. Outside of games, fantasy and science fictions works have always inspired me like the works of Tolkien, Star Wars, and Warhammer/Warhammer40k. My goal is to simulate the joys and experiences I had in these various games and works in my own games I have created and will create for others.