Plasma Speaker

Last week, in addition to the two exhibit ideas that I refined, I also brought in another project that I've been developing. I'm very interested in sound, electricity (specifically high voltage), and the cultural and psychological effects of playing with danger. 

A plasma speaker uses a high voltage source (in the 10s of kV range) to produce an arc of ionized molecules in the air, creating a stream of plasma. This plasma is pulsed at a frequency too high to hear, but is modulated with an audio signal that can be heard coming directly from the arc.

Stanford's own Paul Demarinis used a similar phenomenon with the flame as a medium instead of an electrical arc.

I'd like to push this piece forward to a point that I can get some meaningful interactive elements. To do this, I need to ensure that no one receives an inadvertent shock from the high voltage sections, then I can concentrate on one of several variable elements. The distance between the electrodes controls not just sound quality, but also volume. The material, shape, and orientation of the electrodes makes a big difference as well. I could also allow the visitor to control the sound source. For starters, the distance between the electrodes will hopefully yield some interesting discoveries.

Groovy CDs

Groovy CDs (An exploration of diffraction from CD grooves)

Project in a Nutshell: When we see colorful patterns on the surface of a CD we are seeing the diffraction of white light with these rainbows of colors being the diffraction patterns. A CD consists of a series of evenly spaced reflective grooves that act as a diffraction grating. This project demonstrates the effect by having users shine a green laser on the CD tower thereby creating lights cast on the walls and ceilings showing these diffraction patterns. 

Concept and Evolution: This particular prototype was less of an evolutionary process than it was something I ended up doing as a backup. I was originally going to create a prototype based on magnifying glasses warping light from a string of lights, but the strong of holiday lights I bought from the store short-circuited and I had to use a back-up idea. This particular idea arose from the everyday knowledge that the face of CDs often cast a beautiful array of rainbow colors. I once did an experiment in science class years and years ago that involved shining different light sources on the CDs and observing its effects. This inspired me to create this Groovy CDs prototype. Initially I wanted to hang the CDs in a netting to create a tower-like display, then have a rotating inner motor that slowly turned the laser, and caused these diffraction lightings to appear all across the walls slowly. I thought this would be mesmerizing to watch and also interactive since any people could experience the phenomenon all at once. However, I realized that it was hard to angle the laser and CDs correctly so that the patterns were projected high enough onto the walls and this was hard to control. Instead, I decided to give users the freedom to shine the laser anywhere on the tower's exterior. If I hadn't arrived at my final product through this process, the prototype probably would not have taken on this tower shape, and would have been much simpler to emphasize the point of discovery.

Ideal Interaction: My concept of the ideal interaction would be multiple people with laser pointers who could shine lasers on the CD and cast diffraction patterns on the walls and ceilings for themselves---as well as other passersby---to notice and wonder about. As I mentioned before, I didn't make the structure a complex tower shape with lots of intent since it was originally going to serve a different purpose, but I thought preserving this structure might encourage collaboration and multiple interactions if multiple people could interact with the exhibit at once. As was pointed out, the fact that there are so many CDs obscures the point of this exhibit, and something more simple and direct would be better.

Problems and Improvements: There would be a lot of improvement if I were to move forth with this exhibit, in particular, modifying and simplifying in the prototype set up to better clarify the intent of this exhibit: what do users walk away knowing and discovering? With the CD tower set-up it becomes confusing what the interaction is, or why there are so many CDs. Instead I'd modify the set-up to only consist of 2 or 3 CDs, and a controlled laser pointer where you could project the laser on the CD. Then where the pattern projects on the opposite side, I'd have a protractor that can measure the separation between the points of the pattern and demonstrate this in relation to the distance of the back wall from the CD source. Then I would make the back wall movable so users can discover how the diffraction patterns move apart relative to the distance from the CD source.

Other ideas: As I mentioned this was actually my 2nd back-up ideas after I had material-issues with my other two (materials not arriving in mail, short-circuiting a series of lights.) Originally I wanted to play with the idea of a lightscape that could be created by bending light rays with magnifying glasses. I would have many (on the order of 100s) small magnifying classes connected to a base with flexible wires. Then users could bend then into the light, overlapping each other, and see what the effect is, as well as try to make patterns. This was inspired by an exhibit I've seen where you can bend light into arcs that eventually piece together into letters (to the right) and was fascinated by the effect. I think it would've been engaging to have users play with light and magnifying glasses, discovering how light bends as they try to reach a goal ie. spelling their own name, for instance. I actually tried to attempt this prototype for 2 weeks in a row (the next week where we made 2nd versions of prototypes I wanted to bring in this one as a 3rd) but the second string of lights I bought from Target *also* broke (all the lights blew out spontaneously when I hadn't even done anything...) so I think I'll take a break from light bulbs for now since we clearly have an antagonistic relationship...!

Red Banana

Red Banana

This exhibit is an exploration of light and color which allows the user to experiment with color mixing. I was interested in the way light is filtered through translucent colored gels. I intended for the user to select an object (the examples I had in my proof of concept were a yellow banana, a red apple, a blue water droplet, and a green tree) and one or more colored filters (made from colored gels) and place them inside the box as indicated.

When the user looks through the viewing hole while shining a light through the light hole, he will see the object through the filter and it will appear to be a different color. I didn't know very much about light and color when designing this exhibit; I thought I remembered earlier in the quarter someone told us that not knowing much about the topic of your exhibit was a good thing, so I tried to learn as I prototyped the exhibit. I guess I didn't learn enough, however, because I now realize that I could have done several things to make this exhibit work better. For example, I think it makes more sense to put the filters in front of the light source instead of in front of the user's eye. That way, it is less obvious how the color will change. Even small children could probably predict how something will look when viewed through a colored filter, but they might not guess that the color will also change if the light is shining through it. In addition, I could have used opaque materials for the "objects" (banana, apple, etc.) instead of translucent colored acrylic. Since I do not intend to show anything with the light shining through the objects, it is not necessary.

 

Build Your Own Kaleidescope

Name of the piece: Build your own kaleidescope (Warning: future versions deviated from this theme and may henceforth be known by other names). 

How your prototype evolved from the original idea to the current prototype: My original vision was to ensconce the whole production in a cube because I wanted to blow glitter around using fans and use the mirrors to make the glitter go on forever. This turned out to be a pure and classic example of something that "worked perfectly in my head." Luckily, the infinite reflections still looked brilliant and, after getting glitter all over the common spaces of my house, I found that people really liked playing with the box my taking off the lid (I never intended for the lid to be removable in my original conception of the project) and putting their own objects in the box and creating personalized infinityscapes. 

Ideal visitor experience: I'm trying to strike the right balance of a compelling baseline experience with enough incorporation of the user's creativity to make the experience really exploratory. Ideally, I'd like users to enjoy the cube regardless of whether they're inclined to mess with it's innards or not. Sebastian suggested a rally constrained set of items that the user would be allowed to manipulate. I agree; I think people are overwhelmed by too many options and that constraints actually encourage people to be more creative. One direction that I'm exploring is whether or not user-controlled lighting provides enough interactivity for a good experience. 

Problems you encountered/next steps for this piece (adjustments, rebuild, new ideas, let go of…): Like I mentioned, I had too much stuff when I last presented this. I need to think carefully about what options I present to the user to strike the right balance between user created infinityscapes and something that's visually delightful as soon as you stumble across it.