The Food Chain

Hola

Here is a post strictly dedicated to the last project I worked on, and eventually exhibited in June. It is called "The Food Chain," and among other commentary, it is meant to be a reference to the existing hierarchies of control between humans and animals/the organic world. You can find all of the original documentation, coding, write-ups, testing plan, and all that good stuff on my course blog.

My class exhibited in a gallery (if that is what you want to call it) that was on campus for our mid-year exam project. Our original opening date was scheduled for June 17th, and the show ran until June 24. I relocated all of my supplies and "moved-in" to the gallery around the 10th of June. The space I occupied was actually upstairs from the gallery space; a cold, completely darkened room measuring about 20' x 80.' Every day for the week leading up to the exam I spent day and night in that cold room, constantly working and tweaking to make the installation just right.







By the day of the opening, I was completely set, except for one lurking "issue" which did not prevent the system from operation, just kept it from running properly. Unfortunately, my classmates were all nowhere near ready to be exhibiting that day, and we had to postpone the show until Monday. All of my hard work, and the piece was only exhibited to the public for two days. :(

Either way, when the opening came around on the 22nd, the piece was up and running without a hitch. It looked and worked beautifully.





How it works:

A person walks in, turns to the left, and sees this:

While their eyes are not yet adjusted, the darkened space catches most off guard
This is the system in its standby phase

The object in the middle is basically a steel enclosure with glass on three sides of the upper half and wood on the four sides of the lower half. Behind the enclosure there is a computer on a desk, and on top of the enclosure is my interactive "lid" that houses my motorized light holder, a video camera, and two 600mm UV bulbs; all of which are pointed down into the enclosure. Inside the enclosure there are three motorized robots, all of which walk differently and have different UV colors/patterns.







This is the original screen that the first user of the day would see. I designed this whole interface and made it able to be clicked on, triggering different actions within the enclosure.






If you click on the different buttons in the top right corner, the video camera mounted in the lid looks for the color, locates it, tells the motorized light unit where to go, and then the light in the enclosure shines onto the selected robot for four seconds and the robot's info page comes up.

This is what the camera that is mounted in the lid sees.

The colors are the three different robots.
I added the lines to help in developing the mapping system and troubleshoot.

Here are the different info pages displayed as if that robot was clicked on, as well as a picture of what they look like when the light is on them.

"Link" was the first robot purchased.
The name comes from me thinking he resembled Link from Legend of Zelda,
as well as taking advantage of the obvious play on words since it walks upright.

Link in action







Anyone remember the video game "Earthworm Jim?"
I really hated it and never knew what to do, but that is where this robot's name came from.


Jim in action








One of the NYU exchange students saw this robot and said I should name it Herman.
I did.
It just so happens that it ended up being the pink robot.


Herman in action

Various pictures of the installation that I took.

Me and installation in standby phase



Me using the system.
These pictures were taken before I refined the mapping;
you can see that the light is not shining on any robot in particular.

3/4 Wide view in standby phase

Side view in standby phase

Hey gimme a break I was flyin' solo

I worked with the assistance of several people on this project, but probably the biggest contributor was Dino Fizzotti, a Master's student in Electrical Engineering. Actually, the project would not even have been successful without his help. He helped me develop the much more technical aspects of the project involving custom circuitry.

This is the relay circuit we developed to enable the 5V out
from the Arduino to switch on the 50W, 12V downlight.

This is the custom circuit that was applied to each robot.
Two potentiometers allow for control of light-dependent resistor/transistor
switching sensitivity and control of voltage out to motor.

This is the Light Dependent Resistor.
When enough light is hitting it, it switches the robot on and makes it move

Head of Digital Arts Christo Doherty is also a photographer. Below are his photographs from the day of the planned opening and the day of the actual opening.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/christopics

My instructor and I trying to figure out that final problem

The Food Chain has one major flaw -- the robots only move forward. Within 3-4 clicks, a robot can navigate across the entire space, running into a wall. What happens during an exhibition and the piece is on display for hours and hours? Nobody wants to come up to see a whole bunch of robots in a corner getting illuminated when you click. This is what Andreas Broeckmann, director of the International Symposium of Electronic Art (and former director of Transmediale), and I had a long discussion about during my Alpha Testing stages. He was right. I knew it was a huge huge huge problem from the start, but within the time alotted for this project, there was no way I would be able to make the robots move in more than one direction.

Eventually I knew exactly what I needed. Because I was attempting to directly imitate/reference enclosures found in zoos and similar places, I needed a zookeeper. This way I could add a human element to the piece, while also solving my problem and really bringing the project full circle. The zookeeper was Ben Lundberg, an NYU student that is here at Wits originally on the exchange program, but has decided to stick around for another semester. I have seen him perform only once, but that was all I needed.

Ben's job was to not only help the robots when they were stuck, but also
to anthropomorphize them as much as possible.



He was great.
I received many compliments on how he was the perfect touch.

Let me know what you think! Comment right on the blog or email me or Facebook or something!!!

Remember, you can check my course blog for more details on the project if you are interested. I will post up the videos once I get the chance to compress them.