see midterm-log for details about what i made & how.
i thought i failed the ask, but i didn’t.
granted, i was not able to achieve the desired ‘interactivity’ (due to my misdoings with the fsr), but i:
- made a system with physical controls.
- kept people engaged.
- understood all the technical concepts.
- made people enjoy.
i do wish that i worked in a team. i was envious of seeing people split up their work, and achieve something greater than what they could individually produce.
i regret not scaling down my project. this prevented my experimentation with testing, physical-interaction-design, and actually being able to see how people interacted with the thing i made. in the next one, i shall scale it down, to be able to do a small thing really well. it would also help to account for equal amounts of time for all the things that we are asked to do (and not let circuitry take up all my time).
throughout this midterm-period, i’ve managed to help multiple people with their circuits & their programs. that, to me, was a richer learning experience than making my own project. it forced me to grapple with the basics, and do so with a high level of confidence since someone else was desperately relying on me.
i am happy with the extra hours that i invested at the beginning of this course. this is clear evidence for me to go about everything in my life with high amounts of curiosity — i am on the floor to learn.
i love electricity. it is like falling in love with infinite possibilities all over again — exactly how it felt when i first stumbled upon code.
now that i’ve gone through this process with a medium before, i can tell that the essence of electricity is different than the essence of code— and i am far away from understanding what it is yet. i also know that i can only arrive at it via about 4-years worth of experimentation (atleast that’s how much it costed me with code).
another thing with electricity, or more fittingly — ‘physical’ computing — is the tangibility. i can feel something there (see tangibility makes magic more plausible). i don’t know what it is, but the feeling is strong & attractive. there is just something different about having a thing interact with you outside the flat premise of the screen.
simple things — such as seeing input resulting in output, and being in a loop of feedback with a computing machine (where something you do changes the way something else is) — are powerful experiences.
my love & fascination for electricity scare me.
i fell in love with something that i wasn’t academically trained for (code), and struggled to find an economically feasible way to exercise my wonder.
it feels like the exact same will happen with tangible things (and electricity) — i will have this thing that i love & really want to do, but will struggle to find economically-feasible spaces to do so. i don’t want to let that happen again.
i’m 25. every day i spent split — between being a design-researcher / product-designer & computational-artist / researcher — was torture. i need to exit this space with a way to exercise my curiosity.
i don’t want to make a lot of money. i just want to be able to keep doing this thing that i love. please tell me how to; tom.
in the next project (final), i would like to: