Jetha's Graduation Project

Category: Supervisor Meetings

Categories
Construction Supervisor Meetings

Week 20 – Pause in Production

SMART goals for this week

  • Finish circuits
  • Make diagrams for thesis
    • circuit diagrams
    • iteration timelines
  • Make booklet for blog
    • Process for each part

What I did this week

Supervisor Meeting Notes

Thesis

  • Feedback for first draft thesis
    • Remove details of hardware 
    • Beneficiaries
      • Make sure it’s clear how the work addresses them
    • Planning
      • Evaluation of the Moscow and SMART how it helped prioritisation
    • Ideation and conceptual
      • Make clearer of what the process was 
    • Production
      • Make clear what was done and what will be done 
    • Code may not be needed
    • Merge stats and hardware paragraph together
  • Finish circuits film that finish writing and then do housing 

Due to the time left my supervisor advised that I paused production after finishing the circuits to focus on the project report. So, I made some final touches like recutting the racks as there wasn’t enough space for it to slot into it’s holding. Acrylic for the spatial organisation was also cut. I made them slightly bigger than planned to allow for it to be made smaller if need be for the housing construction.

The pause in production was also caused by a delay on Monday as the physical computing lab was closed the whole morning for filming. I was supposed to finish the circuits in the morning and go to the prototyping lab for the housing in the afternoon. But ended up working on finishing the circuits until closing.

I’m going to make a demonstration video with the circuits in case I can’t do the housing before the deadline. So, I also cut out 45cm x 45cm cardboard squares to mount the circuits onto.

I brought all the circuits home so, I could set up the demonstration over the weekend. I spent the rest of the working week on finishing and editing the project report.

I also finalised a design for the hardware symbolisation after all the delays

Categories
Construction Supervisor Meetings

Week 19 – Finishing circuits

SMART goals for this week

  • Solder circuits
  • Laser cut parts
  • Call around for circuit boards
  • 3D print buttons and light tubes
  • First draft of thesis

What I did this week

Supervisor Meeting Notes

Thesis

  • Audience research 
    • Could be merged with beneficiaries 
    • Show in the development what changes were made for the audience
  • Conclusion 
    • The project and its future 
  • Made circuit for spatial organisation
    • The circuit didn’t work I’m not quite sure why.
  • Soldered LED Matrix and circuit
  • Laser cut and tested gear and rack. I think it’s catching because it’s not fixed in place. If it is the gears than the teeth just need to be sanded down a bit more
  • 3D print buttons and light tubes.
    • The buttons need to be sanded and painted but that can happen at the end
  • Got help for the spatial organisation circuit
    • I booked a meeting with Tom who helped me figure out how to make circuit work and made this schematic for me to follow.
  • Handed in round 2 form for the exhibition
  • Make user control circuit
    • soldered LEDs together
  • Got recommended to use servo driver to only use one arduino
  • Couldn’t get code to work together
  • Got old DELL laptop from mum
  • 9V plug didn’t work with solenoids causing them to be a bit faulty when in a certain position but I got a 12V plug
  • Struggled to get a hold of the charity that were going to help me get circuit boards
    • Called my laptop repair guys they have a laptop with no harddrive for £30
  • Undid my old MacBook Pro 2019 laptop
  • Figured out why user control circuit didn’t work
    • the one solenoid that wasn’t work was because it was in a faulty pin on the board
    • Moved LEDs to analog for brighter LEDs
    • Zeyu helped merge code and also showed me how to not use delay
    • the one solenoid stopped working when I put them in the strip board. I think it might be because the breadboard has resistance whereas the strip board doesn’t. Hopefully I just need to add some resistors in the circuit like I did with the spatial organisation
  • I did a draftish of my thesis so I’m up to the production part.
Categories
Construction Supervisor Meetings Technician Meetings

Week 18 – Starting Construction

SMART goals for this week

  • Start construction whether it’s circuits or housing
  • Write beneficiaries
  • Write draft of wall text

What I did this week

Supervisor Meeting Notes

Thesis

  • Detailed Blog, Thesis summarises
  • Literature Review
    • Reason for choosing medium by excluding another medium
      • doesn’t need to be back up by evidence
    • Inspiration for the piece
  • 50% research 50% process
    • Iterations
      • Whole piece
      • and document the individual in the blog
    • Financial reasons for doing things a certain way is fine
  • Separate weekly posts and extra detail
  • laser cut test gears for user control slider and trackpad mechanism out of acrylic.
  • Meeting with Alex
    • Alex is the prototyping technician. We went over some of my designs and he said that I would need to make the circuits first before making the housing for them to go in. I’m thinking of making one circuit and housing at a time.
  • Meeting with Sarah
    • Had a meeting about the exhibition. They need to see pictures of what’s been made, a draft of the wall text and be notified of any changes that have been made. I wasn’t expecting this I was hoping to work on my thesis writing over the weekend.
  • buy hamster wheels, solenoids
    • I had to buy an extra solenoid as CCI didn’t have anymore available. I also bought the hamster wheels. They look good, i’ll need to ask Alex what the best way to fix them to the servos.
  • test button 3d printing
    • I did a test of the button cap for the user control box. the hole that the solenoid is supposed to go through doesn’t fit. So I’ll have to make it bigger in the model before printing again.
  • bought the acrylic
    • I decided on the fluorescents as they let light pass through them the best and the colours worked nicely together. The red and orange are quite similar. But I’ll use them for the smallest panels as they’re on either side of the piece so I’m hoping they’ll look different enough if they’re not next to one another.
    • I also bought 2 sheets of clear frosted for light diffusing the spatial organisation box and interface re-mediation.
  • Started soldering spatial organisation
  • Thesis writing
    • I did a draft of the beneficiaries
  • drafting wall text
Categories
Prototyping Supervisor Meetings

Week 15 – Testing

SMART goals for this week

  • Prototype each element of the piece

What I did this week

Supervisor Meeting Notes

Project considerations

  • Make sure there’s a sense of scale
  • Contemplate a table layout

Thesis Questions

  • For the new theorists to make it stronger
    • Frame a story around
    • See what they all agree is non-neutral. How did they get to that theory of non-neutral speak about that
  • Introduction
    • Cultural interface in computing as the field 
  • Literature review
    • argument
  • Presentation 
    • Maybe write some questions
      • Whether the abstraction 
      • How to balance the abstraction vs being too on the nose
      • Whether I’ve gone too abstract 


This the drawing I submitted for the first exhibition form.

While testing I realised I may have been too ambitious with the initial design so I’m going to start creating the simplest versions of each thing and then adding more detail if there’s time remaining.

Hardware

I used some cardboard and thread to test out the connections between each shape for the chainmail. I wanted to see if it was better to have multiple hoops in one hole(left side) or each hoop have it’s own hole(right side). The left side was stronger and more even whereas the right side was looser and didn’t hang nicely

From left to right you can see I started off closer to the plan I had in mind until I realised how difficult it would be to connect them but also position and size them evenly without the sizes having multiple decimal places making it hard to make sure it’s all perfect for the laser cutter. So, I’m just going to go with different size squares if I have time I might be able to add more details like adding computer parts or PCB circuit trace designs on to them.

Spatial Organisation

TinkerCAD

Interface remediation

I made a crank and slider mechanism as a test as I wanted to make a grid of wooden blocks that I can change the shapes of. However, the construction of this will probably take a while and wouldn’t be easy considering I don’t know much about physical computing. So, for now I think I’ll use an LED matrix which I’ve prototyped in p5.js

p5js

User Control

I didn’t do any prototyping for this. But I will use linear actuator to create the slider and linear solenoid to create buttons that look like they’re pushing themselves.

Categories
Research Supervisor Meetings

Week 11 – Last Week Before Easter Break

SMART goals for this week

  • Finish writing Lit review and Intro
  • Presentation for Formative

What I did this week

Supervisor Meeting Notes

Project considerations

  • The interface
    • Hard to make interesting
    • Make the the external and screen
    • Make it shout out
    • A controller that does a lot of things but it takes a lot of time to control
    • Eye tracker whether you look at pop ups with things that it thinks you want
  • Example Ken
    • 8 bit keyboard
    • To make the most useless e.g. both raspberry pi and arduino
  • Concentrate the quantity

Thesis Questions

  • Audience
    • Technologically extensive to non tech savvy people
    • SMART Goals how to measure improve that
      • I do like this to reach that goal
    • Prove that what I’ve done targets these people
    • Evaluation more systematic
    • Can ask people to informally test it does need to be included in the thesis
  • Extra context with stuff that’s older to support the newer stuff
  • Beneficiaries who might have an overlap with the audience

I started writing my introduction and planned out my literature review. As now that I have the idea to iterate I need to finish the writing before I start working on the project because I will not prioritise the writing as I struggle with it the most.

I thought I found a good structure for my writing and then realised it wasn’t very clear. To be honest I have spent this week mainly feeling very confused and mixed up my thoughts so not much got done this week. I was also very busy with other commitments.

I talked with Agnes who gave me some references to look at and also helped me pick out some physical computing stuff to play with over the break. I also attended her soldering workshop so, I should be well prepared when I come back.

I realised that I missed some stuff out that I need to add to my intro and lit review like

  • Explaining how the current GUI design is based around a capitalist framework
  • Looking at esoteric and artworks that question the design of Operating Systems
Categories
Design Process Supervisor Meetings

Week 10 – I’ve got an Idea

SMART goals for this week

  • Look at examples
  • Structure for literature review
  • Prototyping and mockup

What I did this week

Supervisor Meeting Notes

Project considerations

  • On current design
    • Too on the nose
    • more metaphorical
    • Break down more
      • what do I mean by optimisation and spatialisation
      • Is their obvious representation
      • connection order of spatial design linked in to optimisation
  • Look at the exhibition next week
    • Go in without reading the description and the look at description
  • Difference between eras of digital video
    • less control and more control.TV vs Youtube
    • summarising other video media
      • time optimisation
  • Examples
    • How I experience the web today
      • not specific
      • abstract

Thesis Questions

  • How it sits in the area of creative computing
    • Make obvious you’re taking the computing to show the computing
  • Do the justifications after the fact
  • Introduction
    • prime for the project
    • little about the project
  • Literature Review
    • What is already there
    • connect research and idea
    • Take ideas to make idea a+idea b+idea c = mine or idea a -> idea b -> idea c-> = mine
    • Challenge
      • Clear connection between research and project
  • Ideation
    • conceptually
      • layout argument
    • Practically
      • If possible add all iterations
      • highlight important ones

I really like How I Experience the Web Today it’s a very clear piece that shows how web articles work. As an exercise and thought process I tried to mimic this piece with what I’m looking at.

Ideas

Sci fi human computer hybrid symbiote. Showing the evolution of human if we continue to “improve” time optimisation, spatial design and control. How would this domesticated creature exist on earth without technology. Digital isn’t forever it could be gone there’s many places around the world that have to load shed. Even now I’ve seen lockers that use keycards break and trap people’s belongings and people struggle to open it.

How could this be shown

  • D&D boardgame make it computational digital
  • A punch and judy play with robotic puppets with interaction
  • Parody Star Trek or Doctor Who

I realised that I was trying to make the project interesting for me to make and not actually focusing on the fact that what I’m saying is essentially time optimisation, spatial design and control make life short, boring and stressful. So, making it interesting goes against that

  • Surround audience with tasks that they can complete and will autocomplete after every few clicks the installation will ask what will you do with your free time? This would make people think about how even with all this optimisation and efficiency the free time technology promises is very rarely achieved
  • sliders https://londondesignbiennale.com/pavilions/2023/mudac
  • Three sliders time optimise, spatial design and control. Use these controls to show animation that shows what life looks like with different levels.
    • This is gonna be difficult as I don’t have much experience with animation so to animate multiple different possibilities would probably be out of my time and skill scope. It’s a good idea but not worth it for a poor execution. I mean I could limit the options

How I experience the web Exercise

I haven’t finished the exercise yet but it made me think that maybe I could expand on this format. As I realise that the previous ideas were missing the implication that time optimisation, spatial design and control is a computer design not computers themselves. So in order to show that is just a design I could design a bunch of diegetic prototypes they don’t have to be better than what we currently have they just have to show that there’s so many different ways we could explore. It also shows the influence a design can have especially with products that are ingrained in our lives in multiple ways rather than a tool for 1 or a couple of things.

This concept I really like, I show time optimisation, spatial design and control; I show that these things are just a design and not the computer; The audience can interact with it closely and immerse themselves without me having to try and personalise it to them.

This also feels very doable, I’m the most confident in HTML and javascript. It’s interesting for me to make. I could even add more to the immersion and installation part I could set it up like tech departments in stores where they have all the different types of computers everywhere but instead of marketing different hardware I’m marketing different OS.

https://uxdesign.cc/the-worst-volume-control-ui-in-the-world-60713dc86950

Categories
Design Process Refining Idea Supervisor Meetings

Week 9 – Refined Idea & Literature Review Structure

SMART goals for this week

  • Literature Review and Introduction
    • Finish structure
    • Bullet point
    • Gather list of citations needed
  • Start design process
    • Have a first iteration of the piece by the end of the week

What I did this week

Couple of days after my supervisor meeting my laptop and phone decided to break at the same time so I didn’t do as much work as I had planned to do this week.

Supervisor Meeting Notes

Project considerations

  • 15 minute city
  • retrace
    • Took photos around the world. location, data time, colour influences design of jacket
  • Diegetic prototype
    • Linear interface
    • How would different people in society interact with it
  • Jewish Museum Berlin
    • Shalekhet (Fallen Leaves) by Menashe Kadishman

Thesis Questions

  • focus on one subset of the movement
  • consider the approach for the argument
    • hard to define movement without looking at the previous and hard to put something into a movement.
  • Back up decisions with reasons
  • Planning
    • See using them
    • Refer to them
    • Reflection on the GANTT chart

Exploring ideas

1 Mail, message, folders etc all lined up for you, You can jump between these different things

2 While we plan our physical spaces in a certain way for example schools being close to residential areas etc. The digital version of our buildings (clothes store, grocery store, hospital) all exist in the same area you don’t have to travel to get from place to another. You can have 3 different tabs open zara, sainsburys, call with doctor

3 Is this how we lose our sense of time in the digital space? because we don’t have to travel a distance it feels like everything is done so quickly. (Look into humans and productivity is it important that we are always doing something? Time and mental health?)

4 instagram is a grid format you could 5 posts about each day of your holiday. Friends can jump between the different days look at them in a different order as opposed to listening to you tell the story in a particular order

5a linear internet

MOSCOW Prioritisation

There was something off with the ideas I was coming up with. Which I have now realised is because I have drifted from wanting the audience to realise that the way a computer is designed in its function influences how we perceive reality and how it can change their behaviour. So, I used MOSCOW to help make sure I keep to that

  • Must have: Show spatialisation computer designs effect on human perception of time
  • Should have: Use a new skill I have to learn and an old skill I want to develop
  • Could have: A comparison of the current design and a potential design
  • Won’t have: a simulation won’t have time to make a simulation that would work for a variety of people

This has really helped me organise and make my thinking clearer.

Visualising the foundation of my idea

Categories
Refining Idea Supervisor Meetings

Week 8 – Experimentation

Changed the structure of these blog posts so I can talk about goals for this week with supervisor

By March 15th need to be clear on what you’re doing including whether you can learn a new skill in time etc.

Goals for this week

  • Finish with The Language of New Media
  • Start experimenting with specific ideas that come up from the reading
  • Start recording references
  • Make Project Plan

What I did this week

Supervisor Meeting Notes

Project considerations

  • Marshall Mcluhan the medium in the message. Media theorists. Understanding media. The medium is the massage
  • David Carson Postmodernist graphic design
    • Massimo Vignelli
  • Skeumorphism
  • Creating something jarring
    • physically morphing clay with digital outputs
    • digital interface onto physical interface
  • Challenge will be creating a narrative that is smooth and linear
  • relevancy
    • creating a story behind it
    • This particular issue
    • relatable starting point
    • technofeudalism callback at the end

Understanding Postmodernism

I’ve understood that postmodernism is a rejection of modernism which focuses on simplicity and usefulness. I searched for postmodernism computing and came across a talk from Larry Wall about Pearl and its connection to postmodernism.

I think in order to refine the idea and start playing around with the idea is to define these to use as a framework and guideline

  • What is postmodernism
  • What is modernism
  • What is spatialisation

Experimentation

After looking at Perl I realised that I wanted my piece to be understood by a non tech savvy audience. Perl isn’t a commonly used language amongst coders so, it’s less likely to be known by non coders.

I booked out a projector and have been learning to use MadMapper.

First time projection mapping
projecting photontide image on radiator

What aspect of spatialisation do I want to show?

  • Daily life comparison
    • Show how we think about time linearly but we display time spatially on computers
      • We wake up, go to the bathroom, eat, shower, check mail routine
      • Mail, message, folders etc all lined up for you, You can jump between these different things
    • While we plan our physical spaces in a certain way for example schools being close to residential areas etc. The digital version of our buildings (clothes store, grocery store, hospital) all exist in the same area you don’t have to travel to get from place to another. You can have 3 different tabs open zara, sainsburys, call with doctor
      • Is this how we lose our sense of time in the digital space? because we don’t have to travel a distance it feels like everything is done so quickly. (Look into humans and productivity is it important that we are always doing something? Time and mental health?)
      • Could you create an interface that has that injection of distance and travel.
      • What would a linear computer look like?
  • Media specific
    • instagram is a grid format you could 5 posts about each day of your holiday. Friends can jump between the different days look at them in a different order as opposed to listening to you tell the story in a particular order
      • Linear thinking with a spatial interface. Everything is laid out in front of us all the time. With linear thinking there will always be the next thing.
    • Wikipedia you can jump through the web page find the specific thing and jump elsewhere.
    • Drawing depending on medium you can’t erase what you do but digitally you can jump between layers adjust something you did it at the beginning of the piece right at the end
  • Our strong tie to technology is through media. Media will morph to the new technology. Are computers different? computers are a flexible technology we could use computers in a different way to how we do now. Is optimisation and simplicity the best way to design is this a modernistic view that postmodernism rejects? Odd contrast of computers being designed spatially not linearly which is a postmodernist effect but we want to make things as simple and optimised which is modernist view. Oxymoron?
  • Different parts of life to look at spatialisation to see the digital version of it
    • Geography, urban planning
    • Sociology, social structures
    • Philosophy
    • Time, History
    • Economics
Categories
Refining Idea Supervisor Meetings

Week 7 – The Idea and Supervisor Meeting

What I did this week

Notebook correlation: Research (Artwork and Media (Neuromancer) – Academic (Lev Manovich))

I picked ‘Digital and Physical World Swap’ out of my options as Monday we had the first graduation project class and we were starting our introductions and research proposals. I picked this one as I found it the easies to explain to other and people and felt confident in what I was talking about. All the options were interesting to me.

I made a notebook for all my research notes and eventually also for design iterations. I want to keep the blog as a space to summarise the week.

Random thoughts I had during class

  • Maybe look into a specific spaces like software that’s supposed to make us more “connected “or “easier”. E.g. Spotify, Instagram,
  • Short simulations using dark lab or something. Maybe rigging my flat with physical hardware and film the experience.

I have meeting with my supervisor every Monday now so Blog posts will have a Meeting Notes section now.

Supervisor Meeting Notes

Project considerations

  • Compare how we live now to pre technology
    • So music now with Spotify, iTunes, YoutubeMusic etc compare to pre recording music
  • Look at cyberpunk genre and art movement and see how they explore cyberspace
    • Make note of the visual language used from this genre
    • Look at neuromancer by william gibson
  • Use Double Diamond Process
    • Currently in the define stage
  • Pick 1 experience
    • Show the differences in cultures and the internet
  • Keywords
    • Technological dominance social impact of technology.

Thesis Criteria questions

  • Communication objective for art projects: identify key audience impact coming through the work, if you’re looking to make a change in the audience
  • Avoid making thesis question a rhetorical question
    • Open to interpretation. What kind of differences are there between digital and physical world. and what questions why is more research
  • Research proposal is not part of thesis
  • Conclusion of the research
  • If doing an installation put it all up in dark lab and take pictures and videos.

After looking at artwork I’ve started looking into academic papers. I used Chat GPT to find papers as I struggled to find the correct keywords to find what I wanted.

I found Lev Manovich’s book “The Language of New Media” which talks about the language we use to understand and operate computers. He identifies that we use language from text and cinema as a foundation for how computer interface has been made.

I’ve been quite drawn to the text influence on computers over the cinema influence. I might focus on that aspect of the how the digital space works. Although the part about how the cinematic frame and postmodernism has influenced computer interface is interesting.

Categories
Research Supervisor Meetings

Week 3 – Supervisor Meeting

What I did this week

With everything that’s happening in the world recently I want to make a contribution. So moving slightly away from social relationship with technology. I want to look at the political role US technology plays in the UK.

However, when I was talking about this with my supervisor I was concerned I would get swept up in the idea and lose sight of my dissertation. It could be better to pick something a little more controlled and just pick a piece of technology and take it to the extreme. But my supervisor pointed out that there was overlaps. That I could look at current US tech dominance and push it to the extreme (ironically in hindsight I think we are already at the extreme end of the scale).

Notes I need to remember:

Technical part of the project

  • Have interaction in the final piece whether it be sensors or something else that involves coding
  • Blend current skills with new skills (I would really like to do something with Blender and Projection mapping)

Goals for next week

  • Collect research
    • Find a central piece of research
      • Supporting research
    • Look at existing artwork
  • Refine Context and Problem Statement
  • Figure out whether I want to do a:
    • Statement Piece
    • Solution oriented
    • Satire