Pots and pans

[Click on images to see large version]

[Also, here is a link to a show where I used the panel. The show was mostly for an experimental animation class, but with some cross over to my physical computing class ... http://www.rsd.no/documenta_web/ ]

Useful Experience:

Since my goal was to put together something that could be displayed in public, I had to think about some of the problems that might occur. First of all, would they understand my 'analog interface' and what to do with it? Since I planned on staying in the room where the 'show' took place all the time anyways, it did not really matter so much in this case. But in any other case, under normal circumstances, it would have mattered a great deal. I think four knobs are pretty easy to understand (especially because they look just like any other normal knob would do [see images]) but what those four knobs represent is not given at all. My intention was that people would test the knobs, and by receiving feedback from the screen, they would understand what was going on. In some cases, it might be more or less random things that happened, and that would be okay too, as long as the subject did not stop playing with the knobs, because of confusion or any other reason for that sake. There would be little use in having a 'user controlled piece of digital art' if the user were either not willing to control it, or did not understand that this was the whole point of it.

In any case, I learned that making a good interface is not easy. I was actually pretty confused myself many times when I tried controlling the different parameters with the knobs on my panel. To make it easier to understand, I could have labeled them on the panel itself, but that would be hard, since their function changed from piece to piece. I had about 4-5 usable pieces in which they all took use of the inputs from the potentiometers, but in quite different manners. The other thing I tried, was to have bars and labels on the screen itself. That worked somewhat, and is probably the best solution for now. An even more hi-tech, exclusive, expensive, and usable solution, might have been adding an LCD display to the panel itself. I might do that at some point. Also, it would have been very interesting to make it a wireless solution, something I do not think is too hard, given the right hardware.

In any case, making the potentiometer panel, and having it to work, was very fun and interesting indeed. I had a hard time doing the soldering, mostly because I do not have 'helping hands' to help me, yet, and partly because I do not have the necessary training and skills required for work like that. I am hoping that practice will help eventually. Despite the trouble, I managed to get some of the wires stick to what they were supposed to stick to, and without making any short cuts, so that was all good. The panel itself was part of an old Ikea metal shelf I found behind my house, left there by my old renters. It suited the purpose perfectly. I only had to file a small notch in each of the holes to fit the pots, which only took a couple minutes for each. It is possible to add many more pots to it, or maybe adding some LEDs on the underside could be nice? Either way, I found the whole idea of controlling an application like this very satisfying, and surprisingly easy to extend. I mean, I had some trouble making the first one work, due to a somewhat badly explained example in Arduino, but after figuring out that one, adding more pots was no problem at all.

I was a little bit disappointed that I had to go back to Arduino after spending an immense amount of time trying to learn assembly, and utilizing the PIC, but to have the PIC communicate with a PC/Mac through a serial communication (i.e. USB in my case) was just too much for me to get my head around. This is partly because I could not find any good tutorials on the matter, and also due to the fact that there are a lot of different types of PICs out there, and they all have slightly different ways of doing things like this. Also, this was a matter of hardware, since Arduino works with Mac out of the box, something PICs generally do not do, making it even easier to use the Arduino. So, having said that, when I first went back to the Arduino, it was a dream to work with compared to the PIC. This is not only because of the hardware, on the contrary, but because Arduino and Processing are such popular and wonderfully easy applications to work with, and even more importantly, with so many working examples straight up. I mean, you can find an example of a working application for every function there is, literally. That is a huge help, and makes the learning curve almost go downhill instead of up.

There are many aspects to consider making user controlled digital art pieces, and many skills are necessary to master. One of those skills is something I completely lack, and that is the physical electronics part. I am a total 'newbie' when it comes to that, and for all the tutorials I am looking at, I feel like they are not basic enough for me. That said, some of the tutorial are so basic that they get complex because of that, since they start with the atoms and go from there. So, I would really like to see a good book, that deals with both micro-controlling, thoroughly explaining the electronic parts of it, in addition to having working examples. It seems that most tutorials take for granted that the electronics part is understood, having a much more thorough explanation of the coding, which for me, really is the easy part.

Conclusion:
There is a lot more to learn, of course, in all aspects of making art that involves interactive, physical, digital, aesthetic, and not the least, conceptual parts to it. Together, but also individually, these aspects are all huge fields in and by themselves, that easily can fill up a lifetime of learning, experimenting, and fun. I really hope I will be able to continue to work with all of these fields, with the goal to have them to work as a fully whole at some point in the future.