Notes from Knut

Lately i have found myself in a " status quo " on my main project while doing a lot of fun things with paper cups and cd-rw drives. To get back on track i am doing more research into projects that revolve around data mining and robotic emotions or expressions. In an interview with MIT's Sandy Pentland by Kate Green (TR 2007) there is quite a few gems that fits my project quite well. I have long been facinated by the ability to use the ubiquitous cell phone to gater information unknown to man. And in an experiment in "reality mining", by Pentland, he states that: A cell phone is the ultimate data-collection machine and later he states what i feel is a great purpose for the collections of everyday data (Slightly paraphrased): "Reality mining helps us anonymously compare ourselves to our peers" And it is in that context ubiquitous data mining or reality mining comes to its right. It will help us see our selfes in a new context and it adds a social laye

Lecture by Dr. Mark Paterson, University Of Exeter The lecture is building on his book on this subject. He looks into the language of feeling: The "felt" phenomenology which is the Science of describing experience. The phenomenology psykology. The phenomenology language lets us see deeper inside ourselves. Touch expands into a series of sematic sensations combining all available sensing input into a coherent and meaningful output. Aestetics defined: "Pertaining to the senses". The aestetic atitude is to learn how to see. Bye holding feeling and learning by touch you can remember previous similar experiences. The aestetichs of sculpture results in more embodied engagement (according to Margaret Bodin) due to the possibilities of touch and other haptic senses. Sculpture is created for the hand, while painting are made for the eye ( Das Plastik (1778)). Herder claims that touch is the most sluggish of our senses, but i know that touch, especially in the fingers are the

The workshop with Tom Igoe was very interesting. Although it did not result in completed prototypes it was a good week of learning more advanced Arduino prototyping. After the first days with general Arduino practice i decided to try an idea for my major project: To make a Bluetooth RFID reader that is connected to my SE K610i using mobile.processing.org After learning serial communication through a terminal program it was just a matter of having the right commands to set the devices up. So while the electronics is rather simple (An ID-12 RFID reader with the data pin connected to a BlueSMIRF Silver Bluetooth modem) the issue is to make an application that uses the newly made gizmo for something interesting. In my mind i have a plan for doing that, so in the next few days i will try to elaborate and detail that plan.

Next week Mr. Tom Igoe will be on campus to advance our knowledge in Physical Computing . It has been stressed that we need to present plans for what to do in the short time we have with Mr. Igoe. After Iteration One and Two of the major project we are supposed to have that plan, but that is maybe stretching the the realities a little. I've had my talks with Timo on the progress of my project and plans for the workshop. I usually like to have a clearly defined goal and a useful purpose for my projects, but in this project i do not have that. After talking to Timo i have realized that it might not be a drawback. So for next week i would like to see if my angles of attack can be synthesized into a working demonstrator of "Use Qualities" ( Löwgren and Stolterman ), RFID and "The Internet of Things" ( Bruce Sterling ). Plan A for the week is to create a setup like this: Note that i plan to build two identical devices that will exchange information. This will en

Arduino Today we had some more fun with Arduino after class. Me and Silje decided to add motion to our Alien Cup by using servos. After some trial and error we found a method for using just one servo to make it walk. Not very elegant, but it works. Sensor To add an interesting controller to the system we decided to be puppetmasters and donned a sensor glove with touch sensitive fingertips. By "Walking" on the index and middle finger the servo, with its attached steel wire legs, propels the big guy forward. It does actually feel quite nice. The coupling between the finger walk and Alien walk could have been tighter, but for a three hour prototype i am quite pleased. Take a look at the videos for more!

This write up of my workshop last thursday is meant as a tool for my project and might not be that clear to others, but it is an insight into a discourse on the topic of objects with social skills. As promised the workshop started with a "press conference" of evereyday objects my workshop participants usually carry: The Moose Key Ring, "Lypsyl" (Lip Balm), A Wallet, My Keys and Ipod Touch w/headset. The experience was quite strange. All of us wrote one question for each object that we asked in the "conference". They were answered by the objects owner. Here is a selection of Q&A: My Keys: Q- Wich sensation do you feel when you are inside the door? A- It is bumpy in the start, but then the world spins around! The Ipod Q - How important do you feel compared to other devices in your network? A - I Feel almost as important as the camera, but since i am more fun i think she [Ingrid] likes me more! The Moose Q - What did you do at 2200 last night? A - I was