FERRUM - Indian International Jewellery Show, Signature Goa

Ferrum - Indian International Jewellery Show, Signature Goa from niveditaganjoo on Vimeo.


Held in Kala academy, Goa in Feb ‘10.
Designed an outdoor interactive installation ‘Ferrum’ for a pit in kala academy. Ferrum is an interactive installation that provides the user a chance to engage in the playful activity of generating and enjoying exciting patterns formed by iron dust & magnets.
Working: When anyone comes near the installation the PIR sensor detects the presence and the magnets make patterns with the iron dust.




























Concept

The installation had two aspects-
1) Act as a piece of art, aesthetically sound
2) Interactive, capable of providing people with a engaging experience
For its functionality the installation largely depended on electronic components .

Electronic Components

The functionality was as follows-
Proximity of an observer was detected through Passive Infrared Sensor ( PIR, incorporating an Fresnels lens and a motion detecting IC )
PIR sent a signal which was received by the IC
The IC in turn triggered a DC motor ( 100 rpm ) to rotate.
A limit switch was incorporated to limit the height of the platform housing another "motor-magnet" setup.
The limit switch triggered a signal, which caused the DC motor to stop rotating.
At this point, the stepper-motor,kept on the platform started rotating, in pre-programmed fashion.
In case, no-motion was detected for some pre-defined time, the PIR resets, sending a signal.
Receiving this signal, the IC made the stepper-motor to stop.
Then the DC motor starts rotating in the reverse direction, hence the platform came down.
Another limit switch at this point is used to limit the minimum height of the platform.
A AC-->DC (12 V , 1.5 A) adapter was used to supply power.

Mechanism of the piston







The greatest hurdle in piston mechanism was the motion of the platform in the vertical axis. I tried to do this motion by following how a piston work i.e. transforming circular motion to linear motion.



I devised another method to do this. I used a screw attached to the motor axis. As the screw rotated, the nut attached to it moved up/down (depending on the direction of rotation). This worked.



Electronics, motor, PIR





Site Measurement





Form Exploration





Electromagnet test


I tried to generate different shapes by changing the shape of the solenoid, This too did not worked well, as I realized that iron-dust magnetized along the magnetic lines of flux and not on the body of the solenoid.





Glycerin test
I did the following experiment, trying to achieve a structure of iron-dust in the cylindrical tube when magnets were applied at both the ends by use of some viscous fluid.

Student: Supreet Kumar, Nivedita Ganjoo
NMD-09

Euphony- Interactive Generative Music

Euphony - An Interactive Generative Music Installation from Sumit Pandey on Vimeo.

Euphony was an interactive music generation installation that allows an audience to engage in a localized sound based sensory experience. The targeted concept was to generate music that creates a pleasant and soothing experience for visitors while maintaining a balance between direct interaction and a noticeable output. It was designed to blend in with the environment and set a desirable ambience in that space.

The technical components that were used in the installation were speakers, a wide range web camera, a professional quality amplifier and a work station computer. In order to represent our concept in a real open space, we used an earthen pot or ‘matka’ as our sound post. The matka as an object not only facilitates a pleasing aesthetic ambience but was mainly chosen for its natural property of increasing the volume of the sound. It also lends a reverb quality to the sound which enhances the quality and goes well with the nature of the music produced. The form of the matka was modified so as to give way for inserting a web camera in a cleverly hidden manner and also concealing maximum amount of wiring within the matka itself. More importantly, the individual matka design was made completely independent from other dependencies in the location; hence, making it portable, cheap, and convenient way of distributing music. Further intervention with the design of the post includes a pedestal under the matka for aesthetic value and as a housing for the computer and electrical power supply.















Multiple numbers of these sound posts/pots were placed in certain specific locations within the open space. This would allow users to move around the space and glide through a localized dynamic sound experience while avoiding any overlap or interference by other posts. The system generates music using movement and density of a set of people moving in a space that is monitored by a web camera. This web camera detects and sends movement and density information to a computer that uses it to generate music through a software called ‘Tiction’. Due to the uniqueness in the nature of movement that people have and the variation in density with time, the installation generated music which was melodious and yet non-repetitive through time.

Euphony- Interactive Generative Music from Anuradha Reddy on Vimeo.


Team: Sumit Pandey, Anuradha Reddy

IIJS Signature Goa 2010

IIJS Signature Goa 2010 from Promila Roychoudhury on Vimeo.

Multitouch Tables

This project was a live installation done as a part of IIJS Signature, Goa 2010. The brief was to create an interactive and dynamic art installation for the cafeteria space of the exhibition.

The initial idea floated around a concept of engaging the visitors with an interactive table while they were spending some quality time at the cafeteria. So we replaced the coffee tables with four interactive multi-touch tables. One of the tables was designed so that people could view the last year’s exhibition photos and the other three were based on the concept of human-object interaction. The reason for introducing an interactive table at the cafeteria was to provide the guests an experience of the Goan environment with some subtle animations as well as an opportunity for them to mingle with one another.



The table was equipped with multi-user interactive animations which were designed based on the theory of response stimuli system. It was an intelligent system which was able to distinguish between the natural hand gestures and objects like ipod, mobile phone, coffee cup etc, and thus responded accordingly to generate visually pleasing animations. The theme of the exhibition was celebrating Goa. So taking inspiration from the goan beaches, we choose water ripples as one of the visuals for the table.



The project comprised mainly of three major segments. First was the designing of the interface through which people interact with the table, the second challenge was achieving it technically and finally the design of the form, colour and placement of the table.

The method of FTIR (Frustrated Total Internal Reflection) was used for running the photo application on one of the tables and the other three tables worked on the principle of Front Diffusion Illumination. For both the tables, CCV (Community Core Vision) received the blob coordinate data from the web cam feed and later, sent to Adobe Flash via TUIO protocol to generate the graphics.

Previous / Next image (3 of 3)

Team Members: Sures Kumar, Ishwari Vakhariya, Purnima Anand
Acknowlegments: khakhar Jignesh, Loonker Mayank, Shimul Vyas


Ref: Sures Kumar

FRAMEWORKS

FRAMEWORKS

FRAMEWORKS is an interactive installation based on the principle of mixed reality, which tries to enhance the meaning of an architectural space. We have tried to achieve it by developing a game named 'Jesture', where virtual objects play with the real space, walls and depth according to the hand gestures of the user.

The game is about navigating the character through different levels and directing it back to the initial position. The direction of the player’s hand gestures guides the motion of the character in virtual space. The character moved in left or right direction by simply moving the players’ hand in left or right direction. The character can also jump up by moving the hand in the upward direction.



The level of immersion in a gaming experience can be enhanced by using mixed reality techniques because of the involvement of real time interactions between real and virtual objects. So we tried to use the MR technologies to translate the conventional gaming world into more naturally immersive one.

We initially started our mixed reality experimentation with the traditional game of ‘Pong', where the virtual ball bounces within the physical boundaries of the wall For this game, we selected the wall which housed the railing of the stairway as the game The profile of the stairway acted as a boundary for the virtual ball to bounce back. Players were provided with a wired glove which controlled the paddle for hitting the ball. 



The video (below) showcases our initial explorations involving Projection Mapping techniques, which revealed us the problems regarding lighting, shadow and issues of perspective. We chose Foyer at National Institute of Design, Ahmadabad, India which provided us a challenging setting for the gaming experience. 



This project was developed as a part of six-week course on embedded systems and interaction design. The design encompasses a wired glove connected to a single board microcontroller prototyping platform- Arduino and sensors such as triple-axis Accelerometer, single-axis MEMS Gyroscope and Force Sensing Resistor . The game interaction is achieved by programming in an open source programming language – Processing 1.2 and projected using projection mapping techniques - Autodesk Maya.

This is our 1st video prototype of the working of the sensors



Pictures:

Previous / Next image (5 of 5)

FRAMEWORKS is selected for presenting at Yahoo! USID Academic Showcase, as a part of USID 2010 conference at Hyderbad, India.
This work has been submitted as a note at CHI 2011, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Team members: 
Sures Kumar, Promila Roychoudhury

Acknowledgments:
Khakhar Jignesh, Nagar Bhaumik, Panchal Ujjval, Pathan Arshad

Ref: Sures Kumar