While in New York, I had my first opportunity to work with an Arduino Microcontroller, already familiar with Processing I was really interested in how I could use an Arduino and some basic electronics to enhance my projects. That summer my friends at The Studio for Interactive Media and at Interaction Lab at RockwellGroup helped answer a lot of questions and really inspire me.

When I returned back to Minneapolis to finish up another semester at MCAD I found that I had to scale back my ideas, due to time allowed for execution and having only myself to rely on. At that point, using multiple capacitance sensors attached to a bench were a little out of my range, so I went digging.

A trip to Ax-Man Surplus struck some inspiration for a simpler solution for my project. I found 5 cent cardboard mailing sleeves, and a $5 roll of aluminum foil tape and decided to make my own switches. By applying aluminum foil tape to each side of the cardboard mailers and attaching leads to each piece, I was able to make a switch that held closed with force but opened without. Each switch was used with a pull-up resistor, so, if it was closed the current went to ground, otherwise it would lead to a digital pin on the Arduino. Printing this out to serial, I was able to read it into Processing, receiving “1010″ would translate to “there is someone sitting in the 1st and 3rd spots of the bench,” a sound would then be triggered accordingly. In this setup, a laptop is required to run the processing sketch and trigger the sounds. Upon reflecting on the process of this project, I would probably use a Wave Shield from Adafruit and remove the Processing sketch and laptop altogether, but I am still satisfied with the way I was able to remove complexity from the project by using a cheap 5 cent piece of cardboard.

On March 22nd, I began my new role as the Director of Creative Development at Y Worlds. It doesn’t look like much yet, but it will, I promise. We are a lean team on a highly-aspirational objective, more on that at a later date. To boil it down, I am in charge of the creative direction of our company, our goal is to aid in the transference of knowledge through interactivity and the development of knowledge visualization systems. Their have been a lot of bad decisions made in the world, decisions that don’t express equality or nurturing for self and others, we want to change that by educating people in a way that is easier to understand and entertaining, for an intelligently-derived future for all.

Below is an image of yworlds.com as it exists now. It will be interesting to look back at this in the future. I look forward to sharing more with everyone soon, our first visibility will come in the summer.

The title of this post was borrowed from an exhibition a couple of my friends had recently. Ben Moren and Tyler Stefanich exhibited site-specific works addressing the transition from Winter to Spring, more information at the They Won’t Find us Here Gallery.

Y Worlds as of April 17, 2010

I am looking forward to being a part of such a great program and am very excited to have received this opportunity. For the next nine months, I will be focused on working towards my goal of creating an installation space that encompasses a sense of memory and identity. The fellowship culminates in opportunities to present work at this years SparkFest in October.

Visual synopsis of the five fellows: