Tats à Rotterdam

Je reviens bientôt, mais tel que promis je vous envoie un dernier podcast.

Je suis passé à la tivi sur une chaîne de Rotterdam! Il faut être bilingue néerlandais-anglais pour tout capter...

I have found a few links about virtuality and loneliness. First this post tells about the Tamagotchis and the issues it raises for young kids. This article talks about virtual pets as a way for old people to overcome loneliness.

Here are a few ideas for a title for my work.

Raft

Nacelle

Sanctum

Haven

Rift

I have been doing a lot of thinking about the model of control (ie. the behavior) of the object. The model should meet the following objectives:

• Work within the constraints of the system
• Create a good experience of interaction
• Represent the loneliness/company-seeking agenda of the object
• Produce a variety of sounds/interactions

Different ideas

Sound is working!!! I can get input and output...

I'm now trying to somehow play with sound. I want to create the "parrot game" ie. record and playback sound. The main problem I'm facing is that the Atmega8 has only 1K RAM (and 512 bytes EEPROM). For human voice, we need at least 6kHz ie. 6000 samples/second. Let's say I don't want to use EEPROM and I have 1k memory available, this means that I can record up to...

• 1/6 second @ 8 bits
• 1/3 second @ 4 bits

I built the circuit shown on the image, with the microphone I bought for 1 Euro. I tested the microphone before btw and it seemed to be working well.

I get inputs between 506-511 from the Arduino, but still nothing really happens when I make some noise.

I just bought two of these nice mics, for 1 Euro each, at ACTION. They're unidirectional dynamic mics, 600 ohm impedance, freq. response 100-8000Hz and sensitivity -77+/-3 DB.

The most interesting part for me was "Tactics for using ambiguity" which explicitly gives "tricks" taken from the art world to be applied to design ideas.

Ambiguity of information

• Use imprecise representations to emphasize uncertainty (e.g. Mona Lisa's smile)
• Over-interpret data to encourage speculation (e.g. Picasso's Guernica, figured is blurred by overuse of lines)
• Expose inconsistencies to create a space of interpretation (e.g. once in a while, juxtapose images that have no obvious link to one another)